oday, I was forced to think about methods of authentication. I have a scene or two in my book in which my heroine heads to a bank to make a withdrawal from an account. When I originally wrote them, I did a little bit of research to see where banks were and what interest they paid and that sort of thing, but the research I found did not give me any details about the actual practice of banking in London in 1836. Feeling to lazy to delve further, I made a mental note to do Actual Research (namely, hoping someone on the Beaumonde knew better) later, and I made the rest up. (For those of you who are cringing at this lackadaisical attitude, I have to say that there are some historical details I find endlessly fascinating–like, when did the courts of law and equity merge? And what happened to cases pending in Chancery when they did? There are others, like, say, everything to do with finance that I find immeasurably boring.

This, I thought, fell in to the latter category. It turns out I was wrong. Well, wrong about some of the details I’d made up, but also wrong that the details would be boring. It turns out–and this is oh-so-topical–that problems of authenticating identity have always existed. My biggest problem in thinking about banking in 1836 London was this. By the time 1836 rolled around, London was a large enough metropolitan region, and the larger banks had sufficient clientele, that authentication by recognition was simply not much of an option. That is, the banks had lots of clients, and while they probably knew the wealthier ones (or, more like, the solicitors of the wealthier ones), they probably didn’t know Farmer Jones and Grocer Bob. How did Farmer Jones and Grocer Bob go about keeping a banker? In other words, even setting aside questions of bank failure, how could Farmer Jones walk into a bank and trust them not only to keep his money, but to give it up to Jones–and only Jones–on request? And these mundane details that were of actual plot-significance for me–who would actually bother to write them down?

After all, there are so many aspects of our life today–how an ATM card works, for instance, and the manner in which checks function, and the financial web that allows us to walk up to a bank in the Netherlands and withdraw Euros from the American Dollar salary direct-deposited by our employer–I mean, all of those words today, if you had no idea what they meant, wouldn’t even explain how the system works. Enter this incredibly detailed description of how banking works. It is essentially a comprehensive manual, describing exactly how to run a bank, with everything discussed in both minute detail, with a running commentary about the purpose of all the things that are required. It discusses things I would never even have thought of researching, but that I got wrong, including the method in which debits and credits were entered into an account (I shoulda known that they did double-ledgered accounting–of course they did double-ledgered accounting–my brother taught me better than that!), and the manner in which debits and credits were entered (they were not, as I had thought, entered as 3l 5s 2d, as sums were so often written–that takes too long. Instead they were £ 3-5-2.

I also learned that when people talked about a holographic draft, they meant a draft in the account owner’s own handwriting–a historical detail that I suspect can’t be used since the word “holograph” would only confuse the modern reader who attributes a very different meaning to the word. They also had a signature registry, which they used to match signatures on drafts. In any event, I feel suitably chastened. I thought I was going to be searching after arcane details, but it turns out that I was actually searching after intelligent solutions to an extremely hard problem.

I had dreaded it for so long, and it was fun! It was like going to the dentist and getting a book instead of a teeth-cleaning!

hus continues CM’s monthly blog-fest. Come July, I shall blog more. But for now, this rate is just fine.

As I am sure you know, we have come up on the Season of the Devil. Oh, come now. Don’t stare at your computer screen in coy surprise. You know what I’m talking about. Yes, you. It’s obvious.

Thin Mints. Samoas, too, but it’s really the Thin Mints that get me every time. Coworkers hawk them for their cute little girls. You see smiling faces bobbing above green uniforms outside every grocery store. Everywhere you turn, someone is selling Thin Mints. And they are so darned good. Plus, one fits into your mouth so easily, and it takes almost no time to chew it. One bite, and it crumbles into nothingness. And as we all know, nothingness cannot have calories.

Unless nothingness is a Thin Mint. Curse you, Girl Scouts of America.

So you tell me. Girl Scout Cookies: Evil? Or pure evil?

  lot of people are talking about goals. I have three lists of goals. One is my mid-year goals list–the things I want to accomplish by July of 2008. Then I have the 2008 goals list. And then I have my 10-year plan, for 2018.

The one thing I always keep in mind is that I cannot have everything I want (sadly), and so I don’t make goals lists so I can strike off every item on the list. I expect to not achieve all my goals. That means I have to know what trumps what. So, for instance, on the ten year plan, I have listed “build my own home.” Because that is a dream of mine, and it would be nice. And another thing on that list is “have at least a million dollars in liquid assets.” Which would also be nice. I think that either of these things are attainable. It’s probably going to be difficult to do both. A third item on that list is “Have sex on every continent (including Antarctica).” Which may not exactly be compatible with the million dollars, either.

And so I have to know where my priorities are. Of the the three, the one that is (obviously) highest priority is. . . . The third one. Obviously. And yes, I’m serious. Because at the end of my life, I am not going to lean back and say, “I had a million bucks when I was forty.” And while I might enjoy the process of acquiring a custom-built home, I know myself well enough to know that 90% of the time I spend there will consist of my ignoring my surroundings because I am enraptured in what I am reading or writing. I just don’t pay attention to what’s going on around me.
But the third one not only involves two of my favorite activities, it’s one that will make a lot of memories and bring me closer to Mr. Milan. And so if I have to sacrifice the other goals to get that one, I’ll do it.

Remember: Goals are dreams. Goals are not death sentences. Don’t pursue them just because you want to cross them off your list. If you stop wanting a goal, don’t be afraid to give it up.

With those cheery, encouraging words for 2008, I wish everyone all the best! Happy New Year!

  was just looking for a plane ticket–daydreaming, more like.  I thought the price was pretty high–around four hundred bucks–when I saw this little notation.  “Get this flight plus a rental car for $187!”

How on earth could that possibly be the case?  I checked.  I double checked.  I triple checked.  And then I bought the flight–and the rental car–for $187.  I feel like I’ve pulled a fast one over on someone.  This can’t be legal!

But the cops are gonna have to look for me elsewhere, because I’m skipping town for the weekend.  Have a nice Labor day weekend, everyone, and tell me all your delicious plans.

he use of the word “literally” to mean something other than, well, “literally.”

For instance, I was told today that “my head literally exploded.” Uh, no. Your head did not literally explode. It may have done so figuratively, but literal and figurative are opposites.
But using literally to mean something similar to “like, whoa” or “totally” has become surprisingly, shockingly common. Every time I hear it, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Which is wholly unreasonable because I know what the person means, and it’s used as often as not in the mistaken sense.

And the OED says: Now often improperly used to indicate that some conventional metaphorical or hyperbolical phrase is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense. (So, e.g., in quot. 1863.)

It’s been around a long time.
What random and unreasonable peeves do you entertain?

nyone wanna buy a cat? Someone’s selling.

kay. Some of you have heard my theories about how to game Avon FanLit before. Some of you even saw them being tested, when we first posited them. But here’s the truth:

As constituted in the game we played, the rankings in Avon FanLit were susceptible to gaming. I’m not talking about cheats or zero-bandits or skippers or any of that. I’m just talking about regular old gaming that resulted from the game mechanics. A lot of what I’m going to say here is conjecture, but it’s conjecture that’s supported by observation, evidence, and FanLit’s own comments.

Things we know. First, your score is determined by two things: the votes you get, and the number of eyeballs you can grab from the crowd.

Important conjecture number one: The database stores one score for each voter. It either store a number (e.g. 4.5) or a skip. If a person skips a story, but then has it come up in the pool again and reads it, their previous skip is replaced with the score they give. Holly verified that, although it’s possible to skip a story more than once, it would only record one skip per person. I conjecture that it stores only one score–otherwise a person could skip a number of stories and then give them zeroes, which gives them double-ding power. Believe it or not, this hidden mechanic is vastly important.

Important conjecture number two: The database tries to get every entry to have a certain “minimum” number of scores (inclusive of skips). That minimum number is determined, to some extent, by the total number of votes relative to the number of stories. It won’t be even, but let’s say that any story should have at least half the average number of votes available in the pool.
Important conjecture number three: The number of reads you get is inclusive of invites.

Important conjecture number four: Not all positions in rotation are equal. Your position in the rotation is determined by two things: (1) whether you need more scores so as to fit criteria 2; and (2) your last N scores, where N is probably 3 or 4. If your last three or four scores are not very good, even if you are technically “in” rotation, you’ll probably be near the bottom of the pack. If your last N scores are decent, you’ll be near the top of the rotation.

This second bit is partially supported by claims by FanLit, who claimed that if your story isn’t getting skipped, you’ll fall out of rotation faster, but it’s more supported by observation. There’s a reason why getting a 5 from an invite was more likely to be obliterated by a low-score within minutes after you’d been sitting on a 2.0 for three hours: The 5 pushed you towards the top of rotation, and so you were more likely to be pushed in front of eyeballs, and thus get a bad score.
In Rounds 3 and 4, I tracked score timing and data, and while I didn’t have enough information to say definitively, it seems to me that this was a very plausible theory.
Okay. That’s the sum of my guesses about the inner workings of FanLit. Now you add in some observations about the FanLit reader’s habits, also garnered by paying a great deal of attention.
People were less likely to skip stories when the pool was thin (few entries available). People were less likely to skip stories late at night. They were less likely to skip stories that were presented to them when the database was serving up batches of 10 or so near the end of the voting period.

People were more likely to skip stories in that first rush on Monday.

So what do you do about this? Easy: you use your invites to game the system so that you’re only getting read when the pool is favorable. You submit your story on Saturday afternoon. You don’t use any of your invites. It’ll get reads up through Sunday mid-morning, where (chances are) you’ll get a few bad scores in a row. You lay low all through Sunday. Sunday night, you send out three invites to people you know respond quickly; you’re tossed back into the voting pool, and you pick up more high scores. At this point, you’re getting more scores from non-invites, because the database will push you to the top of the rotation to try and even you out. You should have something like 30 votes at this point, and 22 invites in your pocket.

Then you blast your 22 invites all at once. Boom. You’ll have 50-something votes; way more than anyone else, and you’ll be so far out of priority on Monday, compared to the stories that were submitted, that you won’t surface until the database starts batching at the end, when people are unlikely to skip.

That’s how you use your invites to minimize skips. Is this indicative of anything other than an ability to game the system? No. Will this help if your story isn’t any good? No. Must you do this to final? No. But it probably helps. And it shows that the main problem with the Avon FanLit calculus is that skips are weighted far, far too heavily. They’re the easiest thing in the world to game, and so their effect needs to be minimized.

n case the heroine in your Regency-set historical ever needs to take a short trip, here are driving directions from New York, NY to London.

Yes, that’s what I said. New York to London. Driving. Admittedly, some of the map conditions might have changed in the two intervening centuries, but the crucial step 23 is probably the same.

ore procrastination is afoot! I’ve added a progress-meter. It’s deceptive. It gives you the impression that between now and February 11th, I have written 7,000 words. This, of course, is an illusion. It must be, because I’ve apparently written 7,000 words, and yet I still have the same darned scenes left to write.

How did that happen?

hat I should be doing is Actual Work. Either for work or on my book. But what I spent far too long on instead is designing business cards for nationals.

Now, I have a very specific reason for going to Nationals this year, even though I’m in an extremely odd position (even if I wanted to, I couldn’t accept an offer of publication until midway through 2008–don’t ask, I can’t explain). I want to learn about agents and maybe editors. I want to talk to them. I want to see who I like and who I click with and, well, who I don’t. So that when I can query agents, I have a good idea who to go for.

And so I want a business card that’s clean, uncluttered, and memorable. So I spent some time dithering around all the many, many sites that offer business cards at astonishingly low prices.

I hated them all fervently.

I finally found a place that used ink rather than toner, gave reasonable paper choices (look, I’m picky), let me pay extra for bleeds (graphics and text near the edge of the card) and allowed me near infinite control over exact placement of elements: you can rotate and move the elements by minute fractions. Yay, control.

I’ve hit on a basic design. Now it’s just a question of color choice. For that, I open the matter up to you, dear readers. The burgundy design is definitely more romantic. But I also like turquoise, and the gold (that is supposed to be gold) is very cool.

Which has your vote?

EDIT: Adding, by popular demand: