New Text books!

New text books are shipping for me! Ancient Rome here I come!  This is so wonderfully exciting!

I'm loving the French Enlightenment!

I'm still debating over at the Pirate Party. It's sharpening my thoughts a lot, bringing me into the new world.. things have changed, but it's still not right to steal from people.

Amazingly.. they gave me a new blog over there.. .How dangerous is that?

http://www.pirate-party.us/uspp/userjournals_menu/userjournals.php?blogger.306

Nix

A letter to the Pirate Party of the world

My name is Nix Winter. 

I write romance and sci-fi, draw comics. I'm not a great writer, probably. I'm not the worst writer. 

There have been times when I've made a fairly good living entertaining people with my stories. 

How that works for me is I spend time and skill making a file with the story in it. Usually my own art as well. Then I set this little file for sale. People buy it for a small price. Some of the money goes to me. Some of the money goes to my distribution system. I buy bread and cheese. 

Recently I've found my books on a lot of sites where people get my books, but I don't get any money. They're talking to each other some of these forums.. and I can see them talking to each other. 

It breaks my heart. It bleaches the will to create out of me. 

They think they should have my work for free. Do they think I'm a slave? That I should work, but deserve nothing for my work? Am I horrible? Am I a bad human being that people should think it's okay to take my efforts? If someone wanted to have sex with me and I didn't want to have sex, would they have the right to have what the wanted from me anyway? 

So you're a new political party and you think it's okay to do that to me? That as a creator of stories... I deserve nothing? These stories are my soul and my blood. If I can not earn a living creating stories, do  you think I should just go get a different job and stop creating? 

I ask this in earnestness. I am not being flippant here. Do you seriously think I should create no more works, or only create such works as I wish to do for my own entertainment and share them only with my close friends? 

How do you think a creator of stories should earn a living? Should I beg? 

When I create my stories, some of my characters are so precious to me. They are like living voices in my mind. When I create them and share them with the world, it is a safe feeling that I will have some say in how other people use those characters, worlds. 

You would strip that sense of safety from me, so that anyone can do anything they wish with my characters? And if they do something that defames my characters, ruins my vision, is obscene and insulting to me, that I should have no recourse other than to beg them to stop and watch them laugh at me? 

If I understand your party correctly, and I might not, but if I do, you wish to take all my rights from me via democratic processes. Reason and natural law mean nothing, but you can take my precious possessions from me because you wish to share them with everyone?  It's like the right of eminent domain, but it is the mind that is parceled out?  It is my soul and the whole effort of my life that you feel you should have the right to use as you please without regard to my wishes?  To prevent you from owning my ideas and dreams, then I must remain silent? So I then have a choice between silence or pillage?  I don't know which I prefer. Both feel like death. 

Tell me then, bright and shining children of the future, how do you plan to reward writers and creators?  My ideas and stories are a resource. I require resource in exchange for their use. Tell me how you think I should be fairly compensated for such us? 

Pirates board ships, take resources, enjoy the use of those resources. We can say that the ship is the planet, but the ship I fear is about to be boarded now is not the world, but my mind. 

Nix Winter

www.nixwinter.com