Thank You, Charles Stross!

Charlie Stross, SF author of The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, Singularity Sky, Halting State, Accelerando, the just released Saturn's Children (and many more), has posted about the Author Advocate Defense fund in his blog today and the fund got a nice run of donations, it's over $1k now. If you can't donate, please post about the fund, because others will donate if they hear about it from someone they trust.

Some good info on how to post about the fund are in this post on Absolute Write by my blogging forum co-moderator L M Ashton - just skip the parts about joining the blog carnival (or not - join AW and join the carnival!) - there's advice about what to say, links to information about the cause and code for a donation button, all in the post. (Thank you again, Laurie, for taking the time to do the post and organize the carnival)

A bit of personal stuff...

Tomorrow is my son's last day home. Three weeks seems like a nice, long time for a vacation from work, but when the job you have to go back to is soldiering in Iraq for 5 or 6 more months, it's way too short. My dad came up from L.A. to visit earlier this week and we had two lovely days with him. We shopped and ate out and just sat around and talked, it was wonderful. My son has caught up with friends, visited Las Vegas, and also taken care of some important stuff he could only do in person here, so I think he'll go back satisfied that it was a good visit.

Otherwhere on the web...

I hope you're all watching Dr. Horrible's Musical Blog. Act II is up now, Act III goes up the 19th. The FAQ's on the Master Plan page are a good read for the background to how the whole thing was conceived.

Back from Vacation in Vegas Update to Author Advocate Defense Fund News

Just got home yesterday from Las Vegas with my son, his girlfriend and my husband. Stayed at the Venetian, which is beautiful. Two things will keep me from going back, the constant perfuming of the hallways on the way to the room, and the distance from the monorail. I prefer taking the monorail whenever possible to get to other hotels, and from the Venetian you have a long walk out, down the strip and then through Harrah's to get to the station.

We visited the Hilton to have a final lunch at Quark's and ride the Star Trek: The Experience ride (we just did the Klingon Encounter one) before it all closes down in September. On the way home (hubby and I drove) we stopped and bought a couple bottles of Klingon Blood Wine and a case of Romulan Ale.

We went to Zumanity on Friday night and had dinner at Benihana's on Saturday. Don't ask me about the gambling - I didn't come home ahead like last year. I did stay within my gambling budget, but only brought home a little of it. I did hit two pretty big jackpots Friday night and Saturday morning - just gambled with it later and said "bye bye".

While I was gone Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi posted about the Author Advocate Defense Fund. The traffic to the page did take a nice uptick. Unfortunately the Pay Pal script that had been working just fine up to the time I left stopped working. I'm not sure if it's something with Googlepages not liking the script, or what, but when I got back I had some emails saying people had tried the button and it didn't link to anywhere. I've updated the page and will use different coding for the link if it breaks again. There's always the button in the sidebar of this blog, too, if you just happen to be hanging out and decide to help.

A couple posts ago someone suggested starting a blog tour and now there's one going on with the Absolute Write bloggers. Thank you L M Ashton! Now, go give the bloggers some link love, and fund tour in your blog, too!

Another Mention of the Fund!

Origami Unicorn mentions the fund. Thank you Catherine!

Other bloggers are mentioning the suit, and while I'm leaving comments, perhaps if you're a regular commenter/friend on their blog or LJ, it would mean more to them to hear from you about the donation site? Your help is appreciated. Your donations are too - there's a button right over there in the sidebar, for your convenience :-)

Great Comment About Author Advocate Defense Fund Publicity

This came in comments to my last post - and I think it's worth bumping to the front page.

To be clear, I have been commenting where I can find a polite reason to, but I'm not going to become a comment spammer. The post has to have some relation to Barbara Bauer v Jenna Glatzer . I have also sent emails to a number of those writers and agents mentioned. I'm still waiting responses from some.

There are some names I will definitely email that I hadn't known of or thought about, because I'm not a writer so the "how would you get the word out if it were about your book" part didn't occur to me. I should research this as if I was going to send out a query! All these years on Absolute Write and have I learned nothing?? *grin*

But, the suggestions are all good ones and I thank you, anonymous, for the comment. One question, though - who's Patry Francis?

I've underlined some really important points of the comment, not about publicity, too (bold doesn't work, I've discovered). Anonymous is dead right about the cost of this - these defendants really need your help. I'm not a publicist, nor can I dedicate long hours to this, as I have a day job that demands its own long hours, but I'll do what I can.

How would you get the word out if it were about your book? A press release? You'd notify bloggers and publishers that have high reader volume like Gawker, Galley Cat, and Publisher's Lunch. You might ask some of the better known blogging agents for help,people like Kristin Nelson, Jessica Faust, Janet Reid, Nathan Bransford, Jennifer Jackson, Jonathan Lyons, Evil Editor, and so on.

{break added by Dawno to make it easier for her to read}

Even if they didn't, or couldn't, for legal reasons, add a link in their next daily post, they might not mind if you left one in comments. It never hurts to ask. Remember how we all got together to help Patry Francis?

{break added by Dawno to make it easier for her to read}

Organize a blog tour. (note from Dawno: I've posted about this at the AW blogging board, but I can't organize the tour right now, maybe in a couple of weeks, after my son goes back to Iraq) Get out there and be seen and heard. Faint heart never won a fair amount of money, and I can tell you for fact that's what is needed. Would any one of your readers like to mortgage their home for the cause? That's what some of the defendants are being asked to do to pay their lawyers.

{break added by Dawno to make it easier for her to read}

And have you calculated the number of lawyers involved? (note from Dawno: yes, I know exactly how many lawyers are involved, it's public record who is defending them) Everyone is gung ho to jump on the Babs Bandwagon, but in all honesty, they have no idea at all exactly how much this is costing the defendants. The case is what's commonly known as a SLAAP suit -- litigation intended to intimidate and silence critics or opponents by burdening them with the enormous cost of a legal defense so that they abandon their criticism or opposition.

I am not a lawyer, and I can't say whether or not this qualifies as a SLAAP suit, but regardless, it will be expensive and they do need help. Please donate!

Getting the Word Out Is Hard Work

I've been sending emails to people like John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman, and if anyone blogs again about the case, I will try to make polite and appropriate comments. Other than that, I'm wondering how else I can get the word out about the Barbara Bauer v Jenna Glatzer, et al Author Advocate Legal Defense Fund. (as you can see, I hope that using a link to the site with the name of the case will help getting it into more searches - but I know I'd have to do that a lot to get any traction).

If you have any ideas for publicizing the fund, please let me know!

Author Advocate Legal Defense Fund Update

The fund has reached $500. I've been sending emails to site owners/bloggers that I think will be friendly to the cause and making comments on blogs that have mentioned the lawsuit in the hopes of attracting more publicity to the fund.

The other day a site called Journal Fen posted a link to something I said in 2006, as well as the link appearing in the comments at NJ.com and this blog had over 200 visits on that day. I'm hoping the person who made the original post will consider linking to the Author Advocate Fund page, too.

If you add the link or mention it on your blog, I'll gladly add you to the sidebar on the Author Advocate Fund website.

A Little Help, Please?

A certain literary agent sued Wikimedia Foundation last year (the information here shows the case was filed Sept '07 - I have also seen a report that the case was filed in January of '08).

On July 1st the case against Wikimedia Foundation was dismissed. Rumor has it the case against two other defendants, (in addition to Wikimedia there were 19 individuals and the SFWA) but I have yet to find any links to support that.

The lawsuit brought this agent back into the spotlight - the most probable precipitating events were pretty much ancient history as far as the internet was concerned. Places as diverse as Information Week, Gawker, and Publisher's Weekly, have picked up on the case in the past few months due to Wikipedia's involvement, as well as a number of writing related sites and blogs.

I mention all this because I was asked to help some of the defendants in this case by setting up and administering a defense fund. The donation button for this fund is in my sidebar. I've also created a webpage with additional information.

The defendants would appreciate your help. One thing you can do is either share the webpage link or link to the PayPal donation page on your sites and blogs.

Lee Goldberg and Author Scoop - Thank you! There have already been visitors to the webpage and new donations to the fund as a result of your mentioning the fund on your sites.