Hello Thursday!

I started writing this while waiting for my lawnmower batteries to recharge so I can finish mowing the lawn on 31 May. Every year, I participate in No-Mow May — the city doesn’t ticket for overgrown lawns during the month of May, pollinators get extra plants, plus I get an extra month of not mowing the lawn? Don’t threaten me with a good time! But it all comes to an end when June rolls around. Then I’ve got to mow so that I don’t get cited. And I don’t know what kind of grass I’ve got growing in the back yard this year, but it’s like amber waves of grain back there. The grass is up to my mid-thigh, it’s golden yellow, and it’s actually kind of pretty. I wish I could leave it long, even though when I’m at the back of the yard looking up at the house I feel like I’ve stepped into Christina’s World.

Days since I've had to stop and remind myself that the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is in fact in the country of Denmark, not in the American state of Louisiana : 0. (Most recently after reading about the exhibition “Headstrong: Basquiat—on Paper.”) The name of the museum goes back to Hofjægermester Alexander Brun, the original owner of the estate where the museum is located. Brun had three wives, each named Louise, and he named the estate Louisiana, in honor of one of them. Now I’m not really sure what happened there, but I’ve got three theories (each more improbable than the last, but each also more fun than the last) as to how the good Hofjægermester came to be married to three women named Louise:

1. The name Louise was really, really, really popular in mid-19th century Denmark.

2. Alexander had some sort of kink regarding the name Louise. (I don’t know what it could possibly be, if it could possibly be, and to be honest we’re all probably better off not knowing.)

3. After Alexander and Louise #1 got married, she went wild with the monogramming. Absolutely wild. Utterly beyond any rational limits. Whatever you’re imagining, she went further than that. Picture practically everything in the house embroidered “Alexander & Louise.” After she died, once Alexander was ready to consider marriage again, he looked around the house, imagined the embroiderers’ bills he would face, and despaired — he knew it would be easier to woo and wed another Louise than to find the money to have all the monogramming redone, so that’s what he did. And then, upon the passing of Louise #2, he did it all again.

At any rate, somehow Denmark came to be home to a museum with such a geographically-confusing name. I run across references to it often enough to remember it’s in Denmark, but only often enough that I first think of the state of Louisiana.

Publishers: The road(block)s between authors and readers

I came across a discussion in Reddit’s r/writing subreddit yesterday that’s gotten me to thinking more about the nature of fiction publishing. The original poster (OP) had posted something to the effect of “I’ve just finished my first novel (epic fantasy, 150K words) and I’m getting ready to start the process of submitting to publishers and agents. I’ve read that this process commonly takes a year a more to get a response. Is this correct, and are there any shortcuts?” The commenters, some of whom were published authors while others with in the same boat as OP, informed OP (with widely varying degrees of kindness) that not only was the time estimate that they’d read correct, and not only were there no shortcuts, but that OP needed to start cutting huge chunks out of their book, because no agent would look kindly at a book of over 100K words, or at all at a book of over 120K words. This was attributed to the fact that no publisher would buy such a book, given the rising costs of paper and ink.

And I know it’s not just costs of paper and ink. It’s also capacity of bookbinding equipment, and number of books that can fit in a box, and shipping costs, and shelf space, and so many other physical constraints of the 20th-century publishing and bookselling industry that modern technology was supposed to have freed us from but hasn’t yet. And it really annoys me. Possibly more than it should, but there it is. It particularly annoys me whenever someone from one of the big publishing companies tries to explain the price relationship between paper books and ebooks: Paper book prices go up because “paper and ink prices are going up” and then ebook prices go up to the same level because “paper and ink are actually a small part of the cost of producing a book.” 🙄 

I think OP might also have been less set up for disappointment if they were writing in a genre other fantasy. In romance, for example, even the big names in the genre seem to be still held pretty tightly to the publishers’ requirements with regard to word count, sex scenes or lack thereof, specific tropes to cling to or avoid, etc., and producing numerous books that adhere to the requirements counts as a successful career. In fantasy, by contrast, the aspiring author is confronted with the sight of authors — either established names who’ve worked their way out from under editorial control or else newcomers who for whatever reason are anticipated to sell extremely well — who are allowed to produce huge books and/or long series, and this is viewed as the definition of success, even though this goes against the requirements that publishers present to authors.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers to the problems of the publishing industry. (I know the publishers have their own problems, which I am, frankly, less sympathetic to.) But I know that there are problems, and there are probably solutions, if we can match the one to the other. 

(I do know for certain, though, that the solution is not to use AI to produce 80K-word book-shaped chunks of slop.)

What I’ve been reading:

Since last week I’ve started reading

• Art in America, Winter 2025 — I subscribe to magazines and read them long after they come in. Expect this.

• Art in America, Summer 2025: As promised in Thursday #1, I ran to the nearest bookstore and picked this up. The cover art by Malo Chapuy immediately caught my eye: it looks like a Renaissance portrait, until you notice that open page on the book the lady is holding looks like a QR code — it looks enough like a QR code that my phone actually identifies it as a QR code, but it doesn’t seem to actually be a valid QR code when I try to read it. I’ve just reached the issue’s main article (”New Talent,” p. 48) and so far I’m impressed with it — it looks like a renewed subscription is in my future. So far in this issue I’ve particularly enjoyed Eliza Goodpasture’s Spotlight column on Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, early 20th-century German painter and associate of Carl Jung, and Louis Bury’s review of Trevor Paglens’ book How to See Like a Machine: Images After AI. (I’m inclined to think that Paglens’ publisher made sure that “AI” was in the book’s title, but Paglens is really addressing computer technology much more broadly than just AI, and when he does address AI, he’s addressing it much more broadly than just generative AI.) 

• Looking for Group (Alexis J. Hall) — A gay romance novel set in and around World of Warcraft! (Hall files off the serial numbers, but you can tell it’s WoW.) I hadn’t heard of this book until I started reading it, but I was in the library picking up a book that I had on hold, stopped at the Pride Month display (the librarians at my local library system do AMAZING displays), and this one caught my eye. I’m two chapters in and loving it so far. The main characters haven’t met outside of the game yet, and based on the cover blurb I’m expecting a big surprise when they do.

• Laid-back Camp, vol. 17 (Afro) — One of the most common cliches in American articles about manga is that there is manga about everything, not just superheroes and giant robots. This is one of those. It chronicles the camping adventures of the girls in a high school camping club. Besides the stories, you also get camping how-to tips (using Japanese camping equipment) and Japanese camping recipes. It’s a very calming read when the world is blowing up outside.

• Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma, vol. 18 (Yuto Tsukuda) — A challenge/fighting manga (think Pokemon or Dragonball) but set at a cooking school, and with a bonus of recipes for the battle-winning dishes. (I haven’t actually tried making any of the recipes, but they look like they’d be good.) 

• Careless People: a Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (Sarah Wynn-Williams) — After reading an article in The Guardian about how the author of this book had to sit on stage in silence at a panel about this book at the UK’s Hay Festival because of threats from Meta’s lawyers, I decided that I needed to read this book: If Meta wants that badly for me not to hear what she has to say, then I want to hear it that much more. So far I’m only a chapter in, so I can’t really make any judgments, except to say that she seems nice enough and she’s an engaging writer. It’s going to be hard to read this with an open mind given that I’ve got foreknowledge of what comes after, but I’m doing my best.

I’ve continued reading

• Komi Can’t Communicate, vol. 37 (Tomohito Oda): I can’t recommend this manga about a high school student with a communication disorder who sets out to make 100 friends highly enough. This is the final volume — they’re about to graduate. It’s both fun and funny (books aren’t always both), and I recommend it for Japanese language learners: most of Komi’s classmates have names that are puns based on their defining personality characteristic. There’s also a 24-episode anime and an 8-episode live-action series based on it, which I haven’t checked out yet — if you have, let me know if they’re any good. I rarely reread things anymore, but I’m seriously considering going straight back to volume 1 and rereading this one.

• Welcome to the Ballroom, vol. 12 (Tomo Takeuchi): As I noted when discussing Laid-Back Camp above, there is manga about everything, and my taste in manga tends to really lean into that. This one is about a high school boy who gets caught up in the world of competitive ballroom dancing. I really enjoy the writing for this because of the way it dives into the psychology of the dancers — they are just as competitive as any (other) athlete, but at the same time have the face the fact that most people outside their event don’t view them as athletes. I also love the drawings of people dancing. If you’re a comic artist — or any artist of any sort really — and are looking for ideas of how to incorporate motion into your drawings, these will definitely give you some things to think about.

and I’ve finished reading

• I’m in Love with the Villainess (manga), vol. 10 (art by Aonoshimo, story by Inori, character design by Hanagata) — A Japanese lesbian is reborn as a character in her favorite dating sim, where rather than trying to win the heart of any of the three princes who are intended to be her targets, she’s trying to woo the noblewoman who’s intended to be her main competition. There’s much more to it than that (of course), but that’s where it begins. This one started as a series of light novels, which were then remade into a manga, as well as a spin-off series of light novels told from the villainess’s point-of-view. I’ve read all three and recommend any of them. There’s also a 12-episode anime, which I haven’t seen.

• Absolute Batman, vol. 1: The Zoo (Scott Snyder, Nick Dragotta, Gabriel Hernández Walta): I’ve got kind of a love-hate relationship with Batman. I know that he’s one of the classic American superheroes, and I’ve enjoyed some of the Batman comics, movies, and TV shows. On the other hand, ever since Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight, the Batman titles are often where DC lets their writers and artists turn out their grimmest, darkest, and (to me) most unpleasant to read stories, while at the same time, because of the commercial success of Batman, DC seems to be unable to resist the urge to jam Batman into any of their titles, whether it’s a Batman title or not, leading me to find the character to be horribly overexposed. (It’s also discouraged me from reading comic from other DC characters that I like, because the whole time I’m reading it, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and Batman to show up even though I specifically chose to read a non-Batman comic.) Given my feelings about Batman, I was hesitant to try this, but so many people were raving about it on Threads that I decided to give it a shot. I’m glad that I did. It stars a barely-recognizable Batman, a dark hero try to save a Gotham City that all too recognizable to anyone who’s opened their door and stepped outside recently. Time spend on Wikipedia reveals that this is an alternate version of the DC universe created in the aftermath of one of the DC’s all-too-frequent universe-shattering crossover events, but you really don’t need that to enjoy this tale of an angry Bruce Wayne creating Batman to try to save the people of Gotham, who are caught in the crossfire between the corrupt billionaires and the masked criminals, who may or may not be the same people.

And as always, THIS NEWSLETTER CONTAINS 100% HUMAN-CREATED WORDS.

Have a great week, and I’ll see you next Thursday,

Jason