Read the West, SFWA, & Other Bits

Greetings All,

I want to start off by apologizing for my lack of posting this summer. It's good to be busy, but there is such a thing as too busy. The kids are back in school (thank God) and hopefully I'll be able to dig out from beneath the pile and resume regular posts here soon.

In the most recent WWA newsletter, they mentioned that the READ THE WEST program is getting underway. From the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum, Persimmon Hill editor M.J. Van Deventer and Susan Adams will serve on the initial advisory committee, along with WWA President Cotton Smith and Executive Director Paul Hutton. The announcement didn't mention yours truly for some reason, but for what it's worth, I'll be on there, too. As things continue to move along, I'll post updates here.

Unrelated to westerns, but worth mentioning... I've been a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) since I first became eligible. I now serve on the Board of Directors. For those of you who might be following the recent kerfluffle involving a website called Scribd, SFWA and the various arguments pro and con about the DMCA notices that were sent on behalf of some members, I want to share a couple of things here.

• The official stance of SFWA has always been that each member has the right to determine who the electronic (and other) rights of their work are handled. Some people strongly object when their work appears online in an unauthorized place; some don't care, and some actively encourage file sharing. The spectrum runs between these points freely.
  
• In the case of Scribd, several things went awry, but the key one is that during discussions between them and the (then) chair of the ePiracy Committee, in attempting to identify infringing works, some works were taken down that shouldn't have been. It created a firestorm of controversy, with many people accusing SFWA of abusing the (badly written) DMCA law. Apologies were issued to all concerned, and the works restored. As a Board, we passed a motion suspending the activities of the ePiracy Committee until such time as we could put in place a group to investigate some of the key issues involved as well as to get a sense of what the membership wanted. While this is a very short summary, and it totally skips over the many nuanced arguments about all it, the basic gist is there.
• I wanted to point out here that SFWA does a great many things to help authors. They have GriefCom - that helps with disputes between publishers and writers; the Emergency Medical Fund - that helps writers pay for medical emergencies; the Legal Fund - that helps writers pay for legal expenses related to publishing. There is advocacy work at virtually all levels to protect the interests of writers. There is Writer Beware - that keeps track of and warns writers of potentially fraudulent or bad agents, freelance editors and publishers. And much, much more.
• In short, SFWA is a valuable organization that serves many needs and while things don't always go right (not that they ever will for any organization), the many volunteers that help keep the show running work hard to do the best that they can. If you write science fiction or fantasy and you aren't a member, you should be. It's a community with many unique voices, and more are always welcome.

In other news, the remake of 3:10 to Yuma starring Russell Crowe opens this tomorrow, so be supportive of the genre and go out and buy a ticket or two.

Regards,
Russell Davis