Malcolm F. Cross

@foozzzball

Lazy. Writes. Is known to write fiction. Is almost fictional. Sometimes furry. Homepage: Patreon: Writing sketchbook:

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Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Jun 15

Instantly reminded of a piece of an essay/rant I wrote. In short? There is work to share with others, and work to learn and appreciate. Both are valuable. Trace/copy because it's fun, not because you want something to share with others. sinisbeautiful.com/comparison-b...

I have copied material, verbatim. I think I copied out Neuromancer’s first chapter or two line by line when I was a little younger, trying to understand how Gibson wrote like that.

I didn’t tweak that and present it as my own. I didn’t simplify the text. In that particular case, I didn’t even try and rephrase things in my own voice, I just copied it out.

Why?

Because engaging with the text, word by word, helped me learn why the infamous opening lines, ‘The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel’ didn’t feel as strong for me as the following paragraphs where Ratz is tending bar. The way his smile was described as ‘A webwork of East European steel and brown decay’. Just typing it out again, now, almost makes my fingers shiver in delight.

I regard it as similar to tracing. Tracing is pleasurable. It is nice to sit with a piece of paper and make something that looks coherent, and the process of tracing an image teaches you in the moment how lines can turn into the representation of something else. And copying out prose, or rewriting it line by line, is a beautiful way to try and sit with the author as they composed that text. To try and embody how that prose was formed.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Mar 3

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide... When was this written down? Because it's entirely possible you've managed to unearth a much earlier etiology than the 1803 'origin' for the Flying Africans myth. Which is nuts to me, as a story guy.

n example of this may be found in 1898 account of the people who were illegally trafficked to the United States on the Wanderer, which stated that a number of survivors later committed suicide under the belief that "if they would jump into the sea and drown themselves they would be carried back to Africa by the good spirits...among them being one called King Mingo, who decoyed two children to St. Simon's beach, during the absence of his mistress, and all three of them jumped from a high bluff into the swift current and were drowned."[9]

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Dec 23

I figure out what my take-home is from each sale, then divide that across cost of production to figure out how many books need to be sold to cover that. I will, however, admit that none of my books have 'earned out' yet. In general it will wind up going through excel and look like this:

Expenses to needed sales
Average Needed Sales: 385
Average Earnings £1,201.53 $1,501.91

Wordcount 90,000.00
Expenses (Cover, edits, etc) £1,200.00 $1,500.00
Per word (my pay) £0.000 $0.00
Total £1,200.00 $1,500.00
Total Profit (my pay) £0.00 $0.00

Total Price (eBook) £3.99 $5.99
Royalty (Each eBook) £2.75 $4.13
Sales Needed 437 364
Total Earnings £1,201.75 $1,503.32

Total Price (Print) £10.99 $15.99
Print Cost £3.85 $4.60
Royalty (Each Print Book) £2.74 $4.99
Sales Needed 438 301
Total Earnings £1,200.12 $1,501.99

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Aug 20

Looking up the author, uhhhh. ... Well that's a really interesting market segment he's swung to serving, huh?

About the author

Michael Ford began his eBay career in 1998 and first became an eBay Power Seller in 2001. His software business has expanded beyond eBay, but he still enjoys buying and selling on eBay as a collector of antique arcade games. Michael has authored a number of books on antique arcade games, game restoration, and computer security. He is a regular contributor to collector magazines and he is a well known business writer.

Michael has always been an entrepreneur and eBay has helped develop those independent business drives into several full-fledged commercial ventures. Michael is known for telling it like it is and has a no nonsense approach to business and writing. He focuses on details which led him to document and analyze eBay auctions in a hard hitting way in order to determine what works and what does not. Michael has continued his quest for knowledge by monitoring the unsavory side of eBay which resulted in protection measures that are commonly used to identify fraudulent buyers and sellers.

Michael knows both the good and bad sides of eBay and has shared his experiences and techniques to help eBay members gain the most from eBay without losing their shirt to scammers.

Three of Michael Ford's titles on Amazon. 'Mein Kampf: A Translation Controversy', 'Understanding Hitler' and 'Jobs For Felons'.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Aug 2

Also the fact there's an Age Verification Provider's Association reporting 5 million checks, which can be £0.25 a go, implies the government just handed up to half a billion quid in business to this industry with a stroke of the pen. Which could have been free, if leveraging ISP parental blocks.

The Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) reports that there has been an additional 5 million age checks on a daily basis as UK-based internet users seek to access sites that are age-restricted.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Aug 2

The thing that worries me is this. This implies that almost every method for a user to contact another user needs to be age-gated, possibly inclusive of browser-based e-mail depending on just how they've defined e-mail (which is otherwise exempt, I think)?

It’s clear in Ofcom’s codes that we expect platforms to ensure that strangers have no way of messaging children. This includes preventing children from receiving DMs from strangers and children should not be recommended any accounts to connect with.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Jul 11

For those wondering:

A screenshot of the Mouse Cage manuscript in word, displaying the number of times the phrase 'Dry Swallow' appears. (95 times.)

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Jun 18

A rare and mysterious corkboard update!

A close-up on one corner of the author's corkboard, displaying Patreon supporter pins.

A wide-shot of the author's corkboard, displaying cluttered notes, the top halves of some reference books, and a plush rat.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· May 30

If these leftovers will assist you in doing *something*, drop me a DM - I'll pay the postage to get 'em to you because I AM A FAN.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· May 23

A snapshot out of my reading journal. (I keep one of those. What?) In alt text and in post: Joe Abercrombie at his best? This one necessitated I dash off a fan letter. It feels like joyous dancing by a writer doing the things he loves best and putting down the equivalent of a gold-medal -->

Joe Abercrombie at his best? This one necessitated I dash off a fan letter. It feels like joyous dancing by a writer doing the things he loves best and putting down the equivalent of a gold-medal performance in the discipline of being Joe Abercrombie. To me, no longer is he grimdark, he's Abercrombesque fantasy. He is his own genre, now. For a fan, this is a delight. For an author, seeing him improve again is a heavenly inspiration.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· May 9

Ha! HA! After being sold out on release day, after randomly wandering into bookshops looking for it, today my local bookstore's kind staff saw me with the shelf copy then LITERALLY HANDED me the SIGNED EDITION they hadn't put out yet. And you all thought I was MAD.

A picture of a bookshelf containing the photographer's collection of Joe Abercrombie books, inclusive of a signed special edition of The Devils.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· May 3

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Apr 30

Also! If you want to turn on those little paragraph mark things, as well as spaces displaying a tiny little dot - so you can actually see them - that's the little paragraph mark button at the top, the one that's been selected here - show/hide formatting marks. Useful when proofing!

A screenshot of microsoft word focussed on a paragraph-symbol button in the toolbar.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Apr 30

How about those paragraph-separating double dashes? Those are a bit finickier and need to be done twice, one for each line - '--^p' and '^p--'. With another search/replace for double-spaces to replace them with single ones, a ton of the finicky work has been done.

A similar search-replace window in word, displaying a search to find '^p--' - or caret p, dash dash.

A screenshot of word, showing the earlier passage joined up with the artefacts from copy-pasting a thread removed.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Apr 30

Those little guys are 'paragraph' marks, although they have proper names elsewhere. You can search-replace for them, too, and replace them like this using the special character '^p' - that's a caret, shift-6 on most keyboards, followed by the letter p. This replaces them with a single one.

A screenshot of word's find and replace function, showing how a caret and a p (^p) can be used to search for and select paragraph marks in a larger document.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Apr 30

Super quick #HacksawDraft thing on a way to use Word's search/replace and special characters you might not know about: While converting my essay-thread from yesterday into a usable post from a copy-paste, it's easy to search/replace artefacts like my username from the resulting text. How about this?

A screenshot of Microsoft Word, displaying a trio of paragraph marks selected in a larger text.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Apr 29

-- and wrote them down verbatim, cleaned them up a little, and published what they got out of that process. If you don't believe me, check out The Golden Key. These schemas become both a way to remember the main parts of a story, but also to construct the framework in such a way the teller can --

200 The Golden Key

In the winter time, when deep snow lay on the ground, a poor boy was forced to go out on a sledge to fetch wood. When he had gathered it together, and packed it, he wished, as he was so frozen with cold, not to go home at once, but to light a fire and warm himself a little. So he scraped away the snow, and as he was thus clearing the ground, he found a tiny, gold key. Hereupon he thought that where the key was, the lock must be also, and dug in the ground and found an iron chest. “If the key does but fit it!” thought he; “no doubt there are precious things in that little box.” He searched, but no keyhole was there. At last he discovered one, but so small that it was hardly visible. He tried it, and the key fitted it exactly. Then he turned it once round, and now we must wait until he has quite unlocked it and opened the lid, and then we shall learn what wonderful things were lying in that box.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Feb 11

This is the pull-quote for creatives. While there's room for quibbling over some use-cases, this one (ought) to horrify any creative worker trying to use GenAI in their workflow. (Hint: I don't think anyone should.)

The researchers also found that “users with access to GenAI tools produce a less diverse set of outcomes for the same task, compared to those without. This tendency for convergence reflects a lack of personal, contextualised, critical and reflective judgement of AI output and thus can be interpreted as a deterioration of critical thinking.”

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Jan 28

Doing some research on keeping white fur white for a story, and I ran across this AI slop advising you treat dogs like laundry. What the actual hell?

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Dec 6

Ouch. You heard it here, folks, working towards the public good is inherently bad for corruption. (From: globalinitiative.net/analysis/org... )

One often ignored reason for state weakness is neoliberalism. A doctrinaire prescription for small government and big business, the proponents of neoliberalism, according to one scholar, ‘proclaim the apotheosis of the unfettered market and private property while fighting against the state and demanding the far-reaching curtailment of its economic intervention, budgetary redistribution, and social policy’. 44 In effect, the state exists simply to promote business. More traditional notions of enhancing public good, strengthening civil society and increasing citizen welfare are jettisoned because they interfere with the market. In short, neoliberalism has encouraged states to relinquish responsibility for the welfare and safety of their citizens.
It is not coincidental – although it is counter-intuitive – that neoliberalism has been accompanied by increased corruption. As scholar Sarah Chayes has argued:
In a range of countries around the globe, orruption is the system. Governments have been repurposed to serve an objective that has little to do with public administration: the personal enrichment of ruling networks. And they achieve this aim quite effectively. Capacity deficits and other weaknesses may be part of the way the system functions, rather than reflecting a breakdown.45

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Dec 6

To be fair on Partridge, he wasn't the worst of them. It looks like the cops twisted his arm after secrets got out. But there were others who turned flat out collaborator. CURSE THEIR NAMES TOO! rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/mot...

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Dec 5

I have run across people who, due to the poisonous bullshit, do not believe the fact anymore. It is a fact. Yet in reality, brain size does not seem to be correlated to significant differences in intelligence - Einstein's was below average, and studies take immense effort to find marginal links.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Nov 28

For no reason in particular, @kyellgold.com has developed a new self-publishing plan to expand into a brand new book format: ENORMOUS CAKE. (Alternately, I hear @hashtagcat.bsky.social has suggested this may be an attempt to get me to eat my own words...) Happy Thanksgiving, oh Kyell fox!

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Nov 19

Reading a report on the illegal arms trade in Ecuador ( globalinitiative.net/analysis/fir... ) and this little snippet leapt up and slapped me in the face. '... a new trend is that the barter system now includes advisory services for ... how to use technology, such as artificial intelligence,'

With regard to where the weapons that circulate in Ecuador were manufactured, it is worth noting
the annual entry of more than 500 000 weapons from the United States into Mexico.92 Some of the
devices that enter Mexico are destined for that country’s drug cartels. However, another portion of
those arms is for criminal groups located in other countries, such as Ecuador, and they are transferred
via air and later sold in exchange for drugs, money, technology and advisory services. Several investi-
gative, journalistic and academic sources maintain that a form of barter exists between the Mexican
drug cartels and Ecuadorian criminal organizations. 93 The exchanges of arms for drugs or money
are not new, and follow a logic of economy of scale and yield; nonetheless, a new trend is that the
barter system now includes advisory services for evading customs, fiscal and legal controls; on how
to launder money; and how to use technology, such as artificial intelligence, to design new and safer
routes for transiting and exchanging illegal products

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Nov 15

For the purposes of clarity regarding my stance on generative AI, and just because it's worth restating, the underlying nature of generative AI poisons the attention economy we live within. This isn't to do with how ethical or unethical the tech is, it's innate. sinisbeautiful.com/ai-the-algor...

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Nov 11

An important question, which I believe has been asked before. Is the Kool-Aid man one of the Headless people, the Blemmyes of folklore and myth?

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Nov 8

Another quick edition of #HacksawDraft on how to use paper notebooks. Mostly we're looking at the images, this time, but there are a couple of other things to say here, so, as usual, short thread time. Working in paper has pros and cons. One of the biggest pros is that paper is flexible. 🧵

(Note that this screenshot of a text page contains some images, described in the text as they're used.)
This is how I use paper notebooks.
It is not the only way to use paper notebooks, and that’s one of the reasons paper is great – it’s flexible in a way you can make personal to you.
There are a lot of techniques. I informally borrow some methods from common practices for keeping laboratory notebooks, and I’m more murkily influenced by attempts to keep a bullet journal when that was the new fashion.

Crossing out material to void it is done with widely spaced single lines, so what’s ‘voided’ remains legible.

At the top of the page, if I’m starting a new section, I give it a heading summarizing what I’m trying to do, and I date the page so it’s easier to work out what I was doing later.
In the top right corner, or top corner away from the spine, I write the page number. This could be the physical page number – meaning I manually number my notebooks – or numbers on loose sheets I use elsewhere.
If the notes I’m making need to jump around the notebook, at the lower right/lower away-from-spine corner I put the page number where things continue from this page with an arrow following it. At the top left/upper near-spine corner, I put an arrow followed by the page number that leads to this page.
I try (and usually fail) to give myself wide margins for taking later notes, so sometimes they sneak in elsewhere.
When I’m done with an entry, I mark it off with a scribble so it’s clear it doesn’t continue into the next entry, like this.

A photograph of a piled series of paper notebooks of various types.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Nov 7

The point being - however you track your goals, you have to test what you're doing separately from your actual goals. So try things out, play, and figure out how you work - because however you track your progress, you need to tailor it to you.

A bonus screenshot of a doodle of a rat holding a hacksaw. Sort of.

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Nov 7

(Really going to need to experiment with the format of these more...)

Malcolm F. Cross@foozzzball· Nov 7

A quickish and very rough/raw #HacksawDraft on the topic of goal tracking. Screenshots from my word processor. Full text at sinisbeautiful.com/chunk-your-g... (which will hopefully make up for the lack of alt text) 🧵