anna genoese

In the last few weeks, several of my friends and clients have had their email accounts hacked. This is your friendly reminder to create a password that is not easy to hack. There are a lot of complicated rules in every article about creating passwords. But. I have not had my email account hacked (ever, yet, in my life, knock wood), and here is how I create my passwords:

First, I take a phrase that I can remember. For example, a lyric from a pop song I enjoy. I love the band Empires, so I might take my favorite line from my favorite Empires song, "Hold On":

"They might try to poison my heart"

Then I will condense it down to just the first letter of each word:

Tmttpmh

Then I'll add a number, because I like numbers. I saw 13 Empires concerts in 2012, so I'd probably add 13. And I like symbols in my passwords, so I might do an exclamation point instead of a 1 in the number.

The password would ultimately be: Tmttpmh!3

It looks like gibberish, but it's totally easy for me to remember.

(Note: If you are worried: this is not actually one of my passwords.)

While I am here, I also want to note that f.lux is one of the greatest programs I've ever used, and I install it on every computer I use regularly. It adapts the color of the glow of your screen to the time of day, so when it's ten pm, the glow of the screen is more orange than blue. My eyes appreciate this a whole ton. (I do tend to turn it off if I'm doing any graphics editing, for color purposes.) It's free, and available for Windows, iOS, and Linux.

Hey, Internet.

It's been a while since I've posted here, because I got out of the habit and then never picked it up again.

Things that happened while I was not posting:

1. My house was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. The first floor was flooded with almost six feet of water; since the first floor is where my bedroom is, I lost all my stuff except my computer, my phone, and my cats. (You can see some pictures in this Flickr set.) We had to gut the entire downstairs, take off the siding, redo everything -- wiring, plumbing, etc. After a while, to be honest, I kind of tuned out the details. All right, all right, just fix what needs to be fixed.

(Note: The cats are safe and sound and happily being fostered with c_katherine's kind family.)

2. I moved in with my younger sister and her husband while the house was being rebuilt. It is still being rebuilt; we are not back in there yet. My sister and her husband live in a pretty neighborhood on Long Island, with both my gym and a Starbucks within walking distance (albeit in opposite directions), so it's not too bad.

3. I got a new tattoo on my left foot and a new tattoo on my arm; both by Rich at Solid Gold in Elmont (highly recommended). I am never getting a tattoo on my elbow again. And I thought my foot was painful? WOW.

4. My friend anatsuno, upon hearing I lost all of my yarn (all of my yarn, sob), bought me new skeins, with which I started knitting the Art Nouveau stole; I am exactly halfway done. (I actually had several friends send me yarn, because my friends are the best, and understand these things.)

5. I finally found a fantastic psychiatrist and a decent therapist. It is unbelievably difficult to do that in NYC, apparently! I continue to maintain that going to a therapist once a week is more difficult than going to the gym three times a week. Brains.


In other news, I am still taking on clients who need their books edited -- you're welcome to email me at anna@annagenoese.com if you'd like to discuss hiring me -- and I am still extremely cute.

I don't know if I'm going to go back to posting regularly here right now, but you can always find me at annagenoese!

Now that it's getting cold, I've been cooking and baking more. This morning, I made muffins for breakfast using my favorite muffin recipe -- from a cookbook my mom got from opening a bank account some time in the 70s. It's the McCall's Cook Book from 1963 (but ours is the 13th edition).

- 1 c milk (any kind; dairy, soy, almond, etc., are all fine)
- 1 egg, beaten (any kind of egg replacer is also fine -- applesauce, banana, flax, etc.)
- 1/3 c oil (I don't recommend subbing in melted butter here)
- 2 c flour
- 1/4 c sugar
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 400F. Grease or line your muffin tin. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. (The original recipe calls for sifting; I dump it all in a bowl and whisk! I hate sifting and love whisking.)

Mix the milk, egg, and oil in a separate bowl (or measuring cup), and then pour the mixture into the dry ingredients.

Stir together (don't beat or whisk, just stir with a fork) until the wet and dry are mixed. The batter will be lump and weird looking -- don't worry about that.

Dish into a muffin tin -- this makes 12. I usually use a 1/4-cup measure, just slightly less than full.

I also like to add stuff to the muffins, like strawberry jam or frozen blueberries. (My mom likes to sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top.)

Bake for 20 - 25 minutes. When they're done, take them out of the pan immediately, and eat them! They are very sweet and moist, even when they don't have strawberry jam inside.

I have a folder full of draft blog posts, and I go in and noodle around there sometimes, trying to figure out what I want to post next. My oldest draft post varies dramatically in length, because sometimes I go in and delete everything, sometimes I rewrite it until it's 10 or 15 pages long. It's from 2006 or so, and it's about the tendency of authors to use the words "masculine" and "feminine" as adjectives.

Well, I've decided to give it up for a bad job, and instead post my basic thoughts about it. Which are: Just stop it. That is some lazy-ass writing, and it makes your work boring, and I'm tired of reading it.

Masculine and feminine, more than almost any other words in novels, mean radically different things to different people. Often, they are used as "shorthand" words -- especially (though not only) in romance novels and action/adventure novels. These words usually (but not always) are meant to tell the reader that the cisgender male hero smells earthy, has a large, muscular body, and embodies some vague societal idea of "masculinity" that really doesn't mean anything in the context of a book that is usually about idealized versions of the norms inside the author's head. It also implies that no cis woman ever could possibly hope to achieve these qualities.

This is also seen a lot in m/m romances, to explain why men are gay. Because no woman ever can be muscular or smell earthy or really know how to give a great handjob, and no man ever could possibly not be or not know, right?

The word "femininity" is the same -- the cisgender female hero smells like a combination of citrus and the sky and "mystique," and regardless of how strong or short she may be, her limbs are slender and long and her skin is delicate, and she embodies a, frankly, much less vague but no less societal idea of "femininity." It is slightly more formed than "masculinity" because "everyone" knows what women are "supposed" to be like (thanks, magazines and tv!), but the details still exist mostly in the author's head.

And hey! Check out some f/f erotica, and see how no man could ever hope to touch her this way, how orgasms are completely different, how no man could ever truly understand a woman's body . . .

It may seem innocuous. It may seem ridiculous that this is something I focus on. But you know what? In the absence of the book itself defining the words masculine and feminine and securing those words in the context of its society, those words are ridiculous. (An interesting exercise: read some historical fiction by contemporary authors, and then books set in the same time period by authors who lived contemporaneously, and observe the masculine and feminine ideals.)

I'm also going to come right out and say that these words, beyond being lazy and boring, are hurtful. They encourage gender policing, and they are transphobic, and they erase people who are genderqueer and intersex from the narrative completely. They also erase the experiences of people who may be cisgender, but whose presentation, experience, or sense of self doesn’t fit into the hazy, yet totally controlling, ideas of "masculine" and "feminine." This doesn’t just mean that these words are bad writing, but that these words, used generally and without clarification, do tangible harm to real people.

When I do developmental/line edits, I often point out to writers where they use "masculine" and "feminine" and ask them to write instead what they really mean -- either to use better adjectives that get across exactly the ideas they're using these words as shorthand to represent, or to root these words in a context for the reader.

I challenge all authors to do this: go through your writing, find these words, figure out what you really mean, and write a more interesting, thoughtful book.


Note on commenting: I'm usually lax about policing comments, because the people who comment on my posts tend to be pretty great. Please keep up that trend. Hurtful, ignorant, and nasty bullshit should go somewhere else.

As you know, Bob, my mom is a reading teacher. Actually, she was a reading teacher (specifically for struggling and/or reluctant readers, which is used as something both true on its face and also often as code for ESL students) for a million years. They are phasing out the reading license and switching all reading teachers to being other teachers, so now she teaches "Literacy" -- the modern NYC school equivalent of "English." What this means for my life is that sometimes I get to help grade vocabulary tests (:D :D :D, do not get me started on how much I love grading) and also that I get to borrow all her YA books that she buys for her students.

Yesterday, on an interminable subway ride, I read I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore. My mom really enjoyed it in her capacity as a teacher (if you are interested, she said part of why she enjoyed it was that it had clearly been written for readers who were below grade level and unambitious).

( Spoilers have to be killed in sequence. )

Now: a thing I liked! A few weeks ago, I holed up with some friends and we watched the entire second season of Justified in one day (well, in 11 hours or so). I do like Justified, but that was a pretty overwhelming amount of people in agony for one day, so we followed it up by watching the first three episodes of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Wow. Just -- just wow. I loved it so much. It's filmed gorgeously, and since it was shot on location, all the glory of Botswana is on display. Jill Scott was hilarious and incredible, and drew me in from the very first moment. She commands the screen; every single scene she's in, she's compelling. And she does an amazing job of communicating who her character is at all times, not just with every word, but with every gesture, every movement of her body. The supporting cast was also great, and the mysteries are pretty enjoyable. It's a really different style from a lot of what's on tv these days -- and, yeah, I was surprised it came from HBO. No one is naked, no one curses, there are no long sex scenes or on-screen rapes; it's a delightful change.

I also love the way Mma Ramotswe deals with haters. She is really great at handling herself when it comes to people who think a woman shouldn't be working/should get married, as well as people who are judgy and shamey about her body. She navigates strong and/or difficult personalities really well, with a really great attitude that steers clear of both strong language and the kind of "bless your heart" passive-aggressiveness that often doesn't work for fictional characters (it tends to end up -- to my eye -- seeming to make fun of the character employing it more than it puts the other character in their place). I also love that she doesn't make excuses for herself or try to justify herself to other people. It's really awesome to see that on tv.

(I am withholding judgment about the way the only canonically queered character is treated until I see the rest of the episodes, though. One of the other characters keeps having, you know, "learning experiences," and I'm not sure yet whether I'm comfortable with the homophobia and gender policing required for that.)

Oh, and thing I tentatively like! Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, set in 1943. The conceit is that it is the diary of a woman taken prisoner by the Gestapo, and her interrogator has demanded she write down her secrets/confession (or they will kill her by pouring kerosene down her throat and setting it on fire, ouch).

I'm about halfway through, reading it slowly to make it last. Sometimes the conceit gets on my nerves, but the writing is beautiful, and the story is fascinating. A+ reading so far.

It seems that recently I crossed an apparent line from "person with a few tattoos" to "tattooed person" and that means that now strangers approach me when I'm out and ask me not just about my own tattoos but about theirs. They show me tattoos and ask what I think about the design, the placement, how it's healing; they eye my tattoos and ask, "Do you think I'll get a disease?" and "Will it hurt a lot?" and "Do you think a tattoo artist will make fun of me?" People want to know what the words say -- or they want me to know they recognize the words.

(The other day at the mall, a teenage girl came up to me and interrogated me on getting her first tattoo; when she was done, she said, "I knew I could trust you when I saw you had a Fall Out Boy lyric on your arm.")

To me, there are two great things about this:

1. I can give people information and advice! I love giving advice, and I love helping people be informed so they can make the decisions that are best for them.

2. When I had just a few tattoos, people would touch me without my permission to look at my tattoos. However, I have realized that the more tattoos I have, the more people are afraid that I will hurt them if they touch me without permission. They don't know I am a pacifist and am much more likely to snap irritably, "KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF." Yay, cultural stereotypes working in my favor! \o/

Here are the questions I hear the most, and the answers I usually give, and some unsolicited advice I always try to work in. I am the kind of person who prefers more detail to less, so... there's a lot of detail here. And, of course, if you have questions when you're done reading (or you want to jump in with something I've missed), go for it!

Disclaimer: IANATP (I am not a tattoo professional!) -- I am just a person who has a lot of tattoos, who has sat for a lot of tattoo sessions. I'm at the "I can't even count anymore" point. So this is all what I know, what I've picked up; it's not the one true way or medical advice, blah blah blah. I also want to shout out to belladonnalin, bessyboo, and sassbandit for pre-reading this and giving me some invaluable suggestions.

Figuring out how to organize this was a little complicated, so I've organized it the way I would want to read it. Feel free to skip around. Additionally, note that this is US-centric; I've never gotten a tattoo outside the US, so I can't speak to how that works. However, I've been tattooed all across the US (from MA to WA!), so this speaks to my experiences throughout the country, not just on the East Coast.

( I. How do tattoos work? )

( II. Aren't they dangerous? I am going to get a disease! )

( III. Does it hurt? )

( IV. What kind of tattoo do you want? )

( V. I want a tattoo but I don't know what I want. )

( VI. What if the artist is drawing something for me? )

( VII. Where do you want your tattoo? )

( VIII. Finding a tattoo artist. )

( IX. How much is it going to cost? )

( X. What do I do to prepare before I get a tattoo? )

( XI. Can I bring someone with me? )

( XII. Tattoo procedure )

( XIII. What about when it's healing? What do I do? )

( XIV. It's normal when your tattoo... )

( XV. What about paying and tipping? )

( XVI. I had a terrible experience with my tattoo artist. )

( XVII. But won't people think -- )

So there you go, that's my two cents and 6200 words on the subject. I do, in fact, run through pretty much all of this with people, which is why when I went to Sephora, I spent 10 minutes trying on tinted moisturizer and 45 minutes giving a tattoo tutorial to the salespeople.

Go forth and have needles poked into you! Enjoy!

(And, as I said above, feel free to leave questions in the comments, or add your own experiences/thoughts.)

Hellooooo, LiveJournal & Dreamwidth! So much has happened since I last logged in months and months ago. I have been living in the internet version of a cave, no lie. But, of course, I faithfully update Twitter.

Hitting on the high points -- I'm no longer with Jones & Bartlett Learning, instead returning to freelance editing full time. (Although... if some awesome fiction publishing company wanted to hire me, I would be open to hearing about that. :)) Anyway, it means I'm moving back to NYC, which I have missed desperately this past year, and I'm hopeful that there will be awesome gatherings and readings for me to attend to get back in the swing of things and catch up on everything I've missed.

And... c_katherine and I have delivered the Salt and Silver sequel to several friendly editors -- while we've been told it's not really something the current market would support, once it's been edited, we're thinking about ways to turn it into performance art (public revising! Yeah, we'll see) and get it to readers who have expressed interest. Additionally, we're writing another romance novel -- this one with no paranormal elements, just a lot of weird stuff.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, tonight I was chit-chatting with Cathy Clamp (new Cat Adams book came out today!) and Lisa Spangenberg about the newest kerfuffle -- repurposing fanfic for wider publication.

(Now, I'm pretty open about the fact that I've been reading and writing fanfic for most of my life; I love it and support it; I donate to and volunteer with the Organization for Transformative Works, post my fic to the Archive of Our Own, record other people's works as podfics, regularly post fanfic recommendations to Twitter, etc. I'm a big fan of the "gift economy" -- while, at the same time, I did publish repurposed fanfic as part of Tor Romance (bet you can't guess which books!) and invite fanfic authors to submit proposals for both repurposed and more traditionally original fiction. So -- I don't think my opinion on this issue comes as a shock to anyone paying attention.)

While having this discussion, though, I observed that I've seen some really bitter people saying pretty crappy things about a newly famous piece of repurposed fanfic (Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James). My comment on this was to say something that I wish more people would take seriously. It's sort of a corollary to what I've been saying for years, that the "secret handshake" of the publishing industry is to be a professional. I said:

Free advice: A really good way to network & get attention is to be the kind of person people want to be around & work with. *

I truly believe this and I'm sticking to it. Anybody else have advice in a similar vein that they swear by?

Announcement #1:
Bad news for anon commenters: I am turning off anonymous commenting everywhere. Not because I have anything against anonymous people, but because dealing with the spam has grown altogether too tedious. Apologies, people who wish to stay anon!

Options for commenting on LiveJournal beside an actual LJ account include OpenID, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. I realize those are all associated with "real" identity, but nothing is stopping you from grabbing a pseudonymous Twitter account and posting using that. I continue to not track IP addresses!

(Note, I believe Dreamwidth allows only Dreamwidth accounts and OpenID.)

Announcement #2:
I am on Google+ as Anna Genoese. I believe I am, thus far, the only Anna Genoese over there. Come add me! If we don't actually know each other, a short note to say who you are or what name you comment here under would not go amiss. I've had a few people add me without telling me who they are, and it's pretty confusing.

It's pretty unlikely G+ will take the place of blogging or Twitter for me, but it's nice to have a Facebook-type thing that is not Facebook (which I despise).

Relatedly, if you know me fannishly, I also have a profile for my fannish pseud, and you're welcome to add me to your circles in that way as well.


...I hope everyone's having a decent weekend! I'm pretending it's not 80F outside my apartment and baking bread. Oh, and I am still trying to figure out my xbox. I feel really old and stupid every time I try to use the Kinect and realize that I can't do so wearing a dress -- oh, and figuring out how to play first-person fantasy games? Wow. It took me eight hours to do something my baby sister (who grew up playing this kind of video game) accomplished in an hour. I'm thinking about retreating to Mario, frankly!

Recently, one of my clients asked me what my recommendations were for someone starting out in the publishing industry. Here's the answer I gave her:

My big recommendations about publishing are:

1. Educate yourself.

2. Stay polite, even when dealing with someone who may not be polite to you.

3. Be open to hearing ideas, but keep hold of your own vision.

4. Be persistent! Don't give up after the first few rejections; it can take years to get published.

...These are the same things I've been saying to people who want to be professionally published for years. Sometimes I rephrase the advice, but it's basically stayed the same. E-book, comic book, print book, whatever -- these four pieces points hold true!

Is there any advice that you wish someone had given you? Or advice that's held true as you navigated the murky waters of publishing?

So I'm in Swampscott visiting my cousin and her family. (It seems like I'm in Massachusetts more than Brooklyn these days!) She has a bunch of interesting-looking books on her shelves, and I'm taking the opportunity to peruse them.

The one I read last night: Best of the Britcoms: From Fawlty Towers to The Office by Garry Berman

It was really entertaining! I am a PBS junkie, so I'd seen quite a few of the (famous) Britcoms Berman talks about in the book -- and I wrote down a bunch of titles, because even though sometimes I don't "get" British comedy (or, like many plebian US-ians, find it depressing!), I do love me television shows about wacky British vicars!

I like that the book is divided into decades (beginning with the 1970s), and that before each decade is a little introduction in which the author explains basics of things the American audience (the target for the book) may not know. For example, before the section on the 1970s, there's a brief history of British television. I did not know that British television was ordered to be shut down during WWII! (BBC began airing again, according to Berman, in June 1946.)

I did find myself wishing that the index was slightly more comprehensive. There's no listing for "vicar" -- so I have to read the book and make myself notes if I want to know about any Britcom about vicars besides The Vicar of Dibley. On the other hand, I don't think this is meant to be a comprehensive encyclopedia as much as it is a cute "reference" guide for your coffee table. (That's totally fair.)

As expected, the entries for shows like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder and The Office are much longer -- and contain more actor, writer, and producer quotes -- than the meager half-page shows like Ever-Decreasing Circles got. There's also small tidbits of the author's opinion threaded in, but I didn't find that to get in my way at all.

Now that I've read this book, first thing on my list to buy when I have some pocket change is the dvd set of Extras, because the pages dedicated to it make it sound incredibly charming.


(Today, while sitting in a sun-drenched courtyard in Salem, I finished Second Line: Two Short Novels of Love and Cooking in New Orleans by Poppy Z. Brite, which was a gift to me from the trifles family that I've been carrying around for a month. The first story in the book, about the boys as teenagers, was a lot more enjoyable for me than the second, a very self-indulgent story that was mostly just loosely strung together vignettes about characters I wasn't invested in enough to really care about. Still: that first story was great. Teenage boys in love in New Orleans! Plus cooking!!!)