Apparently, the answer is yes.

We recently bought a house with two basement suites in it, and one of the tenants pays substantially less than market rates. Of course, he’s been there eleven years. I think Alicia and I have decided not to raise his rent because he’s got a lot invested in the building, and we’d like to keep him, but apparently it would be pretty easy to raise his rent to market rates in one fell swoop.

Apparently, all a landlord has to do is prove that there are specific units on the market renting for more than their unit. That’s it. Seems a little scary, but I can certainly understand the logic. If you bought a building expecting a certain amount of rent per unit, and then found that these units were renting for so much less than you expected, you might have trouble making your MTG payment, or at the very least getting a decent return on your investment.

As for what to do if you’re a tenant faced with a massive rent increase… Try finding specific units in your area renting at the same rate as yours. This may not help according to the language of the Residential Tenancy Act, but remember that arbitraters are human and might be swayed by these kinds of arguments. Also, do what the tenants in the above linked article did and go to local media. Perhaps the added attention will scare the landlords into revising their opinions.

In the end, however, you might just have to pony-up more rent or move out. This is one area of the Act that seems to favour landlords over tenants.

Tags: Greater Vancouver, Rent

So I’ve been perusing the bookstores for books by Clarion West instructors. I’m applying for the class of 2009, and I figure it would be good to at least have a passing familiarity with the writing of the people who are going to teach.

First store I went to didn’t have work by any of them. So I went to a Chapters (the Canadian Borders) and found work by Elizabeth Bear, and of course, Karen Joy Fowler, but that’s it. So I guess I’m going to have to resort to Amazon. This makes me unhappy.

The slate of instructors can be found here. I’d like to read at least a book by each of them. Does anyone have a recommendations?

Tags: Clarion West, Elizabeth Bear, Karen Joy Fowler

One of my favorite bands when I was growing up was Alice In Chains. Though the primary songwriter was always guitarist Jerry Cantrell, the lead singer, Layne Staley, was the true force behind the band, especially in its later years.

Layne sang a lot about drug addiction, which was natural for a lifelong heroine addict. What was different about Layne was that he never fooled himself. He knew he was dying and there was nothing he could do about it.

This was a man who knew suffering like no one else, and he channeled it into his music. You could listen to him and think, “You know, no matter how bad I have it,  that guy has it worse.”

Near the end of his life, he reconnected with his high school sweetheart and he got her addicted to smack. They used to do everything together, and I mean everything. One day she caught an infection from a dirty needle. The infection traveled to her heart, and she died.

After that, Layne basically surrendered to his addiction. He retreated to his apartment and saw no one but his dealer. By the time he sang this song, he was wearing long gloves (which I believe you can spot in the video) to hide the fact that his arms were rotting from the needles. He died April 19, 2002–eight years to the day after Kurt Cobain.

If you’re looking for more information about the life of Layne’s Staley, and I recommend it, you can find it on the radio show (streaming) the Ongoing History of New Rock hosted by Alan Rock. The episode is called “The Rise and Fall of Alice in Chains” on page 17.

The video below is Layne channeling his life. Pure and simple.

Tags: Alice in Chains, Layne Staley

Alright. Welcome to the blog (again).

EDIT: As you can tell, I’ve managed to recover the old content of the blog (minus the pictures). Thank goodness for multiple backups!

I had to move servers, and predictably, I downloaded all the files from my server, but forgot to backup the database. So, we’re starting fresh.

One of the reasons that I stopped blogging is that I’m not convinced that beginning author should keep a blog. Frankly, it seems like if you’re going to be writing, you should be writing fiction, i.e. work that will be increasing your reputation. Writers may point to prolific bloggers like John Scalzi or Diablo Cody who have been discovered through their blogs, but not only does the exception NOT prove the rule, but these bloggers also had other “hooks” to draw people to their blogs. Scalzi was a pro-blogger for AOL in the stone age when no one was blogging, and Diablo Cody was a stripper and that’s what her blog was about.

Unless you have a “hook”, it’s better off, in my opinion, not to join the teeming millions on Live Journal, or WordPress, or Blogger–writers whose blogs have one or two readers, and generally poor content. People just aren’t interested in reading about the local coffee hut. If you are currently one of these writers, be honest with yourself. How is this helping your writing career. No cheats now, nothing ephemeral like, “It’s getting my name out there”. List concrete things that your blog will do for you. If you can’t, take the time you used to use for blogging, and use it to write more fiction.

So, why am I blogging now? I have a hook.

I recently won first place in Writers of the Future. Much of this blog will be devoted to my participation in that contest and my thoughts on winning it. If you’re not familiar with Writers of the Future, I’ll cover the contest in a later post. For now, I’ll simply direct you to the website of award-winning writer David D Levine, whose Writers of the Future page is one of the best resources on the contest that I’ve seen.

Right now, I’m a writer at the cusp of going pro. Hopefully, I can share with you, my gentle readers, how I plan to take my next steps into the markets.

EDIT: This topic was generating quite the discussion, so I’ve elaborated on my thoughts on blogging for new writers here.

Tags: blogging, David D Levine, Diablo Cody, john scalzi, Writers of the Future

Greetings!

Welcome to my mind for the first time. If you’re reading this, my thanks for subscribing to this site while it’s still in its infancy.

What is this blog going to be about? Well I write genre fiction so obviously there’s going to be a focus on that, but I’m going to avoid sharing every excruciating detail of my own career because I’m sure you have your own life to worry about. Instead I’m going to focus on some of the issues that are important in the field, share market information for places I think are cool, introduce you to some really cool writers, and forward some interesting posts.

That said, I welcome comments and I will do my best to respond to e-mail within a couple of days so feel free to drop me a line. You’ll notice the little RSS feed in the bottom right corner of the blog. Click on that and you’ll be redirected to a page that contains an “RSS Feed”. This allows you to get automatic updates on the blog through a FeedReader program like Google’s Blog Reader (the program I use). Give it a shot, I’m sure you’ll like it!

Until next time!

Tags: blogging