tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30066009089557304232024-03-13T13:18:54.638-04:00Kindle in the WindThe official blog of American Zen, The Toy Cop and other upcoming titles by Robert Crawford.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-20413135546117482532013-03-27T10:14:00.002-04:002013-03-27T10:14:45.886-04:00The Misanthrope's Manual<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S_gjaOMiGss/UVL45T2OU_I/AAAAAAAAU1Y/f0qP-F23Pv8/s1600/misanthrope_big.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="346" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S_gjaOMiGss/UVL45T2OU_I/AAAAAAAAU1Y/f0qP-F23Pv8/s400/misanthrope_big.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I know that of late I've been remiss in my responsibilities to the one
or two people who actually care what I have to say about politics and
social issues. I'm in the middle of collaborating with a British
novelist on a thriller and this was the other reason.<br />
At the
beginning of the week, I'd published on Create Space and Kindle a
satirical dictionary I'd intermittently written during the 90's. <i>The Misanthrope's Manual</i>
weighs in at a tidy 122 pages for the Create Space edition and when it
clears in the next day or so, you can order it at cost for $2.31. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Misanthropes-Manual-ebook/dp/B00C11HR3E">The Kindle version</a>
is priced at $2.99. With about 500 definitions (including some new ones
acknowledging the digital age and Occupy Wall Street), that comes out
to more or less a half a penny per laugh, which sounds like a helluva
deal to me.<br />
In case you didn't click on the links for yesterday's post (my interview with my friend and co-author Nick Stephenson), a generous sample of the <i>Misanthrope's Manual</i> can be found <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/127557573/Misanthrope-s-Manual-A-B">here</a>. You can also go to the Kindle page and download most of the "A" words
onto your Kindle and decide for yourself if a ha' penny a laugh is worth
it.<br />
These really are some of the most vicious and ingenious
definitions written in over a century and is well worth your time to at
least check out. Here's the blurb I'd written for the product page when
it finally goes live:<br />
<span class="projectSummaryDescription" id="projectSummaryDescriptionContent"><i>Several
hundred of the world's most vicious definitions, the most vitriolic in
the 102 years since the last edition of THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY published
by Ambrose Bierce, updated for a more modern 21st century readership.<br /><br /> Samples:<br /><br /> Doom, n- The infinitely patient beneficiary of all human endeavor.<br /> Success, n- Material gain without material witnesses.<br /> Harmless, adj- Dead.<br /><br /> What
you're about to hold in your hands are 122 of the most hilariously
misanthropic pages written in over a century. Don't say you weren't
forewarned.</i>
</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-17782960936895201372013-03-26T11:31:00.002-04:002013-03-26T11:31:51.260-04:00Find your Zen – the art of sublime writing with author Robert Crawford <a class="post-thumbnail post-thumbnail-left" href="http://noorosha.com/find-your-zen-the-art-of-sublime-writing-with-author-robert-crawford/">
<img alt="Find your Zen – the art of sublime writing with author Robert Crawford" height="125" src="http://noorosha.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/american-zen-cover-125x125.jpg" width="125" />
</a>
<br />
<h1 class="entry-title">
Find your Zen – the art of sublime writing with author Robert Crawford
</h1>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Apollo is smiling down on us tonight.
He’s gotten with the times and has traded his lyre for a plugged-in
Strat. He’s playing through me, through all of us, pleasingly pounding
the marrow in our bones. It’s that kind of night when even chaotic
feedback is exploitable and my vibrating skeleton recycles that energy
through my fingers. Maybe Apollo had a hand in helping Jimi Hendrix
control and incorporate feedback. But he and perhaps all the gods are on
our side tonight.” Robert Crawford, from the prologue to <i>American Zen.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This week I’ve got quite a treat in
store for anyone who’s ever read a book that makes the hairs on back of
their arms stand on end – or for anyone out there who’s trying to write
something that comes close. Joining us is author and political blogger
Robert Crawford, author of American Zen and The Toy Cop, so grab a cup
of tea, an English muffin (we just call them muffins here) and settle in
for the ride:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Welcome, Rob. I promised you some tea when you come round for this interview, so what’s your brew?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Twining’s Irish Breakfast tea, which I have almost every day, believe it or not. A tart would’ve been nice, but OK…</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Who you calling a tart? Get that
tea down you and let’s get started. Primarily, I’d like to take a
little bit about your novel American Zen. To help readers get up to
speed (and to save me the task of writing it myself) can you tell us
what we need to know about this book?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What you “need” to know about <i>American Zen</i>
depends purely upon what you need out of it. It’s got liberal politics,
it’s got laughs, it’s got rock and roll (It even comes with a sound
track that I can send on CD if you wish). But at its most fundamental
level, <i>AZ</i> is about the strength yet the fragility of human love
and friendship. It’s about four guys who’d made up four fifths of a rock
and roll band who reunite after nearly 30 years. They don’t greet each
other with man hugs and merrily pick up where they leave off. There are
conflicts, there are tests of their character and nothing can be more
testing to one’s patience and good will than a week-long trip in one van
up and down the eastern seaboard.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><i>Can you sum up the book in six words or less?</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Coming of age, coming of middleage (Alright, I had to cheat a bit. Never said I was great at loglines.).</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://noorosha.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/rock-banner.jpg"><img alt="rock banner" class="size-full wp-image-772 aligncenter" height="146" src="http://noorosha.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/rock-banner.jpg" title="Yes, it really does rock this much" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>So, for me the pace of the book
was surprisingly fast – especially when I checked the word count and
realised you were just a few words shy of the 150k mark – which suggests
you spent a lot of time tweaking the structure and composition of the
novel to keep the pages turning (all 500 of them). How do you decide
where to add more detail, more words, more action, and where to cut some
out?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
First off, the <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4076183">Create Space version</a>
is only 358 pages long (although there are over 40 lines per page, well
past the standard 32). Secondly, I really can’t take credit for the
fast pacing because it was a rare case of an author not writing a book
as one writing the author. I may have mentioned to you that the four
months I was writing the draft was my Richard Bach moment. Richard Bach
said about 40 years ago that a voice in his head screamed, “Jonathan
Livingston Seagull!” And his book completely took over his life. Bach
said it was unlike anything he’d ever written before or since.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Whatever the impetus behind his book or
mine, whether it be supernatural or simply riding the surf of a new and
strange inner inspiration, this is what <i>American Zen</i> was like for
me. The first draft was knocked out in exactly four months flat and
during those four months, I’d taken only 14 days off. I wrote it at
work, I wrote it at home, I wrote it on the beach. I was fortunate
enough to have two friends and fellow liberal bloggers (Alicia Morgan
and Steve Benson) as technical experts because they’d been in the music
business and had performed with some heavyweights since the 70’s. My
protagonist, Mike Flannigan, had to sound as if he knew what he was
talking about regarding being in a rock and roll band, the gear that was
available at the time, etc. Since I’d published it, people have asked
me if I ever belonged to a rock and roll band. One or two were convinced
I was.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What to add, what to cut out. Aye,
there’s the rub. That’s one of the greatest challenges of a novelist and
luckily, I was on something like autopilot to the point where I could
trust my muse to make the right decisions even during the revision
process. I was very lucky in that I had all the dramatic spikes (or
story arcs) lined up in my head on the first or second day and it was as
if some voice in my head was telling me, “Robert, if you don’t write
down this parade of images now, you’ll be sorry because you’ll never see
it again.” It was almost as if I was taking dictation from a higher
creative power, as if I was writing the biography of an alter ego. Other
than that, I just tried to end each chapter on a little cliffhanger,
such as when Mike gets cold-cocked in Billy’s garage or when they saw
Dave’s old van parked in front of the Rock Garden. I usually have a
pretty good sense of when and how to end a chapter and <i>American Zen</i> was certainly no exception.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>The book deals with some pretty
heavy themes – life, death, sexuality, youth, middle age, disease,
frustration, and, of course, the music. How many of these big themes are
borne from your own life experiences?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Probably just the
middle age and frustration and even then from a literary mindset. I’ve
never been in a gay relationship, even though I’m bisexual, never known
anyone who had HIV or AIDS, and I never even learned to play guitar. As I
said, this was the story as it was presented to me, almost as if I was
writing someone else’s memoir. It was written so differently (I’d never
written in first person before nor in a purely chronological way) I feel
almost guilty putting my name on the cover. I know very good and well
I’d written it. But at the time and in retrospect, it just didn’t feel
that way.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Yet, at the same time, little incidents
and snippets of conversation from my life in the late 70’s, when almost
half the book takes place, found their way in <i>AZ</i>. I’d always
wondered why I held on to those meaningless little recollections that by
themselves don’t really mean a whole lot but I was able to somehow make
use of them in <i>AZ</i>. The Jimmy Carter Show was a real group that
was around Massachusetts in the late 70’s and the teleporting drummer
gimmick they used in <i>AZ</i> was the same exact one they’d actually
used. Dave’s and Rob’s physical appearance was based on two guys I knew
at the leather shop I worked at when I was a kid (the same one at which
all the band members but Billy worked.).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Mike is my idealized version of myself:
Steady family man, well-paid and respected liberal journalist. He’s
where I want to be. Billy is the opposite side of the same coin and he
is where I’m trying to move away from. Minus the conservative
principles, Billy was where I was: Former Special Forces, haunted,
embittered, with a dark side threatening to overwhelm what good is left.
Between these two very dissimilar men stands yours truly. I never knew
that these two polar opposite guys were actually me until long after I’d
finished the first draft. What unites them and maintains their
friendship is not the music but a common, inexplicable love these guys
feel for each other and others in their circle.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Have you ever been in a band? If so, what did you play, and were you any good?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
See above. Like Mike
and Jo Jo when they went to junior high together, I played incredibly
uncool instruments like the cornet and French horn. I doubt I even know
how to read music, anymore. But as I’d said, several people have asked
me the same questions you just did and I take that as confirmation that
as a novelist, I’d done my job well and got them to willingly suspend
their disbelief.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="rock banner2" class="aligncenter wp-image-775" height="150" src="http://noorosha.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/rock-banner2.jpg" title="The atmosphere - the noise, the cheers. " width="400" /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>How did you manage to create
such vivid scenes involving the band mates of The Immortals? Are any of
their hi-jinks semi-autobiographical?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As regards the vivid scenes and hi-jinx, you’ll have to ask my muse. Writing <i>American Zen</i>
was like watching a movie with my third eye and conscientiously writing
down what I’d seen. The dramatic spikes such as the fight in the
graveyard, the Immortals playing White Zombie in the church, the
practical joke Billy pulls on Rob at the wedding, to name just a few,
are pure fancy. And yet, despite willingly ceding much self-conscious
control and outsourcing my critical acumen to this muse, the discipline
never left me and this higher creative being still kept these characters
consistent, the events compelling and plausible and narrative snappy,
lyrical or whatever the situation called for. To create a world from the
ground up and sympathetic, identifiable and interesting characters to
populate it, all aimed toward a satisfying denouement requires
tremendous discipline if not talent. Essentially, the novelist succeeds
where God fails.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Tell us about your other books – and, out of all your tomes, which is your personal favourite and why?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Well, in a lot of ways, <i>American Zen</i>
still stands as my high water mark, IMHO. As I’d said above, it was by
far the most atypical novel I’d ever written and the only one I’d ever
written that made me, <i>me the author</i>, laugh so often or literally cry out loud. Typically, I write thrillers. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Toy-Cop-ebook/dp/B00APSB4SY"><i>The Toy Cop</i></a> is the only other novel I have in print and on Kindle. Whereas <i>AZ</i> took me merely four months to draft, <i>TTC</i>
took me close to 14 years. The latter is a classic case of a book that
just kept growing and growing, sort of a literary black hole in which a
lot gets sucked in and doesn’t escape. What began as a “what if?”
question eventually yeasted its way up into what I think is the best
hostage negotiation novel ever written. At the very least, <i>The Toy Cop</i>
is the first novel to get crisis negotiation right, a point my expert,
former FBI negotiator Fred Lanceley, insisted on making. But as good as <i>TCC</i> is, I still think <i>American Zen </i>is
my best sustained effort because not only did it radically change me as
a human being, it helped write me as much as I wrote it. <i>AZ</i> had a
wisdom and rationale behind it that was hidden from me until after it
was on paper. There were several times where I’d be proofing a chapter
and I’d find myself saying, “Oh, so <i>that’s</i> what I meant!”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>You live in Tax-achusetts, a
location that features heavily in American Zen, famous for its
propensity for wasting perfectly good tea leaves, world class
educational institutions (U-Mass, of course) and the greatest rock band
in history – the Pixies. What makes MA a special state for you? </b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So, I take it you’re
not an Aerosmith fan? Before I’d enlisted in the Navy, I’d enlisted in
the Air Force (my father was my recruiter). That didn’t work out so well
and the Air Force sacked me at about the same exact time my father
retired. His new civilian job brought him to Massachusetts and he
picked me up at my grandfather’s house at Central Islip, New York and
took my mother and me to Massachusetts. My first lasting job was at a
leather shop in West Concord in which I made little keepers for belts
just like Mike. Except for brief periods (Navy, out of state
girlfriends), I’ve been here ever since and cannot imagine living
anywhere else. The winters are brutal but my sons live in the next town
so I have some family to keep me tied here.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="rock banner3" class="aligncenter wp-image-777" height="140" src="http://noorosha.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/rock-banner3.jpg" title="Proof at least one part of Concord is picturesque (in winter)" width="400" /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>As well as being a novelist, you’re also a political blogger. What’s your area of focus, and where can people find your columns?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I’ve been blogging
politically for well over eight years. I’m on my third blog (I’d deleted
the first two) and the current one is <a href="http://welcomebacktopottersville.blogspot.com/">Welcome Back to Pottersville</a>, which has a <i>It’s a Wonderful Life</i>
motif to it. My area of focus? Name it. It’s a chaotic,
catch-as-catch-can, all purpose liberal blog and I guess one of its few
saving graces is when you surf in, you never know what you’ll get.
Occasionally, Mike Flannigan even chips in with his own byline! I
haven’t been tending to it as well as I suppose I should be which segues
neatly into the next answer. I also allegedly maintain a dedicated book
and writing blog called <a href="http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/">Kindle in the Wind</a>,
which I maintain even more sporadically. Like many other authors, I’m
also on Twitter, in both a literary and political capacity as <a href="https://twitter.com/jurassicpork59">@Jurassicpork59</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/KindleindaWind">@KindleintheWind</a>. I’m also on LinkedIn and Google+.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>What’s next for Robert Crawford?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I’m chuckling as I’m writing this
because you of all people know what’s next. But for the sake of your
readers, we’re collaborating on a thriller entitled <i>TATTERDEMALION</i>
in which Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, Arthur Conan-Doyle
and Sigmund Freud go after Jack the Ripper in 1888 London. The first
four chapters, on which your host collaborated on the third and fourth,
can be found on Scribd <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/129127596/Tatterdemalion">here</a>, <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/129643407/Tatterdemalion-Ch-2">here</a>, <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/130416493/Tatterdemalion-Ch-3">here</a> and <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/132021307/Tatterdemalion-Ch-4">here</a>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This past weekend, I’ve been proofing and reformatting a satirical
dictionary I’d cobbled together during the 90’s entitled <i>The Misanthrope’s Manual</i> and a sample can be found <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/127557573/Misanthrope-s-Manual-A-B">here</a>. If you ever read Ambrose Bierce’s <i>The Devil’s Dictionary</i>, you should love this as it’s a somewhat more updated version of <i>TDD</i>,
or what I fancy Bierce would write if he were around today. It should
be available on Kindle and Create Space within the next couple of days.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And, as proof that <i>American Zen</i> was an isolated peak as regards literary discipline, I’m also in the middle of <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/125547766/American-Zen-2-Rock-of-Ages-Prologue-Ch-1"><i>American Zen 2: Rock of Ages</i></a> which, along with the <i>Misanthrope’s Manual</i>,
was featured on Scribd. In addition, I’m also working on what I call
the Joe Roman trilogy (although it can easily go beyond that) and have
in the works three novels in various stages of completion/disrepair.
Roman’s a unique character in that he’s a former Soviet/NYPD detective
with dual citizenship who occasionally works for the Russian mob in
Brighton Beach but has a soft spot for missing, abused children. It
starts with <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/114356140/The-Saipan-Seven-Prologue"><i>The Saipan Seven</i></a>, continues with <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/114355015/The-Puppet-Children-Prologue"><i>The Puppet Children</i></a> and concludes with <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/114354030/Chernobyl-Dreams-Prologue"><i>Chernobyl Dreams</i></a>.
In the future, I may also print a volume of my poetry written in the
80’s and 90’s. Multiple self-published authors often sell the best so
it’s always important to keep lots of irons in the fire.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Nick says: thanks for dropping by, Robert – and thanks for taking the bait and mentioning our new project, <i>Tatterdemalion</i>. The book is essentially <i>The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vs Jack the Ripper</i>,
and has been an absolute hoot to write. The book should be completed in
time for the close of 2013, so watch this space if you’re a fan of
thrillers, mysteries, and histories or fill in the contact form at the
bottom of this post to get new articles, blog posts and information
about free book giveaways emailed direct to your inbox.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="line-height: 20px;"> If you would like to get hold of a copy of Robert’s sublime </span><i style="line-height: 20px;">American Zen</i><span style="line-height: 20px;"> just </span><a href="http://viewbook.at/B00AHXZ7Q2" style="line-height: 20px;" target="_blank">click here for his Amazon page</a><span style="line-height: 20px;">
and check out the sample – I defy you not to go ahead and download the
whole thing. And, after you’ve read through to the end, go back and
re-read the prologue – it will give you some serious chills.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="line-height: 20px;"> Here’s the
link again:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://viewbook.at/B00AHXZ7Q2" target="_blank"><img alt="american zen cover" class="size-medium wp-image-766 aligncenter" height="300" src="http://noorosha.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/american-zen-cover-203x300.jpg" width="203" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://viewbook.at/B00AHXZ7Q2" target="_blank">American Zen at Amazon – currently <span style="text-decoration: underline;">$4</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">.99</span></a></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-90206931382017372982013-03-15T11:08:00.003-04:002013-03-15T11:11:18.275-04:00Yep, I Stepped On It<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HelDK6VP-JE/UUMxn6kQQ-I/AAAAAAAAUyo/k-zvYt5SIfw/s1600/stepondick.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HelDK6VP-JE/UUMxn6kQQ-I/AAAAAAAAUyo/k-zvYt5SIfw/s320/stepondick.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
Not long after we were settling back into our routine after that guy
drove into our house yesterday, I got a phone call from an executive at
Createspace who was apparently alarmed by my post, "Steal This Book
Royalty" (which has just been deleted from both this blog and Pottersville plus Scribd) and the acrimonious exchange of emails between me and Create
Space's Customer Service team.<br />
Number One, this whole
misunderstanding never would've happened had I taken the time to read
the TOS. But, number two (and the executive who'd called me owned up to
this, after having read the emails), if Create Space's CS people had
adequately and simply explained the business arrangement to me, there
wouldn't've been an acrimonious exchange of emails and threats of class
action lawsuits (as other writers have been threatening).<br />
To
put it simply, anyone following my permalinks to my Create Space estore
and buying either of my novels would have ordered it at the cost price,
not the retail price. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-Story-coming-middle/dp/1481122908"><i>American Zen</i></a> goes for about eight and a half bucks, <i>The Toy Cop</i>
about $10.22. Again, anyone buying them from the estore would've merely
been reimbursing Create Space for the cost to produce each unit and
they didn't make a penny off me. Obviously, this means I was not
entitled to any royalties.<br />
As the executive had explained it
to me, my calculated royalties that had accrued starting in December
were from sales made through Amazon. This necessarily involves a certain
markup (or a retail price), which would then, in spite of any discounts
to the retailer, involve a royalty. Instead of directing people to my
Amazon product pages, I was sending them to the wrong URL, or the Create
Space estore. When Customer Service told me I needed to sell to third
party retailers, this is what they meant. Otherwise, people were buying
my books at cost and no one was making a penny from my books, either CS or me.<br />
So it's obvious I had to man up, delete the erroneous post and rescind my
request to boycott my Create Space editions and all Create Space
products. I was totally in the wrong because I rushed headlong into the
POD world because I couldn't be bothered to read the actual business
arrangement. In fact, partly out of self-interest, partly as a conciliatory gesture, I've just spent $25 I really shouldn't be spending for expanded distribution for <i>The Toy Cop</i>. If I can spare another $25 in the future, I'll do the same for <i>American Zen</i>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-33791714797912780242013-03-06T09:36:00.002-05:002013-03-06T09:36:37.202-05:00Author Interview With Nick Stephenson<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View Author Interview With Nick Stephenson on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/128654656/Author-Interview-With-Nick-Stephenson" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Author Interview With Nick Stephenson</a> by <a title="View Robert Crawford's profile on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Robert Crawford</a> </p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/128654656/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-17xqekrtxcewvp2ivhvp" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.772727272727273" scrolling="no" id="doc_99371" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-14807790521267457572013-02-22T09:28:00.003-05:002013-02-22T09:30:38.528-05:00One Reason Why Indie Bookstores Are in Trouble<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lllUSIUJE4M" width="420"></iframe><br />
Irish Customer Service.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-36164463386524689492013-02-21T14:14:00.001-05:002013-02-21T14:38:01.761-05:00Open Thread, Coming Attractions<div style="-x-system-font: none; display: block; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 12px auto 6px auto;">
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/125547766/American-Zen-2-Rock-of-Ages-Prologue-Ch-1" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View American Zen 2: Rock of Ages-Prologue &amp; Ch 1 on Scribd">American Zen 2: Rock of Ages-Prologue &amp; Ch 1</a> by <a href="http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Robert Crawford's profile on Scribd">Robert Crawford</a> </div>
<iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="0.772727272727273" data-auto-height="false" frameborder="0" height="400" id="doc_8916" scrolling="no" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/125547766/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-19qkh0nmy1ch0ptrr1f5" width="75%"></iframe>
<br />
This is the embed view of the long-awaited sequel to <i>American Zen: American Zen 2: Rock of Ages </i>(subtitled, I'd like to add, before the execrable Tom Cruise movie). The prologue and first chapter of AZ2 was featured on <a href="http://www.scribd.com/">Scribd's index page</a> just last night and you can still see it below the fold, after the jump.<br />
The buzz has started at last like the gathering feedback of a Strat turned up to 10. In AZ2, we see Mike publicizing his new book, <i>American Zen</i>, on the Jay Leno show. During the interview, Mike informs the reader that his band, the Immortals, recently went head to head on a nationally televised talent show with the band run by their front man's daughter, Drew Carmichael. Chapter One begins the previous year with Mike jamming with Stephen King and his band the Rock Bottom Remainders.<br />
Then he gets a stunning phone call from his wife, then a deathbed confession from his mother that changes his life. Then, after his mother dies, Dave's widow Ruby reveals who really broke up the band and it wasn't Dave or the bottom-feeding scout who'd signed him away from his own group. And that's just the beginning.of the dramatic twists and turns in store for Mike and the boys as they once again hit the road and go to LA at a last stab at redemption and respect.<br />
As for coming attractions, I plan on posting a series of interviews with exclusively independent authors (the "real" ones had long since signaled they don't want to be bothered by wearisome little doorknockers like me even though I can write rings around every single one of them). The first one will be up in a few days to a week, depending on when Nick Stephenson answers my questions.<br />
Also, for anyone who cares, I'll be posting articles on sundry and assorted topics regarding writing and publishing as well as sample chapters of my other upcoming novels.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-26549834834615217512013-02-16T12:02:00.000-05:002013-03-15T11:13:47.383-04:00Promotional Giveaway<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w9F7jApdcxk/UR-p5ItoZPI/AAAAAAAAAP4/r1418jSlOcY/s1600/AZ+CD.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w9F7jApdcxk/UR-p5ItoZPI/AAAAAAAAAP4/r1418jSlOcY/s400/AZ+CD.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
In early 2006, John Connolly and his publisher released <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Angel-Thriller-Charlie-Mysteries/dp/0743487877">The Black Angel</a></i>, a Charlie Parker thriller. It was unique in two respects. Firstly, it was more overtly supernatural than the previous Parker installments and secondly, the hardcover edition had bundled with it something I'd never seen before: A music CD.<br />
In having his publisher secure the rights to release a promotional CD of music, Connolly explained for the first time that when writing certain chapters in the Parker series, he'd think of a certain song. It was a full-length CD of roughly ten songs that are intended to be played while the reader read certain chapters in the Charlie Parker saga.<br />
I thought that was a helluva good idea and still do. It was original and, from a business standpoint, it was a very savvy move. Connolly's music CD probably not only stimulated sales, it helped heighten what was already a suspenseful, visceral experience. The Parker series, in my mind, are better written than just about any detective series today, better even than Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series. And, while Connolly's taste in music isn't exactly in synch with mine, his idea to include a CD with the hard cover edition was inspirational.<br />
I had this in mind while I was drafting <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B00AHXZ7Q2"><i>American Zen</i></a> in early to mid 2008. The idea of a soundtrack was inevitable since the book is about a hard rock band from the late '70's. At various times in the narrative I'd described through Mike Flannigan's words how they'd sounded while playing these songs both as kids in 1978 and as middle-aged men in 2008. But even the most skilled writer can't supplant music with mere words. This is why we have musicians. Describing music is as largely pointless as watching food and porn. If it's not interactive and if you can't actually enjoy it, what's the point?<br />
So the idea of assembling a soundtrack was an inevitable one. Connolly's idea, as I'd stated, was a terrific one but the songs had nothing to do with <i>The Black Angel</i> and it required taking previous Parker novels off the bookshelf and playing the songs during certain chapters. I saw where Connolly was going but it seemed like a cumbersome proposition, all the same.<br />
<i>American Zen</i>, as far as I know, is the first book to have its own soundtrack. They, too, should be played at certain moments but, unlike Connolly's idea, you don't have to take down books and fumble for certain chapters before you can get the full good out of them.<br />
So, while still revising the novel in 2008, I had a family member burn for me the first of a series of music CD's using Light Scribe. I'm a writer, not a graphic designer, so the first attempt was Godawful. I tried to create my own Zen font and it came out looking like something an epileptic chicken would make in its death throes. So I had my kid look up a real Zen font and had him use that instead of my abortive custom-made one.<br />
The sound track is a pretty standard length 41 minutes, consisting of 10 songs. Although both Mike Flannigan and I are head bangers from way back, it's a surprisingly eclectic selection of music, ranging from White Zombie to Neil Diamond to The Allman Brothers to Billy Swan to Queen to Norman Greenbaum. Yeah, it runs virtually the entire gamut of popular music since the mid 60's and every song in it has its proper place. There are other great songs that are referenced and even described such as Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors", Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", ZZ Top's, "Lagrange", Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" (actually a stolen Willie Dixon song), and "Roadhouse Blues" by the Doors. But they didn't make the cut because I didn't think they illustrated the Immortals, Mike's band, as both a music group and a unique dynamic of friends. The songs that made it have an emotional impact and personal significance for Mike, the rest of the group and, lastly, for me.<br />
As far as emotional impact, the ones that do me in are the songs the boys play when they meet Drew Carmichael's band at the very same night club where the Immortals had played their last gig in 1978. At the same time Jo Jo was trying to save his friends in the final days of his life, Mike was also trying in his hamfisted way to save his childhood friend Jo Jo when he found out he'd given up rock and roll and played organ for Provincetown's Catholic Church. So it's with great joy that I imagine Jo Jo playing in the final minutes of his life the electric piano of "Jessica" and, finally, the group's old signature song, Stevie Winwood and <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Likewise, earlier in the book, listen to White Zombie's unforgivably profane "Supercharger Heaven" and think of Mike and the boys performing that at St. Peter's to the pastor's (and Jo Jo's) mortification. Or Billy Swan's "I Can Help" played by a 19 year-old Jo Jo playing on Mike's car stereo while he helplessly watches his best friend die. Then, in the Coda or epilogue, when Mike walks into Dave's old barn and remembers the group's first full rehearsal as they pulled together and played a kick-ass cover of Emerson Lake and Palmer's "Karn Evil 9 First Impression". As he visualizes the younger men they used to be, he plays their cover on his iPod and listens to it at the same time you can. And I dare you to maintain two dry eyes while listening to Jimi Hendrix's "Angel" and reading about Mike, Rob and Billy's rendition during Jo Jo's memorial service at the very same church they'd desecrated just days earlier.<br />
The tracks are:<br />
<br />
1) "Everything Zen" by Bush, the only song not played by the band or referenced by me except in an epigraph.<br />
2) "Gimme Some Lovin'" by Stevie Winwood and <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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3) "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum<br />
4) "Bicycle" by Queen<br />
5) "Supercharger Heaven" by White Zombie<br />
6) "I Can Help" by Billy Swan<br />
7) "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers<br />
8) "Hello" by Neil Diamond<br />
9) "Angel" by Jimi Hendrix<br />
10) "Karn Evil 9, First Impression, Part 2" by Emerson Lake and Palmer<br />
<br />
So here's what I'm going to do: Everyone who orders either the physical Create Space edition or the Kindle version can contact me at Crawman2@yahoo.com and I'll mail you a free CD that I absolutely guarantee will heighten the <i>American Zen</i> experience and enable you to better share my vision. This promotion will necessarily be on the honor system so I'll have to assume you're telling the truth about having bought the book. But I don't imagine anyone would resort to disingenuousness just to get a CD of old music.<br />
But wait, there's more! If you buy a copy of <i>American Zen</i> on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B00AHXZ7Q2">Kindle</a> or on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-Story-coming-middle/dp/1481122908">Create Space</a>, I'll include with the music the prologue and first chapter of <i>American Zen 2</i>: Rock of Ages including the cover art. Or, if you want, I can embed a little extra surprise, sort of like an Easter Egg studios put into DVD's but easier for you to find.<br />
<i>American Zen</i> is truly a very good book and I'm not saying that because I wrote it. I freely admit my first two novels were Godawful but I stand on firm ground when I say that American Zen is my most brilliant sustained effort and it's a truly incredible "memoir" of a week in the lives of four old friends in search for redemption, no matter the cost. When you play the music as you read the chapters that make up the dramatic spikes, it'll drive home that point much more effectively than even mine or Mike's words can.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-27747339215208700012013-02-13T11:05:00.000-05:002013-02-13T11:24:54.711-05:00When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Desperate<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3nHRWy2Aips/URu4DF7DMXI/AAAAAAAAAPk/xrj80jvQyBk/s1600/goingvague.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3nHRWy2Aips/URu4DF7DMXI/AAAAAAAAAPk/xrj80jvQyBk/s1600/goingvague.jpg" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
I've known since last year that Robert Barnett was Sarah Palin's "literary agent". Actually, Barnett's not a fulltime literary agent. He's an attorney by trade at the white shoe firm of Williams & Connolly LLP. When the opportunity presents itself, he'll choose to represent someone who isn't actually a writer and has to depend on a ghost writer to keep from sounding like a complete fucking idiot. Fed up to here with disrespect and ignorance from asshole, self-absorbed literary agents, I decided to pitch my novel <i>The Toy Cop</i> to Barnett yesterday. What follows is my letter, reproduced word-for-word (minus the .jpeg).</div>
<hr />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Williams & Connolly LLP<br />
725 Twelfth Street, N.W.<br />
Washington, D.C. 20005</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dear Mr. Barnett:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve both been
around long enough to know how the game is played. And I can appreciate that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Four and a half
years ago, America and its John Birch Society/KKK/Aryan Supremacy demographic
fell in love with a sneering cheerleader out of Wasilla, Alaska who tapped into
their racist fears and secessionist desires and validated them at a time when
they needed validation the most. Then they, inexplicably, stayed in love with
her even after her burning blimps of two “bestsellers”, a reality TV series in
which Daddy had to load her gun for her and a Fox “News” stint that just ended
rather ignominiously.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In you stepped
into the political and personal quagmire that was her previously (and justly)
obscure life and career and sold the First North American Rights for her
ghost-written <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Going Vague</i> or whatever
it was called. I don’t know if you did the same for her when the long-awaited
followup came out just two months in advance of the printing of the “Bargain!
$1.99!” stickers that would be slapped on it in WalMart’s and Osco’s bargain
bins. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, either way,
I can appreciate you stepping into the breach between good and common sense and
putting Sarah’s puss on two books because you, as with any fulltime literary
agent would, struck while the iron was hot. This is, after all, America, the
rib-thumping, Good Ole’ Boy capitol of Capitalism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So here we are,
four and a half years after she stumbled on the American scene like Kramer in a
typical Seinfeld episode. You’re no doubt hundreds of thousands of dollars
richer, she’s millions richer and Threshold, her first publisher, is many more millions
richer. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Going Rogue</i> became a
bestseller only because her political action committee, SarahPAC, bought up
69,000 copies to give away or sell at Bircher and birther conventions.
Individually, it didn’t sell nearly as many copies as you and her publisher
would prefer to think. But I’m a political blogger and a novelist of some
modest brilliance and I read and write about these things for a living.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America is now
just waking up and rubbing its eyes from this latest slumber and beginning to
wonder what in the world they saw in this fantastically insane and hateful woman
who’s like a chapter of the DSM V come to life. I’m assuming you’re
professional enough to have moved on and don’t care one bit at how much you,
Caribou Barbie or Threshold Editions had cattle-prodded our nation’s literacy
IQ even further below than the drooling, foaming-at-the-corner-of-the-mouth
level in which you’d all found it (as proof of this, look at the new flavors of
the day in the person of Grammy-goer Lena Dunham and the self-published author
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">50 Shades of Gray</i>, whatever her
name is, which are apparently doing what Palin had done three years ago:
Perpetuating hateful and self-destructive stereotypes and getting paid well for
it.).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But just in case
you’re wondering, as are so many us, if maybe you should’ve taken a pass on
Palin and let some other attorney or a real literary agent suffer the pre-emptive
stigma of being the one responsible for inflicting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Going Rogue</i> on an unsuspecting reading public, in case you’re in even
the slightest need of some professional redemption, allow me to offer you THE
TOY COP.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a
170,000+ word novel that took me close to 14 years to write and revise.
Considering I had an agent back in the mid-late 90’s to rep my first novel (a
hideously-executed sci fi adventure about Jack the Ripper, written at a time
when I was ignorant about the very rudiments of effective and compelling
storytelling), it only stands to reason that now, at age 54, I’ve only gotten
better as a novelist as well as infinitely more pragmatic about the realities
of modern-day publishing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet trying to
find a literary agent nowadays is like looking for a unicorn in a
slaughterhouse. This is why I’m approaching you with this. You’re an attorney
by trade who only dabbles in literary representation on the side when
opportunity meets opportunism. I’ve had my fill of getting form rejection
letters from flunkies of agents whom I’d directly written and getting rude
silences even when providing quality material and obeying submission guidelines
to the letter. Perhaps you haven’t been around writers and publishers so long
that you’ve been jaded as all other agents have. For my part, I’m tired of the
disrespect to my talent, time and efforts. There is absolutely no reason why a
writer of my talent shouldn’t be put between covers, especially when one
considers 90% of published books lose money. Mergers such as the one between
Random and Penguin are making it even harder for agents to sell properties,
readers to get a varied menu of offerings and authors to find placements. This
is why self-publishing is taking off like a Roman candle.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So that’s why I’m
betting on you. THE TOY COP is a high concept, white knuckle thriller that
benefited from the wisdom of former MA Governor Paul Cellucci and ex FBI crisis
negotiator Fred Lanceley as well as invaluable input from several experts in
their respective fields. If my first, horrible, novel could get me an honest
literary agent in 1996 (she called my house begging to sign me) when I could
barely write a coherent grocery list, consider how brilliant THE TOY COP is, a
novel that took me half a generation to write with the wisdom accrued since I
first snagged an agent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps a man of
your level of accomplishment has his mail screened for him by flunkies of his
own and perhaps this will go unread. Still, I have to try something. I have a greater
instinct for publicity than a talent for it and my own marketing platform is
simply not pushing sales. In fact, I haven’t sold a copy of TTC either on
Kindle or Create Space in a couple of months. Trying to sell even well-written
books on the internet if you’re not a celebrity or have a professional
apparatus working for you is like pouring vials of ambergris into a sand dune
or tossing a ball of lint down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve had it with
agents and I’m tired of publishers telling me I need an agent in order to be
even considered. This current business model is thoroughly rotten, corrupt,
based on nothing but money and is untenable. The nonsustainability is proven by
the mere fact that for the first time in history more books are sold
electronically and by independent authors than traditional dead tree
publishers. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just do yourself
a favor. Read even just a chapter or two of TTC. Look at the synopsis I’ve
provided below then tell me I’m not the real thing. It’s not a political novel
although there are political and legal elements that would relate to your
experience as a legislative assistant and federal law clerk. Over the course of
14 years, the writing’s been sanded down to a slick finish and the research
impeccable. It’s quite possibly the only novel ever written that actually gets
federal-level crisis negotiation correct.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s going for $8
and change on <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4079937">Create Space</a> but I’m sending you a free copy (the Create Space version
I used for the galleys) via Word 7 attachment. Just read even a few chapters
then, if you wish, keep reading until the harrowing end. And, if you do that
and agree with my assessment of its merits, maybe we can do business together.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sincerely,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robert Crawford</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-71676822982094441622013-02-12T12:28:00.000-05:002013-02-12T12:45:09.475-05:00Writer Vs Author<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-54rxGanZwCI/URptd8gGHgI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/VrLjCeHhbd8/s1600/jesusfacepalm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-54rxGanZwCI/URptd8gGHgI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/VrLjCeHhbd8/s400/jesusfacepalm.jpg" width="310" /></a></div>
In one of two or three writing communities to which I belong on Linked
In, the place where middle-aged and elderly wouldbes go to commiserate,
someone asked the same Creative Writing 101 question, obviously fancying
themselves to be asking something startlingly original that had never
been asked before: "What's a writer and what's an author?"<br />
It's one of those questions that involves such a necessarily subjective
answer that if you ask 100 self-identified writers that question, you'll
get 150 responses. Being an analytically-minded writer and political
blogger myself, in which a keen instinct for multi-faceted analysis is
absolutely essential, I tend to look at even simple-minded questions
from different perspectives, such as the colloquial definitions of the
words writer and author as opposed to my own personal definition. This
is why, if you ask 100 writers you'll get 150 responses. Political
bloggers and novelists who tend to tell things from different POVs look
at stories and issues like Picasso looked at women (Well, he looked at
them as sex objects to be used and used up but I'm speaking of those
disjointed portraits for which he became noted in his later years, in
which the human face and body was broken up, thereby forcing the viewer
to look at it from different perspectives).<br />
There's the
hideously expanded and generous definition of what the writer and author
are in the public consciousness. Technically, almost anyone can be a
writer. Making out your "To Do" list makes you a writer. "Wake up. Make
coffee. Piss. Moan. Surf web for new porn. Write 150 meaningless tweets
for the bottomless memory hole. Piss again..." Sadly, that makes us
writers. Despite Texas and its Inquisition-minded Board of Education,
the literacy rate in the United States is still in the high 90's so,
theoretically, we're all writers. If you tweet, text, email or scrawl,
"For a good cock sucking, call 555..." on a bathroom wall, you're a
writer.<br />
The public mind is also just as generous regarding
published authors. Nowadays, if you're a one-time, half-term, half-wit
Governor, a failed Senate candidate or some bug-eyed conspiracy theorist
and your publisher assigns you a ghost writer or "co-author" whose name
looks shrunken below yours, then, by God, you're an author. Yes, we
have to at least until their books eventually end up in the .99<span class="st">¢
bargain bin at Wal-Mart admit airheads such as Sarah Palin, Christine
O'Donnell, Glenn Beck and George W. Bush into the same community as
Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats and Dickens.</span><br />
<span class="st">
Then again, 54 years of experience of stumbling across this world with a
neverending wonder of how we'd ever crawled out of the primordial ooze
informs me that the public is almost always in the wrong. So what if
Lena Dunham is currently popular and the traditional publishing industry
is now a <i>50 Shades of Gray</i>
and Harry Potter-based economy? Slavery was also popular, as was not
giving women and African Americans the vote and invading Vietnam and
Iraq.</span><br />
<span class="st"> So, in the addled public mind,
if you relay shit your dad says on Twitter, you're a writer even if it's
not your material. If it gets grabbed with all 20 fingers and toes by a
literary agent and published by a traditional publisher, you're an
author. And if it gets turned into a short-lived and hideously-conceived
TV series starring William Shatner, then you're a hasbeen and a future
answer on Trivial Pursuit: What the Fuck Do We Have Instead of Culture?!
edition. </span><br />
<span class="st"> And then, there's <i>my</i>
personal definition of the words "writer" and "author", which hearkens
back to the days before literary agents and generic MBA corporate
bean-counters that now make up virtually 100% of the publishing
industry.</span><br />
<span class="st"> There are two types of writers: Those who have to write and those who <i>need</i>
to write. If you dream words, or in chapters, if you continue writing
your book long after you've been taken by Morpheus (Luckily, to me, he
doesn't look like Laurence Fishburne, otherwise I'd have insomnia), then
you're a writer by my more stringent definition.</span><br />
<span class="st">
By the same token, if a photographer sees something fantastic, they'll
record it with their camera or kick themselves for not having one on
them. A composer and musician may want to write a song about it. And a
writer will "feel the itch in the fingers", to quote Stephen Crane, to
write about it or kick oneself in the ass for not having a notebook and
pen on them. But, in my experience, the real photographers will always
have that camera around their necks and the real writer will always have on their person a Moleskine or a cheap .99</span><span class="st">¢ equivalent in case one of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne abruptly drops in for a visit.</span><br />
<span class="st">
Growing up in the 70's, I'd grown to consider writers as the scribes of
the human race, the historians, the quantifiers, qualifiers and
clarifiers of the gloriously bifurcated human condition. The poets try
and fail to explain to us what love, life and death is but they
nevertheless insist on trying to pin down the elusive aspects of the
abstracts of human nature. The historians tell the same tale over and
over again because the causes and effects of war and genocide, which
marks human civilization over and over like pauses in a Harold Pinter
play, never change. But that doesn't stop them from trying.</span><br />
<span class="st">
And novelists, my people, all tell the same tale over and over again
and never, seemingly, running out of variations and that tale is a
single question: "Who am I?"</span><br />
<span class="st"> Any
human language is a fantastically complex Rube Goldberg mechanism
consisting of anywhere from several thousand to several millions of
moving parts all subject to change in shape and purpose. To master the rules of
something so admirably complicated and Protean is a feat unto itself.
But to marshal such a mastery over the course of a 400 page or 100,000
word sustained effort, especially if it's done well, is damned near a
miracle. And <i>that </i>makes you an author. I've done it several
times. I've made grown men and women laugh, cry, feel and think. I know
I'm a writer and author and I don't need a publishing contract and some
opportunistic literary agent to retroactively make me either with a
contract designed to make money.</span><br />
<span class="st">
To accomplish such a feat
requires a rare dedication, love and stubbornness eluding the
appreciation much less the capabilities of most people in this country
today. And to write a novel that suspends human disbelief even for just a
day or two, creating an entire world from the ground up while
subscribing (usually, unless you're [yawn] writing yet another Lord of
the Rings knockoff) to the laws of the natural, real world including
normal and abnormal human behavior and to make sure everything works as
planned. In other words, a good writer and author succeeds where God
failed.</span><br />
<span class="st"> Putting it simply, being a
writer is still, to me, one of the highest callings to which a human
being can aspire because we're the self-appointed ones to tell the human
saga, committing more or less to posterity every single minutia of the
human experience in books, newspaper and magazine articles and blog
posts.</span><br />
<span class="st">
The internet made all of us writers and publishers, at least in a
theoretical sense. The definitions of writer and author have been
cheapened, expanded and made ridiculously generous by the emerging
technology and the reawakened literary ambitions of the human race.
Published speech is now no longer the semi-exclusive domain of an
anointed few. The marketplace of ideas is a crowded and bizarre Arabian
bazaar consisting of tweets about what we had for dinner last night,
Facebook updates of our thoughts on the return of <i>The Walking Dead</i> and kvetching about our in-laws.</span><br />
<span class="st">
And, every once in a while, I'll grant that someone will write a book
or three that's worth reading because they, too, had equally high
standards of what constitutes
a writer and author and exerting over their work and very lives a
painfully monastic dedication to achieve a high and admirable end.</span><br />
<span class="st">
In the meantime, however, we have to accept Palin, Bush, O'Donnell,
Dunham and other flavors of the moment in the same company as poor </span><span class="st"><span class="st">Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats and Dickens.</span></span><br />
<span class="st"><span class="st">
Meanwhile, Jesus will be in a corner doing a face palm and weeping
for modern day Humanity as it awaits its next great chronicler.</span> </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-43710207631322030812013-02-05T13:43:00.000-05:002013-02-05T13:43:13.903-05:00No, it Wasn't a Dark and Stormy Night<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yGTBg4AUwsA/URFFbFhok4I/AAAAAAAAAO8/f3WKvIc7CoI/s1600/snoopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="348" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yGTBg4AUwsA/URFFbFhok4I/AAAAAAAAAO8/f3WKvIc7CoI/s400/snoopy.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Despite the best efforts of literary agents and bottom line-driven publishers, authors still still owe it to themselves to produce the best books they possibly can. Anyone who's been in the business longer than a New York minute can tell you there's often a huge difference between penning a good book that's actually worth reading and extruding one out that's brought into being primarily, if not entirely, in hopes of how salable it'll prove to be.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Imagery is the one thing books most critically need if they're to compete with more visually-dominant entertainment such as TV, movies, video games and a vivid, highly interactive social media on the internet. It could be argued that books could be defined as movies for smart people. But if books are to be competitive in the entertainment/educational marketplace, they need to contain bright, vibrant imagery that frees up that crucial reader imagination that takes off where you necessarily leave off.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> In a 1980 essay entitled <a href="http://www.wordplayer.com/pros/pr13.King.Stephen.html"><i>Imagery and the Third Eye</i></a>, Stephen King had told us in no uncertain terms there isn't any such thing as "writer's block." That's a fictional bogeyman writers like to use like <i>The Family Circus'</i>s Jeffy loved to blame the "Not Me" ghost for his mischief. So-called writer's block can be boiled down to three less than mysterious phenomena: lack of focus, laziness and story fatigue. Of all three, perhaps story fatigue will get the most sympathetic hearing from me. As the author of a novel that took me 13 years to write and revise, I can perfectly understand getting tired of a story after living with it for a long time. However, I'm also of the belief that a worthwhile story will tell itself when it's ready to.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> In King's landmark essay, one that had changed my entire outlook on creative writing, he stresses the need to make your imagery fresh and vivid and even proposes a writing exercise: Imagine a rainy city street and report what you see. Writing exercises such as this help free up a vapor-locked imagination (and a failure of imagination is, of course, another way of saying "lack of focus.") and also help sharpen up a lazy or wandering third eye.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Perhaps without meaning to, King offers a couple of brief examples frrom his own writing, including this paragraph from <i>The Shining</i> and, in the process, helps recall a famous poem by Theodore Roethke, "<a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/my-papa-s-waltz/">My Papa's Waltz</a>":</span></span></div>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">His father would sweep him into his arms and Jacky would be propelled deliriously upward, so fast it seemed he could feel air pressure settling against his skull like a cap made out of lead, up and up, both of them crying 'Elevator! Elevator'; and there had been nights when his father in his drunkenness had not stopped the upward lift of his slab-muscled arms soon enough and Jacky had gone right over his father's flat-topped head like a human projectile to crash-land on the hall floor behind his dad. But on other nights his father would only sweep him into a giggling ecstasy, through the zone of air where beer hung around his father's face like a mist of raindrops, to be twisted and turned and shaken like a laughing rag, and finally to be set down on his feet, hiccupping with reaction.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> It may even be King, a former English and Creative Writing professor, was thinking of Roethke's somewhat more famous and reprinted treatment of a similar childhood experience:</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>My Papa's Waltz</b> </span></span><br />
</div>
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<br />
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The whiskey on your breath </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Could make a small boy dizzy; </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But I hung on like death: </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Such waltzing was not easy. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We romped until the pans </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Slid from the kitchen shelf; </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My mother's countenance </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Could not unfrown itself. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The hand that held my wrist </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Was battered on one knuckle; </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At every step you missed </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My right ear scraped a buckle. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You beat time on my head </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">With a palm caked hard by dirt, </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Then waltzed me off to bed </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Still clinging to your shirt.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> It would be easy to gently chide a younger King of having this poem in the back of his mind when he'd written that marvelous paragraph. Both vignettes involve little boys suspended in midair by happy, slightly-drunk fathers in a playful mood. But what's striking about King's and Roethke's alleged recollections is their brilliant use of sharp imagery.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Both examples show both a striking vividness yet a balanced restraint that allows the reader to take off where the author ends. Neither paragraph nor poem are heavy-handed with eagerness to impart every single, last sensory detail. As King said, when he'd written his paragraph, he himself could vividly see the hairs on top of the father's head, his juvenile character perhaps noting, as children often do, at how much thinner the flat top was at the crown of the head as opposed to the sides o<span style="font-size: small;">r</span> the back. Both scenes feature the unmistakable scent of alcohol, which will also be picked up by children unused to <span style="font-size: small;">its sharp smell<span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> But in these masterful examples of imagery, both King and Roethke stop short of overexplaining and are content to let the reader take off with their own imagination. It's not important to know what brand of beer King's father drank or what Roethke's own father did for a living. <span style="font-size: small;">I</span>t's just enough to know one was muscular, the other having a scraped knuckle perhaps injured at work.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The author is like a parent <span style="font-size: small;">pushing a child on a swing. The <span style="font-size: small;">adult merely provides the initial momentum for the child to extend their legs and maintain their own momentum. Sometimes one big push is enough, sometimes a series of smaller pushes are what's called for. But the author, especially the fiction author, must be respectful enough of their re<span style="font-size: small;">aders' intelligence and own imagination to stretch their legs, and their own Third Eye, <span style="font-size: small;">s</span>o they can take over.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> As stated above, books are in a dire war with visual medium and, let's face it, Americans</span></span></span> are a people with a highly<span style="font-size: small;">-</span>developed and sophisticated visual sense. In order to compete with visual media that takes a much larger <span style="font-size: small;">role in providing imagination <span style="font-size: small;">than to which</span> <span style="font-size: small;">any author should aspire, today<span style="font-size: small;">'</span>s fiction needs to take</span></span> a cue from poets, especially those outside of the United States (such as Latin America and Ea<span style="font-size: small;">stern <span style="font-size: small;">E</span>ur<span style="font-size: small;">ope</span></span>, for instance, two parts of the world with far richer<span style="font-size: small;"> poetic histories than the United States)</span>.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Don't listen to doomsayers who say li<span style="font-size: small;">terature is doomed. <span style="font-size: small;">Publishing is a roughly $25 billion a year business. It's print books that are on the way out. Electronic books sell by the millions every year. <span style="font-size: small;">Y</span>et while agents and editors harp on details such as what similar books to yours have been successfully published, authors insist, rightly, on showing the agent or editor how good the book is when all they want to hear is how much cha-ching it'll put<span style="font-size: small;"> in their pockets.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Everything starts with the author and continues with the r<span style="font-size: small;">e</span>ade<span style="font-size: small;">r. If readers make it known what they want, editors and agents will follow suit<span style="font-size: small;"> just as they were forced to when surveyed readers reported about 25-30 years<span style="font-size: small;"> ago </span>they were more interested in character<span style="font-size: small;">-driven <span style="font-size: small;">novels than plot-driven ones. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Of course, reaching those <span style="font-size: small;">rea<span style="font-size: small;">d</span>ers is another struggle entirely and it's just as daunting if not moreso<span style="font-size: small;"> for the independent author to re<span style="font-size: small;">ach them than it is for a writer trying to reach them and met with two jaded gatekeepers (agent and editor). But striking images that start the reader's pendulum of imagination<span style="font-size: small;">, as well as vivid characterization and plain-old good storytelling, can put books back in their rightful place.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-13106142714976172172013-01-25T13:09:00.000-05:002013-01-25T13:25:04.007-05:005 Ways Publishing's Changed in the Last Decade<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ew5wVnLjMAU/UQA6Lx6RZRI/AAAAAAAAANU/q0ButnhdSrY/s1600/publishing_quadrant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="282" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ew5wVnLjMAU/UQA6Lx6RZRI/AAAAAAAAANU/q0ButnhdSrY/s400/publishing_quadrant.jpg" width="400" /></a> </div>
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For anyone who's written anything more ambitious than a 52 year-old barfly's phone number on a cocktail napkin at last call or a Facebook update dedicated to how they drank too many Sex on the Beaches last night at the local dive bar and "who the fuck were those swarthy guys stealing my kidneys, OMFG, you mean that 52 y/o barfly's in cahoots with them? Is her phone number even real?! Why didn't they cut out my fucking heart, too, while they were at it?", publishing's undergone some serious-ass changes in the last decade.</div>
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From the rise of POD (Poverty on Demand), publishing mergers and a radical acceleration of digital technology that only James Cameron could've foreseen, it's a Brave New World for novice authors and established ones seeking to dip their toes in the digital ether. What follows are the five biggest changes in publishing since we decided invading a sovereign nation with no more involvement in 9/11 than they had WMDs not much more dangerous than a zip gun and then giving publishing contracts to the top war criminals who pulled off this heist of the Iraqi oil fields were great ideas.</div>
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<b>1) Literary Agents Are Slowly Becoming the New Buggy Whips.</b></div>
Ever since 1980-5, or when we thought it was cool to roll up our suit coat sleeves to the elbows and tease our hair like it been washed in liquid Viagra, publishers got together with literary agents in a small, ill-lit, smoke-filled back room at the Four Seasons. In between being served aqua vit and <i>Calamari Fra Diavolo</i> by 400 pound enforcers with shoulder holsters, they hashed out a deal that basically went like this:<br />
"Yo, Binky, Swifty, lissen up. We don't feel dere's a poi-centage in slush piles. They're gettin' bigger than my wife Sophie's tits after our 5th kid. So dissiz what we're gonna do: We'll cut ya in on the action. We ain't talkin' to no more writers an' we ain't readin' their shit 'cuz <i>yer</i> gonna, <i>capish</i>? Then ya can skim whatever you want off da top. 15% seems about right."<br />
Then they all belched and farted in agreement, shook hands and celebrated their collusive new business deal by defenestrating some literary properties (and probably the authors who wrote them). A generation later, this corrupt business model's still firmly in place despite more and more literary agents making themselves harder reach than JD Salinger after an alien abduction. POD, however, is also making literary agents as redundant as they insist on acting like head cheerleaders toward the freshmen on try outs. Still, publishers who are approaching digital publishing like a horny sailor on a 12 hour liberty would that hot Filipino tranny with the suspicious Ann Coulter Adam's Apple are thinking of their agent henchmen. Some publishers with digital imprints still insist on you being fronted by an agent as if they were fencing stolen jewels. This is akin to a plumber who insists on employing his otherwise unemployable semi-retarded brother in law and bringing him into your home so he can piss all over your toilet seat, lick your frozen hamburger patties and driving up your repair bill.<br />
But this insistence on keeping these parasites firmly embedded on the underside of your nut sack just delays the inevitable: Literary agents will eventually become more redundant and useless than a female Strip-O-Gram at the Vatican's College of Cardinals.<br />
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<b>2) The Blob</b></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OR6Kw4U24f0/UQBECwEUS3I/AAAAAAAAANo/b38h_lR_4ok/s1600/galaxy_merger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OR6Kw4U24f0/UQBECwEUS3I/AAAAAAAAANo/b38h_lR_4ok/s320/galaxy_merger.jpg" width="320" /></a><b> </b></div>
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The sight of two behemoths like Random House and the Penguin Publishing Group merge into one is what Steve McQueen must've seen in <i>The Blob</i>. The merger, when completed, will corner a quarter of the book market, making it the Optimus Prime better suited to take on Nemesis Prime (aka Jeff Bezos and Amazon). Despite the official press releases glowing about this corporate coitus, mergers mean only two things: Fewer book titles and selling opportunities for agents and authors, fewer reading choices for readers and expendable employees being stripped naked and excommunicated at gunpoint into the Siberian wilderness (Not really. Considering today's job market, I'm actually soft-pedaling it). To get an idea of the sheer size and scale this merger, one would have to go to the Hubble Space telescope when it witnessed galaxies merging.</div>
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The Random-Penguin merger (which sounds like an homage to <a href="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0312209746.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg">Tom Tomorrow</a>) is designed solely to enrich top executives and shareholders who apparently make no distinctions between selling books and rolls of Charmin, making the Big Six the Big Five. And publishing pundits are telling us this is far from the last merger we can expect. Before they finally get around to publishing <i>An Idiot's Guide to Antitrust Laws</i> for the express edification of the Federal Trade Commission, there will be only one publisher and the American reader will be given a choice between only James Patterson, Stephen King, Tom Clancy's ghost writer and Lena Dunham.</div>
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Like rats leaving a sinking ship, this only drives more of us off the rickety gang plank and on the deceptively palmy, balmy shores of self-publication.</div>
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<b>3) You Are a Spammer Who Should be Flogged</b></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Vo-W9YgZcQ/UQBagRkBiFI/AAAAAAAAAN8/AipS2SlSSmM/s1600/techsupport.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Vo-W9YgZcQ/UQBagRkBiFI/AAAAAAAAAN8/AipS2SlSSmM/s320/techsupport.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b> </b> Publishing today is like walking into a whorehouse where virtually the only people there are johns who also ambled in after the whores had long since been outsourced to Bangladesh. You're told by the holographic image of a madame that if you want to get off, you'll have to pleasure yourself because paying whores is too expensive and we had to outsource them or lay them off. Maybe, if you're lucky, these editors/madames will hand you some Jergens and a travel 10 pack of Kleenexes doubling as bare-bones PR press kits that may or may not include a mention in your old high school newspaper.</div>
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That's basically the fate of all writers who are allegedly lucky enough to get into traditional publishing unless you're shtupping the executive editor's niece, in which case you'll have plenty of <i>oomph </i>put behind your memoir of how you went on a coke and meth-fueled killing spree and got a literary agent catapulted at you right after the hung jury convened.</div>
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For the rest of us. we have to publicize our own work and be whore and pimp rolled into one like those poor seedy Frank Sinatra hat-wearing bastards you used to see on 42nd Street handing out mimeographs for peep shows. Here's the problem: Whether you're traditionally published or self-published, good luck finding a venue that'll put up with even moderate street hawking of your book. I'm living proof that just putting up permalinks without even mentioning your books can get you banned for life on Amazon.com if the beneath-the-bridge-dwelling trolls have a problem with blatant capitalism.</div>
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Yeah, they don't tell you that. Luckily, you have me to give you the 411. But the facts are, lazy-ass publishers and literary agents who think a good day's work consists of updating their index page want your audience lined up in advance, your book edited in advance and your marketing platform set up in advance. Then when you get out there and do what you're told, you're treated like a Nigerian banker or that email in your spam box from Hannah Golightly who wants to extend your penis length by 400% with Canadian Viagra while offering you payday loans to refinance your nonexistent home.<br />
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<b>4) "Baby, Come Back. You Can Blame it All on Me!"</b>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a9diD9TM_sI/UQKzw3gXE1I/AAAAAAAAAOU/94qiShUW-mk/s1600/domestic-violence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a9diD9TM_sI/UQKzw3gXE1I/AAAAAAAAAOU/94qiShUW-mk/s400/domestic-violence.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="miniprofile-container http://www.linkedin.com/miniprofile?vieweeID=69034031&context=anet&view" data-tracking="anet_mlist_profile"><b>
</b>Last Wednesday, Mercy Pilkington of Goodreader posted <a href="http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/the-self-vs-traditional-publishingdebate-continues/">a fascinating article</a> about a new trend that's been emerging not even in the last few years but the last few <i>months</i>: Traditional publishers (Aka TPs, which share the same abbreviation as toilet paper and for good reason) crawling back to independent authors. The source for this article is a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_365040462_5?ie=UTF8&docId=1000830551&nav_sdd=aps&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-B1&pf_rd_r=0DP0BGW857ZJ74P6R6YA&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1471003362&pf_rd_i=507846">Pravda-style post</a> from Amazon.com about the fabulous Amazon-subsidized success of Vincent Zandri, the new king of independent authors. What Amazon fails to insert into the record is that Zandri used to be a traditionally published author who made a name for himself long before he'd </span><span class="miniprofile-container http://www.linkedin.com/miniprofile?vieweeID=69034031&context=anet&view" data-tracking="anet_mlist_profile"><span class="miniprofile-container http://www.linkedin.com/miniprofile?vieweeID=69034031&context=anet&view" data-tracking="anet_mlist_profile">crawled into bed with Jeff Bezos.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="miniprofile-container http://www.linkedin.com/miniprofile?vieweeID=69034031&context=anet&view" data-tracking="anet_mlist_profile"><span class="miniprofile-container http://www.linkedin.com/miniprofile?vieweeID=69034031&context=anet&view" data-tracking="anet_mlist_profile"><span class="text"> <span style="font-size: small;">Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about
self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle
& Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work.
Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to
distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers.
They're a corporation. This is what corporations do. Imagine a roast pig
coming to life at an all-you-can-eat buffet and preying on the steamed crabs
and lobster tails.</span></span></span></span></span></span>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="text"> As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's
notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a
ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to
cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me
one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90%
of its product. Think of <span data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype"><span data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype">Betty
White throwing </span>a lead-lined bull elephant. That's about how far such a
strategy would fly in the real world.</span></span></span></span><span class="comment-body" data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype"><span class="text"><span class="text"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span class="comment-body" data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype"><span class="text"><span class="text">This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship:
"Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I
swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press
kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful
P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules &
bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"<br />
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."</span></span></span><span class="comment-body" data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype"></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="text"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="text"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">After </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype"><span data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype">30
years of </span>broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty
royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch
promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces, insisting
we get repped by agents, who can blame us?</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span class="comment-body" data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype"><span class="text"> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="comment-body" data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype"><span class="text">What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors (Shades of <i>50 SHADES OF GRAY</i>) instead of waiting for agents to approach
them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as
most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90%
of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to
place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being
endangered, it's literary agents.<br />
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.<br />
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns
and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by
publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie
authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with
alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life
will begin anew with battered and bruised authors insisting they fell down the stairs and crying out, "You don't see my acquisition editor's <i>other</i>, more tender side!". It'll also put agents not only back on the playing
field but between the hashmarks. And we need literary agents in our lives about as much as Bob Marley needed another cancer.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="comment-body" data-li-comment-text="Amazon's despicably self-aggrandizing post about self publishing was a more of a commercial for its own POD services (Kindle & Create Space) than a celebration of independent authors & their work. Amazon's had a love-hate relationship with publishers & authors alike since they first launched in '97. Since they're now the online Wal-Mart, they could eschew selling books & still make a handsome profit (At least Jeff Bezos & his executive brown shirts wouldn't be hurting as layoffs of the proles would be inevitable), their relationship with TPs has been verging more on the hate side & less on the love. From an author/consumer POV, the only good thing about the Penguin-Random merger is that Amazon will have to think twice before axing their catalog as they demand deep-cutting discounts that serve neither publisher nor author. When you corner a quarter of the book publishing market, you're not as vulnerable to intimidation.
But I'm digressing. Amazon obviously is trying to dominate the book market from publishing to distribution to sales & to ultimately wipe out dead tree publishers. They're a corporation. This is what corporations do: Eat their own when it suits them. And the only thing that can stop them are We, the Consumers. Ebooks may be outselling paper books but TP is still a $20 billion a year business. Not everyone's going to buy a Kindle. Many of us still love books because it has enough of a history & an iconic status to be a huge part of human culture the world over.
As for TPs crawling back to indie authors, it's still notable they're interested only in sales & still insist that we have a ready-made, built-in readership and fan base because they're still too lazy to actually cultivate careers & actually drum up demand for their own products. Name me one other industry on earth that refuses to give adequate advertising for 90% of its product then think of how far that would fly in the real world.
This new development strikes me as a classic abuser-abused relationship: "Oh, baby, that wasn't me. I'm so sorry. I'll turn over a new leaf. I swear, I won't use basket accounting & short you on your PR press kit ever again. C'mon, babe, come back to me. We can make beautiful P&Ls together. But make sure you still live under my rules & bring your assets back in with you, m'kay?"
Independent author: "You blew your chance, now blow me for a change."
And after broken promises, orphaned titles, bad advances, shitty royalties, basket accounting dirty tricks, no creative control, bait-and-switch promises of hard cover deals & having doors slammed in our faces for 30 years after insisting we get repped by agents, who can blame us?
What's interesting is that they're directly approaching the most successful indie authors
(Shades of 50 SHADES OF GRAY) instead of waiting for agents to approach them with properties. I think publishers, as stupid & dim-witted as most of them are, are finally beginning to connect the two dots of 90% of their books failing with the 90-95% failure rate of agents trying to place adult fiction. It's not traditional authors who are being endangered, it's literary agents.
Dogma, meet Karma. Squish. Goodbye, dogma.
Problem: the number of successful indie authors are rarer than unicorns and honest Republicans. They're the only ones being sought out by publishers & if & when it comes time to approach midlist indie authors and newbies, they'll jump at an actual publishing contract with alacrity & the whole corrupt process and spousal abuser way of life will begin anew. It'll also put agents not only back on the playing field but between the hashmarks. And we don't need that.
Robert Crawford
https://www.createspace.com/4076183 (American Zen)
https://www.createspace.com/4079937 (The Toy Cop)
http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/ (Kindle in the Wind)
http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind (My Scribd account)
@KindleindaWind on Twitter
Crawman2@yahoo.com
Jurassicpork59 on YIM and Skype"><span class="text"> </span></span><b>5) I'd Only Fuck You With Someone Else's Vagina</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HuHGUIwFl-4/UQLF6gaSAjI/AAAAAAAAAOo/X_CjJ6P6y-A/s1600/handmaidsex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HuHGUIwFl-4/UQLF6gaSAjI/AAAAAAAAAOo/X_CjJ6P6y-A/s400/handmaidsex.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b> </b>Because that's precisely what modern publishing is like: babymaking by proxy. Editors ostensibly want to crawl between the sheets with you to bring your baby into the world but only if they can make it a threesome with an agent. It's kind of like those sex scenes in <i>A Handmaid's Tale</i> where Robert Duvall is fucking Faye Dunaway through their handmaid. Then when the product is stillborn for lack of support or doesn't come out at all, neither Robert
Duvall nor his dowager wife get the rap, you do.
Then you wind up in a plastic bag on Soylent Green Day and sold to the proles while Robert and Faye start womb-shopping again from their gated mansion. OK, maybe I'm mixing my metaphors and sci fi movies but you get the point.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Dealing with an indie author, on the other hand, is often a personal, almost face-to-face process that at least brings some humanity back into this medium of the humanities. With Amazon author profiles, social networking through Facebook and Twitter, email addresses that authors may or may not put on their back covers, readers can directly interact (and even buy through) with authors in ways they still can't with hoity-toity traditional authors and their army of flaks. And if the author is charismatic enough, being able to interact with an author of a quality product may be an added incentive to go through them rather than the impersonal bookseller, publisher or even Amazon (if the author sells through their website or blog).</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Of course, actually reaching those readers is another thing entirely but, unlike before when book readings and signings were the only way to do so, independent publishing over the past decade has made the author, especially the independent one, more theoretically accessible than ever.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-12192892748135916232012-12-30T14:00:00.000-05:002012-12-30T14:11:26.322-05:00You Do Not Need a Literary Agent<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
What follows is a long comment I left at a literary agency's website earlier today. Every once in a great while (like, once every couple of years), I'll go to Janet Reid's website and she usually never fails to satisfy and validate my cynicism of agents in general when she misrepresents her profession, its MO and mouthing pieties she knows we authors want to hear. Note the epigraph I used below, the closing line of a post she'd written early this month.<br />
By way of illustrating exactly what I mean about agents being an unnecessary evil, let me relate a story that had occurred just before Janet Reid wrote that post in which she misrepresents agents and their actual intentions.<br />
Earlier this year, my intermediary exhaust pipe had become disengaged from the muffler. fearing the pipe was corroded and an expensive fix, I decided to continue driving the car until such time as when I had the money to fix. I took it to a mechanic whose boss had taken over the same service station at which I'd worked off and on for eight years and I thought I'd get a fair deal.<br />
Without putting the car on a lift or even a portable hydraulic jack, the disinterested mechanic pronounced the intermediary pipe was corroded and needed to be fixed immediately (although how he could've seen that when I myself couldn't get a good view of the pipe is beyond me). I asked him if he could find a matching pipe from a junk yard and he dismissed that idea out of hand as not being worth his time. He said a new pipe would cost me about $180, without labor, which was exactly $10 more than I had in my wallet. When I told him that, he just walked away as if irritated by my very physical existence.<br />
I drove to the local Auto Zone and explained my situation to a young Hispanic kid behind the counter. He was the honest sort and told me what I needed was a collar, likely a 4" one, that I could slip into the flanges of the intermediary and the muffler. He said Auto Zone didn't carry that kind of stuff and recommended I drive to the local NAPA Auto Parts. In about 45 seconds flat, they found precisely what I needed and the 4" collar and the two clamps that it needed came to $11 and change.<br />
I took it to another mechanic who, even though I'd dropped it off near the end of the day, then put the connecting collar on and my car was silent again. After $40 in labor, the total fix was $51+ and my car was once again inspection-ready.<br />
Now, I tell you this rather uninteresting tale in order to illustrate that just because someone says you need them and need them in a certain capacity, it doesn't make it so. True, I needed a mechanic to do the half hour's worth of work that I could've done had I a jack that would've given me the elevation I needed but $40 flat is a far cry from the $220+ the guy across the street was quoting me.<br />
Literary agents will tell you the same thing over and over and over again. "You need us. You can't get your foot in the door without us. You can't negotiate a contract without us, blah blah blah."<br />
Bull-fucking-shit.<br />
Just remember why literary agents like Janet Reid tell you such bullshit. They have a vested financial interest at stake. Maybe not $80 an hour in automotive repair work, but in their case 15%. 15% of a huge runaway best seller could mean millions down the road for an agency, especially if their client is a coddled, naval-gazing little teeny-bopper like Lena Dunham whose Oberlin-educated opus sells at auction to Random-Penguin for a $3.6 million advance.<br />
Other professionals will tell you the same thing. Plumbers will say, "Don't fiddle with your pipes, let us do it." Contractors will tell you if you want your drywall hung right, let them do it. And in many cases, especially regarding electrical work in your house, they'd be correct. Sometimes you <i>do </i>want an expert to do the job and take the headache away.<br />
But I've done minor plumbing in my house. I've hung sheet rock before and have painted and hung paper and I've learned how to lay down floor tiles and all sorts of contracting skills. I do basic maintenance on my car and, if I had the right jack, I could've clamped that collar on myself. And I certainly know how to negotiate my own contract and query publishers. By extension, if I can learn to do these things, so can you.<br />
<br />
<i>Quit fulminating about gatekeepers. We're not. We're your first step on the road to success, and we're looking for you every single day.</i> - <a href="http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2012/12/thursday-morning-special-at-question.html">Janet Reid</a>, literary agent<br />
<br />
Oh, man, where does one start? And it's not even my birthday. And I know
this stands a Chinaman's chance in hell of getting by the censor but
here goes...<br />
Literary agents aren't gatekeepers?! Are you kidding me, Reid? That's <i>precisely</i>
what you guys are. Or have you forgotten about the scummy, collusive
deal that publishers began striking with your colleagues about 30 years
ago when they decided they didn't feel like doing their jobs, anymore,
and hired you agents out as their unpaid slush pile weeder-outers? The
whole idea was to stop getting so much dreck from authors and wouldbes
and to foist off the job to agents without adding anything to their
overhead expenses. In return, they promised them guaranteed income of
15% or whatever percentage they mutually decided to siphon from authors
by telling them, "Ain't no one not repped by one of you guys is getting
through this front door." But something strange happened "on the road
to success" which neatly dovetails into your insistence on trying to
get us to believe that you're looking for us "every single day" (except
for weekends, holidays, vacations, August, when you're jetting off to
the Frankfurt Book Fair or any number of conventions and fairs):<br />
The
younger agents coming up forgot about that "gentleman's agreement" that
was collusively signed between their predecessors and publishers (while
forgetting to send authors the memo). Some of the veterans of that
bygone day and age when authors actually interacted with their
publishers (such as the aforementioned Binky Urban of ICM) have also
forgotten about said collusive deal. Many agencies, both big and small,
have long since closed their doors to tiresome little doorknockers like
us. Now they work by "referral or invitation only", meaning their new
business model of skeeving perfectly good and publishable authors
depends entirely on serendipity (and where does say just because an
author is referred by another or is invited to submit by an agent
actually has a higher chance of success for both agent and author than
cold-querying?).<br />
If you're a genre author like me, that leaves,
after weeding out the fee-charging agents, those that don't rep fiction
or your particular genre, the scam artists and the ones that have
slammed the door shut to brilliant unpublished authors like me, perhaps a
few dozen agencies to which one can make a calculated pitch.<br />
And
Janet Reid, far from being the agent she presents herself as here, has
imperiously ignored or form rejected through flunkies I'd never
addressed several of my novels.<br />
Literary agencies are set up to
make you fail whether you deserve to or not. Agents look for reasons to
reject you, not to sign you. They're solipsistic, greedy, stupid and
arrogant. It's rapidly getting to the point where the only people who
can get inked to a deal are those who've either made it or those who are
connected. It's turning into an old boy's network.<br /> Folks, you
don't need a literary agent and stop listening to people like Janet Reid
who try to fool you into thinking otherwise. I've reached acquisitions
editors, senior editors and even a publishing executive or two by going
over the transom and just writing out the middle man entirely. And if I
can learn how to get their interest and if I can learn how to negotiate a
contract and what to watch out for, so can you. <br />
I repeat: <i>You don't need a literary agent</i>. They're fast becoming as relevant as buggy whips in the age of POD publishing.
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-60605864160275646572012-12-27T17:58:00.000-05:002012-12-27T17:58:00.079-05:00Goebbels Lives<div style="text-align: center;">
<img height="390" id="il_fi" src="http://img3.joyreactor.com/pics/post/full/funny-pictures-auto-484633.jpeg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="400" /></div>
This just yesterday from the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9738552/Author-backlash-over-Amazons-new-online-review-crackdown.html">Telegraph.uk</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div class="firstPar">
Scores of authors in Britain and across the Atlantic have recently reported
that their reviews have either mysteriously disappeared or were never
published. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div class="firstPar">
Amazon has now admitted that it has introduced a ban on authors leaving
reviews about other people's books in the same genre because they may pose a
“conflict of interest” and cannot be impartial about their rivals. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div class="secondPar">
</div>
<div class="thirdPar">
</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div class="thirdPar">
This means that thriller writers are prevented from commenting on works by
other authors who write similar books.
</div>
</blockquote>
So where does it say you have to remain locked in one genre or another?
I've published novels in two genres (LGBT and suspense). Plus,
differentiating between a self-congratulating review and one that's
legitimately laudatory is still a judgment call and one that I'm sure,
knowing how lazy Amazon is, is being done by algorithms. Do yourself a
favor: Get Amazon out of your life. They're fascist and they treat like
dog shit their own customers, authors, warehouse temp workers and even giant
publishers. All for-profit corporations are inherently evil but Amazon is fast becoming my least favorite one of them all. And, considering Blackwater, Wal-Mart, Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, Monsanto and others, that's saying a fuckuva lot.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-16084759277171377872012-12-13T15:01:00.001-05:002012-12-13T15:01:21.877-05:00Too Big to Fail Everyone But the Little Guys<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6WTgrqt3HGs/UMoi32saZWI/AAAAAAAAAMw/OVrN3SL4QMw/s1600/merger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6WTgrqt3HGs/UMoi32saZWI/AAAAAAAAAMw/OVrN3SL4QMw/s640/merger.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
Those of us who last October had followed the merger of Random House and Penguin's trade divisions, especially those of us who are pragmatic enough to know what mergers inevitably result in, the news wasn't good whether you were a reader/consumer, "real"/indie author or even a literary agent. By the same token, industry professionals, namely executives who directly had a stake in the merger, could be heard all the way from Avenue of the Americas licking their chops and rubbing their hands.<br />
It's not as if we haven't seen the same thing over and over again in Corporate America even in this age of so-called, increasingly elastic antitrust laws. And mergers mean only one thing for the rank and vile: Many people will lose their jobs and their office space getting turned into storage rooms or devoted to digital media.<br />
Screamingly obvious are the reasons this merger that turned the Big 6 into the Big 5 and enabled Random-Penguin to corner about a quarter of the book market, will work to the benefit of that new publishing behemoth's executives and their shareholders. People will get laid off under the guise of making the transition to digital media (although publishers, the most conservative and least agile executives tried for as long as they could to strenuously ignore the digital revolution as staunchly as oil executives today strenuously ignore clean, renewable, alternative energy that will surely need to replace oil). Another piece of good news for them is that their much more muscular bulk will mean Jeff Bezos and his fascist thugs at Amazon will have to think twice before axing their next catalog if they don't get the deep-cutting discounts they're accustomed to demand, and get, from smaller publishers.<br />
Fewer titles in their catalog, less office space to worry about maintaining and fewer people on the payroll is classic, tried-and-true scumbaggery designed to do one thing: Drive up market share, make their shareholders and top executives happy. Approximately 3-5% of a publishing company's revenue goes into publicity and advertising and out of that relatively slender amount, the lion's share of that money will get dedicated more than ever to pimping the books of their proven bestsellers written by people who already have household name recognition.<br />
And that dovetails beautifully into how this will affect agents and authors. Far be it for me to take the side of a largely unnecessary and incompetent faction that's treated me with horrendous disrespect for going on two decades but in this case, I have to play Devil's Advocate here and pluck a violin string or two for literary agents.<br />
Since it's obvious that Random-Penguin will ruthlessly edit more than a few pages from their catalogs and provide authors with fewer publishing opportunities, this inevitably will result in fewer selling opportunities for literary agents as well as having fewer acquisitions editors to whom to send their pitches. Agents, as I'd alluded earlier, already have a dreadful time selling even excellent properties. This, as I'd gone into elsewhere, is largely because they are simply stupid and wouldn't know a true bestseller if it crawled up their fat asses and gave birth to flaming pamphlets. Some agents even admit on their websites, as if they're trying to discourage the unwashed rabble from approaching their forbidding moat, that 90-95% of the adult fiction they take doesn't sell. This is because they are solipsistic and have deluded themselves into thinking they can't sell a book or make at least make an impassioned pitch for a promising property if it doesn't personally tickle their fancy. All too often in form rejection letters I hear about "how subjective the business is." Well, considering how well subjectivity is working for them, I might suggest in my less diplomatic moments that what's called for is some objectivity, since their subjectivity results in a 5-10% sell rate.<br />
Still, there are some decent, hardworking, honest literary agents out there who are legitimately seeking new talent and exciting new properties and who will rep even books they ordinarily wouldn't read or buy. My first literary agent who'd worked at the time for Reece Halsey, was one such example. She hated serial killer novels yet repped my first novel about Jack the Ripper and in the beginning of the submission process had placed it in the hands of the biggest publishers and editors in the business.<br />
Fewer spaces in the catalogs simply means fewer selling opportunities, which in turn neatly seques into how this affects the author.<br />
Starting about a generation ago, publishers decided to stop doing their jobs and to use literary agencies as their free slush pile readers. In return for this added workload, publishers collectively struck a collusive deal with agents without telling authors: "Read the shit we get, wade through the slush pile and we'll make sure not a single author will breach our front door unless they're repped by one of you."<br />
Agencies, now being made official and primary gatekeepers, jumped at this chance with alacrity. The problem with this scenario, aside from the obvious, is that the agents who'd originally struck this scummy deal with equally scummy publishing executives have since retired or died off and the younger agents just coming up are now shrugging off their end of the bargain. Their job, and the original idea was, to keep their doors open to give unrepresented authors a place to go to while publishers concentrated on their market shares and lowering the literacy IQ of the American reading public.<br />
Now all the largest literary agencies (some of them being folded into talent agencies in Hollywood, such as ICM) have long since closed their doors to the unwashed rabble just as publishers had in the late 70's-early 80's and have archly sniffed they now work exclusively by referral or invitation only. You'd have to have 100 pounds of brain damage to think that by that business model of talent recruitment that seems to depend upon blind serendipity your day in the sun will come if you but be patient and wait. As with publishers, the wealthiest and biggest agencies look down their nose at unpublished or independent authors. When you have 100 or more clients and are siphoning 15% of all their royalties, you could easily find yourself wealthier than any of your clients and that kind of pelf buys a lot of hubris. One can practically hear the self-satisfied belch echoing in from Beverly Hills. <br />
Ergo, with no one to hold them accountable, literary agents had long since closed their doors to tiresome little doorknockers and refuse to accumulate the slush piles that publishers had foisted off on them 30 years ago. The smaller agencies, with fewer resources, are telling unrepped authors much the same thing: "We're such a small agency, we have to be VERY selective in who we take on, therefore we regret we're not seeking new talent."<br />
And if you're a genre author, that effectively rules out all but maybe a few dozen literary agencies that represent your genre of fiction, don't charge reading fees and that aren't either too big or too small to put out a welcome mat. And good luck pleading this case to an agency that has no interest in hearing about you drawing breath.<br />
Logically, this in turn brings us to how this will affect the reader/consumer: Obviously, this Random House-Penguin merger, as with all prior publishing mergers in years past, means that you, the reader, will have fewer titles from which to select while they blare more loudly than ever about the latest book by Stephen King, John Grisham or, God save our souls, Stephanie Meyer. As with manufacturing companies in this outsourcing-happy day and age who refuse to hire people they'll need to train, publishers seem to think the "right" authors will live forever and never die and that they can sustain this absurd business model with the same people indefinitely.<br />
In recent years, Michael Crichton, Olivia Goldsmith, Nora Ephron and other bestselling authors proved they, too, are mere mortals. Hell, even Phillip Roth got sick of the rat race and called it quits.<br />
I don't give a shit where this leaves literary agents, who are little more than necessary evils. Their parochial mommy mentalities (many agents won't ever rep anything that places children in danger, which would effectively rule out every other book written by Stephen King and everything by Jonathan Kellerman and Andrew Vachss). But I <i>do</i> care about where this leaves unpublished, unrepresented authors and readers.<br />
So where does that leave the ones that really do matter, the ones who really <i>do</i> define this once-great nation's level of literacy?<br />
Plainly, this untenable and unsustainable business model that would make any pragmatic person shake their head, is largely if not entirely resulting in a self-publishing industry led by Kindle, Nook and CreateSpace. Perfectly good authors (and quite a few wouldbes and wannabes), sick and tired of getting disrespected by idiotic and self-absorbed literary agents and their low-paid flunkies are striking out on their own and leaving out the middle men completely. Without having to worry about forking over to agents 15% of the 7-10% they would get trickled down to them by traditional publishers, independent authors are finding a new, untapped readership through POD and digital publishing.<br />
For no money whatsoever, CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, will print a physical copy of your book and give you near-total creative control over the content and cover, something of which firsttime or midlist authors can only dream. Plus, with Kindle, your royalty rate can be set as high as 70%. Nook is very comparable to Kindle (and, in some aspects, even more attractive).<br />
Media consolidation, if you're a reader or author, has been the bane of our existence since time immemorial. Corporate mergers have only one intent in mind, one goal and elevating the literacy of what used to be one of the most literate nations on the planet has nothing to do with it. Mergers are designed to maximize profits for a select group of shareholders and interested executives and the rest of us, from the workers, authors, readers and agents, have no choice but to somehow deal with and adjust to the inevitable fallout.<br />
Back in the 90's, Borders, Inc, Ingram and German media behemoth <span class="st">Bertelsmann </span>AG attempted to form a super company that would've done more than its fair share to corner the publishing, distribution and selling of books. The deal was scotched at the last minute only when the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, said they would violate existing antitrust laws. But, if the merger between Random House and Penguin, which shrunk the number of traditional book publishers from 6 to 5, is any indication, then we have a lot of mergers to look forward to, especially since the Obama administration like the one before it seems to have no problem with gigantic corporations like Facebook forming near total monopolies.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-17589170331018767742012-12-11T17:15:00.001-05:002012-12-11T17:15:29.760-05:00Acknowledgements When I ordered my first hard copy of <i>The Toy Cop</i> (which, at this writing, is on its way to Vero Beach with my fiancee), I was basically going into it with an attitude of, "I know I should've proofed this book better than I did but being an old-fashioned reader, I much prefer doing so off something that's made of paper." I knew before ordering it that, aside from CreateSpace's fuckups with the formatting (producing about a dozen blank pages), I knew there were other errors to which I had to own up. It's one thing to proof something on a digital viewer or a Word processing program and another thing entirely to proof an honest to God book with a red pen next to you.<br />
One of the first things that hit me when I opened up the book was the rude introduction of the story right off the bat. I guess I should've thought to write an acknowledgements page before uploading the file but since I wasn't deluding myself into thinking it was a real book brought out with a real publisher I also thought inserting one for the two or three people who'd wind up buying and reading it would be pretentious. But on reflection, I guessed it would be ungracious of me not to thank the several people who'd helped bring it into being. Plus, when opening up a book, whether it's produced by Simon & Schuster or a vanity press like CreateSpace, we've come to expect that little buffer, that small handshake or kiss before getting down to business in the prologue or Chapter One.<br />
So, for the one or two people a day who actually read this blog, here's a thoroughly revised version of my acknowledgements that I'd written last weekend for <i>The Toy Cop</i>.<br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Authors are fond of saying their books couldn’t have
possibly been written without the help of this person or that. I suspect most
of the time that’s merely traditional literary courtesy but in this case it
happens to be true. When I began writing this novel in 1998, the sum total of
my knowledge about crisis negotiation was gleaned from Jeffery Deaver’s, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Maiden’s Grave</i>. It’s certainly a
superb thriller, but a badly researched one, as I later learned from Fred
Lanceley, former FBI crisis negotiator who’d been in more hot spots than Ebola
and Hanta virus combined. Fred refused to help me until I assured him I’d be
the first novelist ever to get crisis negotiation right. Through emails,
corrected proofs, his own book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On-Scene
Guide for Crisis Negotiators</i> (of which he’d given me a free copy and which
is now going for almost $60 on Amazon, almost $34 for the Kindle version.), and
a particularly memorable night at his motel room on Cape Cod after he’d given a
seminar, Fred confidently guided me through the fascinating, white knuckle
world of top level crisis negotiation. He wanted to make sure that if anyone in
the business had read this book, they’d say, “This guy knows his stuff.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Former Massachusetts Governor Argeo Paul Cellucci, who
lived down the street from me and whom I regularly met while he was still the
state’s Chief Executive, also advised me on Constitutional points regarding the
death penalty. A former state’s attorney before becoming the acting and then
the elected Governor of the Bay State, Mr. Cellucci’s legal input was
invaluable.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Much research went into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Toy Cop</i>. While I was able to do the requisite study on VX nerve
agent, the events of Waco, Rudy Ridge and the Omagh bombing in Ireland by
myself, some things such as the piloting of helicopters needed direct input and
this is where helicopter pilots George M. Semel, Arthur Jolly and especially
Doug Ashworth came in. As with crisis negotiation, I was completely ignorant
about makes and models of helicopters (not “choppers”), the all-important Jesus
nut, what a high-powered round would do to a helicopter in flight and what exactly
a pilot would do to compensate. Through their tireless help, I’d also learned
the nomenclature that helicopter pilots use in their work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Beethoven’s first drafts were so horrible, those who
can read music are amazed they’d turned into the masterpieces of western
culture they had become. The same is true of many of my first drafts. After I showed
my original prologue to her, PJ Gray author Shirley Kennett (now writing under
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nom de plume</i> Dakota Banks)
essentially rewrote the entire prologue from scratch and I had just revised and
added to it. Without her expert guidance (while yet, somehow, escaping her
seductive creative influence), the novel may not have been set on the right
track on which it had eventually been placed. While she never acknowledged my
game-changing input on her debut novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Perfect Evil</i>, I’ll be bigger than Alex Kava and mention that she, too, had
weighed in on the earlier drafts while awaiting publication.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Charlie Chaplin once sang a beautifully spotless
version of an aria. A friend in attendance said to the great silent film
comedian, “Charlie, I didn’t know you could sing!” “I can’t,” Chaplin replied,
“I was imitating Caruso.” It’s one thing to have a fully-grounded working
knowledge of subject matter and another entirely to merely reproduce a small
percentage of that hard-won knowledge through scrupulous but shortterm,
opportunistic research and literary ability. This is what novelists do, pretend
to know what they’re talking about, and it requires the abovementioned experts in
their own respective fields to ensure my characters give the impression they,
too, know their jobs. My gratitude to these men and women is boundless. Obviously,
any mistakes that remain I own. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-Robert Crawford, December 9, 2012,
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9lM7Q0MCk_4/UMNdkZZGnGI/AAAAAAAAAMY/TGyncteiHXk/s1600/The+Toy+Cop+book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9lM7Q0MCk_4/UMNdkZZGnGI/AAAAAAAAAMY/TGyncteiHXk/s400/The+Toy+Cop+book.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<![endif]--> <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4079937"><i>The Toy Cop</i></a> arrived in the mail yesterday and I half-imagine the poor UPS guy going to his doctor at the end of the day to get a hernia brace. This head-on shot (admittedly, a crappy one as it's blurry and doesn't capture the vividness of the colors I'd chosen) doesn't give you a sense of how large this book is. It would make Tom Clancy or Steig Larsson green with envy not because of its literary merits but because it weighs in at 610 pages. You couldn't run over this thing with a Humvee.<br />
It's one thing to know the exact word count of your manuscript (just over 170,000 words) but another thing entirely to format it for POD publishing and seeing the physical size and heft of the thing when it's finally in your hands. I'd shrunk the font size to 11 dpi (I use a standard 12 on Word) to help reduce the page count. But as I said with <i>American Zen</i>, when you're formatting a book with a substantial word count, there's only so many things you can do to compress it and the much smaller 6x9 trim size I'd selected for TCC forced me to squeeze the margins, hence the high page count. And each full page contains 34 lines, two over the standard 32.<br />
A few things ought to be mentioned. I've said before that virtually all my novels are tied to others in a constant crossover effect. One example is the heroine of this novel, Officer Penny Gallagher, briefly makes an appearance in Chapter One of <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4076183"><i>American Zen</i></a>. This was an 11th hour change not done until two years ago when I was doing the final revision and proofing for the Kindle edition. Penny notices Mike Flannigan, AZ's narrator, is down in the dumps at a Pop Warner banquet and somehow convinced Mike to get on stage and do a Karaoke rendition of his favorite song. This taste of what he used to do is what helps get Mike on the road to look for his old bandmates.<br />
Similarly, when I was doing the final revision and proofing of TCC for its own Kindle edition, I decided to insert Mike Flannigan into that universe, writing for him a fictional article on capital punishment for the <i>New York Times</i>. To date, Flannigan also appears in two of the three Joe Roman thrillers I've started, even having a phone conversation with Roman in <i>The Puppet Children</i>.<br />
As I'd stated before, my dream is to incorporate the main characters of several of my novels, including Penny, Roman and Flannigan, into one massive super novel in the future that would make <i>The Toy Cop</i> look like Strunk and White's <i>Elements of Style</i>.<br />
For now, though, that'll have to remain a distant dream as publishers, thanks to the shrinking goldfish attention spans of the typical American reader, dictate that books above 100,000 words don't sell and they avoid them like Republicans do the NAACP annual conventions.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-40688940049197125232012-12-06T11:09:00.001-05:002012-12-06T11:09:03.106-05:00I Shall Name Thee... David<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JR1bGWyi-mQ/UMCwRlsusBI/AAAAAAAATW8/LsuMVdy0-68/s1600/AZ+cover-pp.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JR1bGWyi-mQ/UMCwRlsusBI/AAAAAAAATW8/LsuMVdy0-68/s400/AZ+cover-pp.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
A couple of days ago,<i> <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4076183">American Zen</a></i>
arrived in the mail. It's a novel on which I'd been working
intermittently since March 18, 2008, although the drafting phase only
took 120 days flat (if only they could <i>all</i> be that easy).<br />
The
CreateSpace folks gave me exactly what I'd sent, proofed and approved
and any faults I completely own. It's a high-quality production with a
nice, glossy cover (albeit at a coffee table-sized 8x10). What I can't
understand is, why didn't I feel the sense of elation that I predicted
I'd feel on seeing one of my novels professionally printed and bound for
the very first time?<br />
Perhaps
it's the fact that CreateSpace, however noble its intention, is
essentially a glorified vanity press, minus the outrageous printing
costs. I know there was no editorial gatekeeping and no hurdles to
overcome aside from the headache of formatting, uploading, proofing,
etc. Any idiot with a pile of words and internet access can publish and
all too many of us prove that every day.<br />
It
wasn't as if I was blase or nonplussed by the book's arrival. I knew it
was mine, I was seeing it ritualized in print and I still feel that <i>American Zen</i>
is my most brilliant sustained literary effort to date. I know it
belongs between covers. It was more like a sense of numbness at seeing
my book in print, one of only two copies thus far extant on the planet earth.<br />
The closest I can come to describing the experience is to refer you all to that scene in Steven Spielberg's <i>AI</i>
in which the husband brings home the robot boy David for the first time
and
his wife reacts coldly to it. He looked like a boy, spoke like a boy and
acted like a boy but the wife knew he wasn't the real thing. That's
what it was like for me. It looked like a book, felt like a book and
read like a book. But I knew it wasn't the real McCoy simply because it
neither validated my existence as a writer nor honestly realized my
ambitions, because no real
editor was involved, no P&amp;L done on it, no real publicity and
advertising behind it, no agent that had sold it. Through no fault of
its own, it's a fraud. It's like that guy you see scuttling from the
bushes in the last 100 yards of a marathon. He crosses the finish line
like everyone else but it doesn't count and everyone knows it.<br />
Maybe
in time I'll come to accept it and, hopefully, those who order it will
feel a greater sense of excitement than had I. But I regret that I can't
share the
elation of others who receive their CS books in the mail for the first
time. I doubt that when I get my second book, <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="https://www.createspace.com/4079937"><i>The Toy Cop</i></a>, the reception will be much warmer.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I6ZjBbRSPdY/UMC0wIBxMDI/AAAAAAAATYI/LiPtyKNDNMI/s1600/AZKindle.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I6ZjBbRSPdY/UMC0wIBxMDI/AAAAAAAATYI/LiPtyKNDNMI/s400/AZKindle.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Here's a mini preview of how it would look on your Kindle in landscape.
All told, the book stands at a trim 358 pages (although there are 46
lines on each page, as opposed to the standard 32. There's only so much
you can compress a 150,000 word manuscript.), which comes out to just
under 2.5¢ per page, which is pretty comparable to "real" paperbacks
that generally have lower word counts. Right now, I'm in the process of
writing a "sell sheet" and learning how to register my novels with mega
distributor Ingram's so I can get it on their catalog.<br />
Now,
I've begun taking some hits ever since I took a sabbatical from
political commentary. My own hit count here has gone down, I'm losing
followers on Twitter by the droves and if I gave a shit about that, I'd
be wringing my hands. It's not as if most people give a damn what I have
to say about anything, anyway.<br />
But <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4076183"><i>American Zen</i></a>
was different, a completely atypical novel for me, and this represents
the best of me and, I'd like to think, the best in all of us as a
species. There are no car chases, no exploding buildings, no serial
killers or body counts, no dark, twisted conspiracies. It's a fairly
simple and straightfoward story of a typical, middle aged guy who's
comfortable and then begins to wonder, as do many of us at that age, "Is
this all there is? Should I have gone in another direction way back
when?"<br />
I know of only one other author who can share my near out-of-body-experience and that's Richard Bach, author of <i>Jonathan Livingston Seagull</i>
(who, ironically, crashed his plane and was nearly killed this past
fall). Bach said right after the book's publication in 1970 that it was
unlike anything he'd ever written. In fact, the genesis for his novella
was even stranger than mine. He reported hearing a loud voice in his
head that shouted, "<span class="st">Jonathan Livingston Seagull!" and the book then took shape.</span><br />
<span class="st">
Well, I didn't hear any disembodied voices in my head, thank goodness,
although I can imagine the voices of each of my characters as vividly as
their physical characteristics. By Day One or Two, I had all the
dramatic spikes lined up and it was merely a matter of writing the
transitional chapters that would come later.</span><br />
<span class="st"> </span><span class="st"><a href="https://www.createspace.com/4076183"><i>American Zen</i></a>
not only is by far the most atypical novel I've ever written, it was
also the easiest to write, revise and the only one written more or less
in chronological order. Despite the fact it was extremely difficult to
hold off from writing the later chapters that I had percolating in my
head for up to four months, the self discipline I used shows, making for
an unforgettable yet believable story. Believe me, I wouldn't be
pimping this book for years unless I thoroughly believed in it.</span><br />
<span class="st">
I never wrote nor will ever write a political blog post I'd ever
want to put between covers and the topical 1660-odd articles I've put up
at Pottersville and here over the last four and a half years will be
forgotten in time. But
I'd like to think this will stand and that it and other books I've
written and am writing now will be my way of saying not only, "I was
here" but "<i>We</i> were here and this is what it was like to be human."</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-737723429581540662012-12-03T22:31:00.001-05:002012-12-03T22:31:47.095-05:00The Toy Cop Comes to Create Space<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2NodwocpG7Q/UL1s2oV1YhI/AAAAAAAAAMI/zzGbtKxmjEs/s1600/toy%2Bcop%2Bcover_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2NodwocpG7Q/UL1s2oV1YhI/AAAAAAAAAMI/zzGbtKxmjEs/s400/toy%2Bcop%2Bcover_sm.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
For some reason, maybe it was the larger trim size I'd chosen, formatting and proofing <i>American Zen</i> was a breeze compared to <i>The Toy Cop</i>. It took a dozen uploads before the margins all around were just right and even after I'd uploaded the final manuscript to Create Space, they still screwed up the chapter breaks. They're higher up than they should be (The Chicago Manual of Style dictates chapter breaks be a third of the page down), which resulted in quite a few blank pages. A panicked call to the help desk proved fruitless.<br />
So I just said, Fuck it and went with the proof they'd given me. Blank pages in a book, to me, are no different than selling a music CD with dead air. But I just got sick and tired of fiddling with the margins and going over every single chapter break to make sure it was exactly 11 spaces down. Bottom line, <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4079937"><i>The Toy Cop</i></a> is finally for sale on Create Space and as with <i>American Zen</i>, I ordered a hard copy for myself.<br />
I realize the unit price is a little more expensive than paperbacks go for but when I have the time and the energy, I'll widen the margins a bit and reduce the page count (presently weighing in at a Tom Clancy-esque 610 pages), which is helping to keep the price at just over $11 with shipping.<br />
But obviously, I think it's well worth the money because not only is it a hell of a story drenched with tension and high concept drama, I'd worked on it for 14 years and the work shows. And I wouldn't have gone through this re-formatting hell if I didn't think it was worth the effort.<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-21993232209310912222012-12-02T11:25:00.001-05:002012-12-02T11:29:51.492-05:00Open Letter to Deidre Knight, Literary Agent<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
What follows is a comment I'd just discovered here at <i>Kindle in the Wind</i> that was written last November 18th by Deidre Knight (I go for months without checking that Gmail account), with whom I'd crossed swords on Twitter last month. Her comment follows in italics and my answer is in regular font:<br />
<br />
<i>Hi, Michael:<br />I sought out your blog, as I wanted to apologize for how
badly our interaction went on Twitter the other day. But first…this
prologue is beautifully written. You have such a unique voice, filled
with verve. Anyway, I know you’re not seeking any praise or whatnot
from me, but I figured I’d mention how much I like and respond to the
quality of your prose that’s reflected in this opening prologue.<br />So,
about Twitter. I am sorry I didn’t see your original inquiry, which
prompted the issue. Twitter was acting up on Thursday and Friday—and
that bled over to tweet deck for me. I was actually locked out during
one of our author chats the day before, and it was still being wonky on
Friday, not allowing me to post regularly, and also not showing all my
mentions. Because of that, when I received your second mention—the one
that said I was a typical #RWNJ, out to “fuck the 99 percent”, I hope
you can understand how taken aback I was. I realize that you may use
that kind of language regularly, but in my daily professional life, to
suddenly have it lobbed at me felt like an assault. So I did, in fact,
block you (and I saw that you subsequently blocked me?) Which is why
I’m here, on your blog, because I wanted to reopen a dialogue and also
to apologize for having offended you.<br />But I did want to set you
straight: you misinterpreted my politics. I’m certainly not far left,
but I’ve taken a political grid test more than once and I always come
out left of center. You wouldn’t agree with my full spectrum of views,
obviously, but I’d like to make sure you don’t have a false impression
of where I stand. I’m very much a gay rights advocate, and have been
extremely vocal to that end on both Twitter and in my own writing. For
instance, Publishers Weekly said of my book BUTTERFLY TATTOO: “Making a
compelling case for bisexuals who make no gender distinctions…” My Gods
of Midnight series (RED FIRE, etc) features a very strong secondary
plotline about the painful ramifications of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I am
truly an independent. I don’t find any party that fully reflects what I
believe right now, and I’m not alone in that fact. Anyway, as for who I
follow—if you noticed, I’d only just followed Drudge and Tammy Bruce in
the past week. That’s why they were among my most recently followed,
along with Oprah and some others. I’d gone through another user’s
followings and clicked on people who I thought might be interesting to
follow for a while. But I also follow a variety of liberal news
sources, as well. <br />In short, to have suddenly been told I was out to
fuck the 99 percent on Friday—when we weren’t even in a conversation at
all—felt like an assault to me. So I blocked you, and there it went.
You can certainly tweet whatever you want about me, but I really didn’t
feel like you gave me any forum for interaction before you pulled the
judgment trigger. Which is a shame because you’re a beautiful writer and
I would have welcomed being professional associates. <br />I wish you
all the best. I don’t expect you to respond, or if you do, it may well
be with derision. Just know I’m wishing you only the best in all of your
endeavors. I mean that. Deidre Knight </i><br />
<br />
First off, the name's Robert. It's an honest enough mistake that others have made. You're probably thinking of my alter ego, Mike Flannigan, the narrator of <i>American Zen</i> and erstwhile contributor of my political blog, <i>Welcome Back to Pottersville</i>. Which neatly dovetails into politics:<br />
<br />
Secondly: From having been a political blogger for close to eight years, I can smell a right winger a mile away. Some things are just screamingly obvious and anyone who seriously entertains Tammy Bruce (who, I guess, as a lesbian would also advocate for LGBT rights, which certainly doesn't make her a liberal) or Matt Drudge (another gay person yet, once again, hardly a liberal) for even a nanosecond proves right then and there they do not respect or recognize the truth. I also read your comments on the Hostess bankruptcy and closing and your opinion seems to be that the unions and workers are to blame for the closing of the company and the loss of 18,500 jobs. This is certainly not true although it doesn't surprise me that someone who follows right wing nut jobs like Drudge and Bruce would believe that. The union was incensed that Hostess would offer them a reduction in pay and up to a 32% reduction in benefits, including the pensions for which some people had worked for over 34 years. Meanwhile, nothing from you or other right wingers on the executives being allowed by a bankruptcy judge to pay themselves $1.8 million in bonuses during their second bankruptcy in eight years and year-long wind-down. I am blue collar through and through and my loyalties and sympathies will always go to the working man and woman.<br />
<br />
Thirdly: It was certainly your right to block me and I guess I did come out of left field (figuratively and politically). But I cannot understand why you would've wanted to engage me in a dialogue and "would've welcomed being professional associates" since you rep a genre of fiction that I loathe and in which I do not write. It's yet another example that contrasts my scrupulousness and sense of professionalism and a literary agent's utter lack of it.<br />
<br />
You hold the distinction of rejecting me faster than any other agent in four countries and three continents: In three minutes flat last year, you'd rejected my book, saying you rep only romance fiction. Once again, that is your right (although I think a literary agent that reps only what gets them wet is, once again extremely unprofessional and narrowminded). Yet you railroaded me and made me waste my time because you didn't update your website to inform writers such as myself that you rep only romance.<br />
<br />
Fourthly: Your apparent withdrawal of literary representation (and, I reiterate, I do not write romance, read it nor respect it) is fallacious. You assume that I would ever be interested in you or any other agent. I have no mss in the swim at agencies nor am actively soliciting the indifferent attention of those of your ilk and profession. And I stand on firm ground when I say that your so-called profession, made artificially indispensable by cheap and lazy publishing houses, has done more to tank this nation's literary IQ than perhaps any single industry.<br />
<br />
You're right about one thing: I <i>do</i> have a beautiful voice, one cultivated over years through ceaseless work, trial and error and doing so mainly in a vacuum. Thanks for being that honest. Yet this same prologue that you'd rightly praised had been passed over, ignored and rejected by every single literary agent that had seen it. I am tired of the blatant disrespect to my work despite my research, appropriate submissions and obeying guidelines to the letter. This is why I am not seeking an agent and have published <i>The Toy Cop </i>and<i> American Zen</i> on Create Space and Kindle. You and other middlemen like you have been completely written out of the equation. I am sick and tired of getting treated like the 98% who DO deserve form rejection letters from flunkies I'd never written because the agent to whom I HAD written didn't think it worth the five seconds it would've taken to disrespect me and my brilliant work.<br />
<br />
Having said that, allow me to close by passing on to you something I invariably hear from boilerplate form rejection letters by thanking you for your interest in me and good luck in your future endeavors, yada yada yada...</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-42307494079588078752012-12-01T16:00:00.002-05:002012-12-01T16:00:22.636-05:00American Zen on CreateSpace<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H36IcRg4Ka0/ULeKUTLr3CI/AAAAAAAATUk/PZ6wms7vx_U/s1600/American+Zen+cover.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="282" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H36IcRg4Ka0/ULeKUTLr3CI/AAAAAAAATUk/PZ6wms7vx_U/s400/American+Zen+cover.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
I'm sorry I haven't been screaming my fool head off of late on matters
political and social. I've been busy setting up my dedicated book blog <a href="http://kindleindawind.blogspot.com/">Kindle in the Wind</a>, reuploading a lot of files on my <a href="http://www.scribd.com/KindleintheWind">new Scribd account</a>.
And for the last 24 hours or so, in between my neverending job search, I
was busy reformatting, uploading, designing and proofing the Create
Space edition of <i><a href="https://www.createspace.com/4076183">American Zen</a></i>.
The templates they give you largely suck and doesn't allow me to use
the cover done by my soul sister Alicia Morgan two and a half years ago
but when CreateSpace offers to give you a physical copy of your book as a
freebie, you don't say no.<br />
The cover above is what I decided
to run with for now until such time I can afford to pay CreateSpace's
cover art team to redo it according to my exact specifications (click on
the cover for a full-scale image). <i>American Zen</i> was originally a
421 page Word file but on account of the reformatting and the trim size
I'd chosen, I had to narrow the gutter and outside margins so you'd
think the page count would be larger. But on account of the limited
options for trim size, I had to go with a Reader's Digest-sized 7x10
inches, meaning each full page has 43 lines instead of the standard 32.
This means <i>American Zen</i> is now at a trimmer 358 pages.<br />
It goes for $5.14, just a few cents more than the Kindle version
($4.99) but the shipping and handling is over three bucks, meaning a
copy of <i>American Zen</i> goes for $8.57, the lowest price they would
allow me to set. The royalty rate, for POD publishing, is a joke, at
about 20%. But I'd ordered a physical copy for myself after I'd proofed
the galley and I'll be posting a picture of the physical book when it
arrives next month.<br />
Please give it a looksee (I'm
transferring the CreateSpace edition to Kindle as I write this but the
first few chapters of the Kindle version can be downloaded for free and
you don't even need a Kindle. Just click on the image on its <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B004D9FUZ4">product page</a>.).<br />
Interesting trivia: When the template I'd chosen demanded an author
photo, I panicked. It would've looked borderline antisocial if I'd gone
with an avatar of something else like I do on Twitter and elsewhere. But
since I look every nanosecond my age and am now about as photogenic as
southern roadkill, I didn't know what to do until Mrs. JP sent me from
her cell phone a picture she'd taken of me at the Stewart/Colbert Fear
Rally in Washington DC two years ago.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-2882678614916212802012-11-22T10:05:00.002-05:002012-11-22T10:05:11.598-05:00Thanksgiving, 2008<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zQ5NRAe8DgI/UK4zikbWr9I/AAAAAAAATO4/xkeeCt29MJ8/s1600/American-Zen+guitar.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zQ5NRAe8DgI/UK4zikbWr9I/AAAAAAAATO4/xkeeCt29MJ8/s320/American-Zen+guitar.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="font-size: small;">Dateline: Provincetown, Massachusetts, November 25, 2008</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;">
Just weeks ago, Barack Obama had been elected the 44th president of the
United States, yet liberal journalist Mike Flannigan is the only </span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;">political pundit in America not writing about it. In fact, while his colleagues are exhaustively writing about every minutia </span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;">of
the historic election, Mike takes an ill-advised and deeply unpopular
leave of absence from his magazine to go on an epic road trip up and
down the upper east coast. Why?</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;">
What was supposed to be an overnight trip began when he gets a cryptic
email from his childhood friend, former bandmate and one-time lover
Josiah (JoJo) Vandermeer. It's the first time he hears from him in years
and the email reads only, "Let's get the guys together." Fearing the
worst, Mike leaves his family and asks his editor-in-chief Ari Goldstein
to see his old friend and perhaps reunite with his old band, the
Immortals. There are questions surrounding the promising hard rock
band's abrupt breakup back in 1978 that never sat well with the other
band members.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;">
But while the group of middle-aged men get some answers and some of
their old musical mojo back, Jo Jo suddenly dies on the road. This
excerpt from chapter 44 of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B004D9FUZ4"><i>American Zen</i></a>
starts at Jo Jo's grave after the funeral and his husband, Jeremy
Fleming, fearing being alone for the first time in years, invites Mike,
Billy and Rob to share Thanksgiving dinner with him. During this
chapter, Mike realizes what he should be grateful for and that, despite
pressure from his editor and wife and kids to come home during a
perpetually extended sabbatical, he actually has more to be thankful for
than the other three men who have suffered even more devastating
losses. They sit down to eat a dinner that was prepped by Jo Jo just
days before his death, his final gift to his husband and friends.</span></div>
<hr />
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> The service was brief and uneventful,
although far from forgettable. Rob and I took photos with our cell phones and I
emailed one to Doris with a brief expression of love and a promise to be home
by tonight.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> My
heart sank with Jo Jo as they lowered him into the rectangular grave. The
three of us hung back, allowing Jeremy to throw the first handful of dirt onto
the coffin lid six feet below. As I threw my own in, I realized with a start
that the minute we turned our backs, Jo Jo would be swallowed up by the earth,
hardly a trace of his existence allowed to remain besides our fragile living
memory.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> As
we were wiping dirt from our hands, Jeremy asked us at graveside, “I think it
would be very nice if you were to join me for Thanksgiving dinner. There won’t
be a reception because I didn’t want to have one and, besides, it’s
Thanksgiving. But I’d be honored if you would join me.”</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> It
suddenly occurred to me that Jo Jo had prepared dinner just before we left for
New York State. “No, the honor would be all ours,” I said, knowing the other
guys would feel the same way.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> Back
in the apartment, we immediately shed our jackets and inhaled the rich aroma of
the turkey. The only thing that Jeremy had to do was pop the bird in the oven
just before we went to the funeral home. Jo Jo had done all the prep work.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> Jeremy
slipped on an oven mitt, pulled down the oven door and tore off a piece of
turkey skin. It crunched lightly in his mouth. “Mm, perfect. I’m famished. I
hope you guys are, too,” he said as he turned off the oven.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> Surprisingly,
I was, despite my little accident at the funeral home garage. Remembering that,
I decided to brush my teeth after I washed my hands for dinner.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> Rob
and Billy were only too happy to help Jeremy clear and set the table. After
all, what else did these men have but each other? Rob’s marriage hit an
iceberg, Billy I’m sure lived totally alone and Jeremy just buried his husband.
And me…</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> And
me? </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> Epiphany
sometimes sneaks up on you and taps you on the shoulder, clearing its throat
and politely saying, “Uh, excuse me?” And sometimes it hits you from behind
like a mugger with a blackjack (or a suicidal ex-SEAL), giving no regard for
timing or the rudeness of its appearance. This moment was one of the latter.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> Yes,
what about me? Why did I have to be here? Well, respect for Jo Jo and his
efforts would be a good reason but why was I here instead of hightailing it
home to eat Thanksgiving dinner with my own family? That was the point.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> I
<i>didn’t</i> have to be here. It was a lesson, a fact that I should’ve always
taken for granted. I didn’t have to be here. It was purely a matter of choice
because I wanted to show Jeremy and Jo Jo the proper respect, because I didn’t
want him to be alone. I didn’t want Rob to be alone. I didn’t want Billy to be
alone. I had a choice. They didn’t.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> I
had a choice because I really did have a loving, supportive, compassionate wife
and three kids anxious about my absence. I had a good career doing something I
loved to do. I was the luckiest bastard among all of us, if not the luckiest
bastard on earth. I <i>didn’t</i> have to be here. I wasn’t that desperate to
stave off loneliness.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> Jeremy
seemed like a changed man. Obviously, some of it was an act, a conscious, maybe
a desperate attempt to liven up the place, to establish some holiday spirit
into the apartment. Far from being the merry widower, now that he was finally
freed of over 90 days of crushing fear and oppression fretting and worrying
over Jo Jo, he could almost be said to have a spring in his step as he hustled
back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room table with steaming
chafing dishes of food.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> He
seemed to bow then quickly threw his head back, gathering with his hands his
glistening, bouncy mass of brown hair and pulling it back into a perfect high
and tight ponytail very much like the one Jo Jo wore when he was doing the prep
work. He then wiped the sweat off his brow with his linen napkin before
announcing, “We have food, gentlemen!” Billy loudly clapped his hands together
and was first at the table, Rob just a half step behind. I wasn’t sure if they
knew that Jo Jo had done all the prep work.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> Jeremy
sat to the right of me and took my right hand as he bowed his head. I didn’t
realize that he was into religion. He didn’t even go to the church with us last
Sunday but he wanted to say grace, so I took Billy’s right hand in my left and
so forth and we bowed our heads, our eight hands linked.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> “I
think we all ought to thank Jo Jo for giving us this delicious food that we’re
all about to receive. He did all the work. All I did was throw the turkey in
the oven and pray I wouldn’t burn it.” He smiled and continued. “And this
dinner, made with his own two hands, is in a way a perfect illustration of the
kind of life he led. He was always thinking about others first until he was
finally forced to think of himself.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> “But
even then, I’d also like to think that, in his rare moment of selfishness, if
you can call it that, we all benefited from the journey that we’d been
privileged to share with him. We all benefited enormously from having known and
loved him and that’s what <i>I’m</i> grateful for.” “Amen,” he added as an
afterthought. I squeezed Jeremy’s left hand and smiled. He really said it for
all of us.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: small;">“Now,
who wants dark meat and who wants light meat?”</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-80088077340312884542012-11-21T11:28:00.002-05:002012-11-21T11:33:47.290-05:00Chernobyl Dreams: Prologue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0EF_GDdNjwY/UKz2RrIfIYI/AAAAAAAAALU/77YYZbFfiio/s1600/kiddoofspeed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0EF_GDdNjwY/UKz2RrIfIYI/AAAAAAAAALU/77YYZbFfiio/s400/kiddoofspeed.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
Some of you may know of Elena
Filatova, the Russian girl who, at least until two years ago when the
dispatches suddenly stopped, rode her motorcycle (pictured above with the
ominously ironic KIA on the plate) into Chernobyl and Pripyat every year.
During these dangerous and lonely trips, she'd bring her digital camera to
document the decrepitude of both cities and put them on her original Angelfire
blog.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
The spirit of this girl, and the
personality that shines through in spite of the nearly-unemotional clinical
detachment in her running commentary, fascinated me so much that one day a few
years ago I wrote a prologue featuring a fictionalized version of her and put
it away. Picking it up a few months later, I decided this would be a great way
to start an installment of my then-nascent Joe Roman series. By this time, the
late Stieg Larsson's <i>Millenium</i> trilogy and its unforgettable
anti-heroine Lisbeth Salander took the literary world by storm. And just as a
grown-up Pippi Longstocking was Larsson's inspiration for Salander, a gentler,
more romantic Salander became my template for Valentina Zolatovsky, or Val Zola
for short.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
If you've seen the B horror movie <i>Chernobyl
Diaries</i>, then you'll have a pretty fair idea of what Pripyat and Chernobyl
looks like over a quarter of a century after the disaster. But this prologue
for what would become <i>Chernobyl Dreams </i>was written years before <i>Chernobyl
Diaries </i>was filmed<i>. </i>When I put this up on Scribd about two years
ago, it had gotten more of a reaction and more reads by far than anything else
I'd put up. <i>Chernobyl Dreams</i> is to be the third installment of the Joe
Roman series, one that sends him back to a Russia he'd fled twenty years before
when his NYPD mentor and best friend gets shot under mysterious circumstances.</div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: BodegaSansMediumOS; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Prologue</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Russian girl throttling the Kawasaki Ninja knew that to veer off the road was
pure death.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
was literally true no less so than it is for sharks needing to stay in
perpetual motion to remain alive. To veer off either side was literally to die
for because asphalt does not absorb radiation. The scrub brush on either side
of the deserted highway to Chernobyl
was a different matter: It was steeped in it. But figuratively, the necessity
of remaining on the road was no less real.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Just
23, Valentina Zolatovsky, Val Zola to her few intimates, made the frightful
trek once a year. She would quickly learn to do it during the brief Ukrainian
summer so as to avoid as best she could a toxic snowfall.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since
age 18, Val had faithfully gotten on her aging rice burner, Geiger counter and
dosimeter in tow, to document on her digital camera what few had the courage
these past 25 years to even contemplate: The uninterrupted disintegration of a
major Russian city due to the fallout of Man’s arrogant stupidity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Virtually
the only people she’d see in this part of the Ukraine were young army sentries
at the two dozen checkpoints. Every year, at least one leering guard would look
at the shapely girl in black leather and try to con her into stripping to take
a chemical shower. She’d always avoid such a needless intrusion of her privacy
by tartly wondering, for instance, how they’d fucked up to get such a shitty
post. For the first time that didn’t work, she’d have in a leather saddlebag an
additional deterrent in the form of a sawed-off 12 gauge Mossberg.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>More
often than not, the bored and lonely guard would ask the girl with two or three
extra pounds packed in her leather pants why she was out here by herself. Their
rotation would not permit personal familiarity much less recognizance but word
spread from one checkpoint to another about the brave or stupid girl on the
Kawasaki that drove every year into the most dangerous No Man’s Land on earth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since
she chose to eschew even a nodding acquaintance with even the friendliest ones,
she likewise didn’t wish to share her motives other than to say she was
documenting Chernobyl
and the surrounding area for her blog. This was true but it didn’t explain her
impetus.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Val
Zola’s grandfather Sergei was one of the thousands of firefighters and soldiers
who were sent straight to their deaths. The Soviet government of Gorbachev lied
to these men even as they signed their death warrants and ordered them in
without proper training or PPE. Rushing toward reactor four wearing nothing but
their normal gear, the dying wave of humanity knew precisely what hit them.
They were just never told how deadly the fallout truly was. 30 men had died in
the first few weeks and Grandfather Sergei was one of them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He’d
died mere days before his daughter Olga discovered she was carrying her first
child. From childhood on, Val felt as if she owed it to him to confront the
imperfectly-muzzled monster that had claimed his life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
plight of the Russian firefighters marched to their doom would remind her of
the 343 firemen killed on 9/11. They, too, were unaware of the true scope of
the danger and almost all of them perished when the towers fell with them still
in them trying to rescue the employees.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Those
who’d hastily erected the already crumbling cement sarcophagus over reactor
four were among the first to perish, including the chopper pilots who had
lowered the blocks in place. Even their height and the downwash of the rotors
couldn’t save them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
guards at the checkpoint weren’t the only people Val Zola would see in her
annual pilgrimage. Once in a while she would pass an elderly couple in a wagon
pulled by a sad-looking draft horse. They were the stubborn 300 remaining of a
village of 3500 who, well into middle age by the time Chernobyl melted down, had intractably
insisted on remaining on their ancestral farmlands. After forcibly evicting
them, the Soviet government shrugged its broad shoulders and figured it was
easier to leave them for dead than to argue with them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
the peasants refused to die and still refuse to this day. They were almost the
perfect living embodiment of <i><span style="font-style: normal;">Nietzsche’s
maxim, “Whatever does not destroy me makes me stronger.” Their meager harvests
were irradiated because the soil was and they knew it. But not only did the
gamma and X-rays not kill them, they’d acclimated themselves to it just as
their hardy forebears adjusted to climatic and political change. In a way, they
were immortal.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Val’s musings on immortality put her
in mind of a landmark she’d passed about back at the 86<sup>th</sup> kilometer
marker. It was a giant stone egg, imported from Germany. She supposed it symbolized
the never ending cycle of life, the eternal promise of renewal. It was an odd
place to put such a monument, at one of the least populated and deadliest spots
on earth this side of the Arctic. It sat in
the middle of a killed field, the soil too toxic even for the most insistent scrub
brush normally peculiar to the Ukraine.
It might as well have been a 65,000,000 year-old dinosaur egg unearthed by
paleontologists. In light of its bleak venue, the ovoid monument was more like
a cenotaph to life: A memorial to something that now no longer existed in the
area.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Presently, her Kawasaki took her to the outskirts of the
real victim of the meltdown: The city of Pripyat.
Chernobyl was
only marginally involved in the disaster like Woodstock was only marginally involved in the
festival named after it.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pripyat was the thriving Pompeiian city
from which many of the reactor’s scientists, engineers and technicians came.
Through old clippings from </span>Pravda</i><i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
microfiche and reproduced articles on the internet, Val had read everything she
could about that day. Ignorant of the enormity of the danger, the people of
Pripyat stood atop the roofs of their large apartment buildings even as the
first bright clouds of fallout were beginning their fatal sweep.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Valentina killed the throttle of the
motorbike as she approached what was Pripyat’s year-round amusement park. Its
giant Ferris wheel stood idle as if an expensive plaything left abandoned by
the child of a god or giant. Lovers, Val imagined, young men and women feeling
spring enliven their blood, their hormones responding to the promise of love,
held hands and kissed in these now rusty cars.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On a previous visit, Val had walked
into one of the long-vacated apartments. Behind the front door was a fishing
rod and, on the wall to its left, a 1986 calendar with April 30<sup>th</sup> circled
in faded red ink. The apartment had obviously been rented by a man, typically
someone who’d worked at Chernobyl.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Elsewhere, Val would see evidence of
the paralyzed plans made by good Soviets for the annual Labor Day celebration
on May Day. Now in Pripyat’s kindergarten, she saw more signs of the
never-arrived festivities and the long-forgotten Soviet propaganda that went
hand in hand.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A warm dry wind stirred sun-bleached
leaflets with pictures of famous and not so famous Soviet leaders and heroes.
Now stripped of its once mandatory relevance, the propaganda had met the same
fate as the Ferris wheel, fishing rod and every hearth and home in Pripyat. It
was as if Chernobyl
was the sleeping si</span></i>ckness that would spread and kill off the ailing
giant that was the Soviet Union. In a little
over three years the once proud superpower of Eastern
Europe would begin losing territories like a leper shedding
extremities.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Val
was careful to only walk into buildings in which the windows and doors were
left open. Edifices are tailor-made for trapping radiation and, knowing this,
the evacuated citizenry and the Red Army made opening the windows and doors
their final order of business before their delayed but hasty exodus.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
she was about to pass through the school’s front walkway, Val then locked eyes
with a wolf. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
She’d heard
stories of the local fauna hideously mutated by the radiation warping their
genes. Zoologists for the most part dismissed these as lies, hoaxes or rumors.
But it would be fallacious to assume that so much radiation spewed out over a
quarter century wouldn’t play havoc with the genetic code of every living
thing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Val knew of an
American cardiologist who made his own annual pilgrimage to the area to perform
free surgery on children throughout the Ukraine. The genetic deformities
most often seen were atrial septal defects or holes in their hearts and thyroid
cancer. But Val Zola saw on that same documentary horrific abnormalities such
as a toddler whose brain grew outside of her skull and was protected only by a
sack of skin.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Why should the
fearless animals, to whom Man was a stranger, be any different?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Consistent with
what she’d read and seen with her own eyes in years past, the wolf, a large,
gray male with a head the size of a watermelon, looked nonplussed at her abrupt
appearance. Since their top predator, Man, was only a rare interloper, they
hadn’t cultivated any fear of humans. Only the smaller species of birds took
flight at her presence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-style: normal;">The wolf’s mouth was distinguished by some hanging,
bloody skin tissue and Val didn’t know if was the aftermath of a kill, an
injury or a geneti</span></i>c deformity. It didn’t matter at the time because
the lupine predator stood between her and the Kawasaki Ninja carrying her
sawed-off 12 gauge.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Both woman and
wolf locked eyes in a moment as frozen as the entire city of Pripyat. Then the large animal licked its
bloody chops, turned to its right and loped away. Val quietly but deeply
inhaled before getting back on her bike.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
The next stop was
the local fire department. In the first hours after the meltdown of April 26<sup>th</sup>
1986, the local firemen were the first responders, the ones who’d arrived in
advance of the 650,000 “liquidators”. As with the firefighters, policemen,
soldiers and helicopter pilots, the “liquidators” were issued inadequate
personal protective equipment, training or an adequate briefing on the dangers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
They were hurled
into the mouth of an invisible beast they’d never fought before, a neutron bomb
detonating for 48,000 years that left the buildings intact but leaving no one
alive. Many going into the 3000-30,000 roentgen inferno were fried on the spot.
400-500 roentgens over five hours is fatal to humans (ironically, roaches can
tolerate up to 100 times that much).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
And the emergency
personnel never really knew what hit them because the meltdown was still a
state secret. In fact, the people of Kiev were ordered to continue with the
Labor Day celebrations until they, too, began dropping from radiation sickness
a full week after the meltdown. Even the people of neighboring Pripyat weren’t
evacuated until two days after the beautiful, shiny cloud had blown into the
city like a deadly amoeba. The Soviet government of Gorbachev’s glastnost
wouldn’t even admit there was an accident until Swedish nuclear reactor workers
were found to have radiation on their shoes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
30,000-40,000
people died either directly or indirectly because of the fallout. The
government’s official death toll was an absurd 300.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Val’s grandfather and
29 others had been among the very first to fall. In keeping with protocol and
common sense, the bay doors were left wide open. Many, many firemen never made
it back and neither did their engines.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Large vehi</span></i>cles such as
fire trucks are typically the most radioactive objects in the region.
Instinctively, she glanced at her Geiger counter. Even standing 50-60 feet from
one fire engine (amazingly, even after 24 years, the tires were still
inflated), she was getting a reading of 763 microroentgens or about three
quarters of a milliroentgen, which is 1/1000<sup>th</sup> of a roentgen. It was
actually a minor exposure (a typical baseline city reading is anywhere from
10-16 microroentgens) but as Val was wearing no PPE, she didn’t wish to take
any unnecessary chances.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Besides,
she knew that with every step she’d take toward the engine, the microroentgens
would very quickly spike into milliroentgen territory and the greater danger
would be not to her but her new digital camera. Radiation plays hell with hard
drives.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
got out her Canon Powershot SX20 and squared it as she began taking pictures of
the engine and the plain cinder<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">blo</span>c<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">k firehouse just adja</span>cent. From
virtually any angle and at her distance, it was impossible to see inside the
engine. But Val gave it no thought-After all these years, who or what could
still be inside?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
moved on and took some more pictures of Reactor Four that so quickly killed her
grandfather while keeping a very respectable distance (from even a kilometer
away, the fallout leaking from the crumbling sarcophagus measured several
hundred microroentgens or almost a full milliroentgen). She’d been here enough
times to know and had been warned by her scientist father who’d gotten for her
the government permit that got her this far that if she were to walk right up
to number four, she’d glow in the dark like the magic trees and would be dead
in a week or two.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Calling
it a day, Val Zola mounted her Ninja and sped away from the Chernobyl reactor, through the necropolis of
Pripyat, past the peasant village, past the egg and all the way back to the
Ukrainian capital of Kiev.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Once
in her studio apartment, she set right to work uploading her captured images to
her computer’s hard drive. She minutely examined every image, sometimes
comparing them to older ones with identical subjects to see what changes had
occurred.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At
first, she didn’t see any changes out of the ordinary. The usual rate of
disintegration, the flora’s shy but inexorable encroachment on manmade
structures and vehicles. Then Val observed the pictures she’d taken of the fire
engine. As when she was looking right at it, the reflection of the trees and
buildings confounded any view of the truck’s interior. But she noted a circular
white object against the driver side window.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
glass was spider-webbed from some impact but she couldn’t tell either then or
now if it was struck from within or without. She zoomed in on the picture that
offered the best view of the round, white object. Using her photography
software’s enhancement tools, she cleaned up the pixilation as best she could
to no avail. There weren’t any details out of which she could divine any sense.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Val
Zola then played a hunch and decided to blow up and enhance the only picture
she’d taken of the front of the engine. Then horror dawned on her, neurological
lightning charging the top of her head.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There,
in the front of the white, round object, were two barely discernible black
holes and, between and below them, another. And, beneath the roughly
triangular-shaped hole, what looked like teeth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
human skull.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Below
the skull that rest against the driver side window was the suggestion of a tie
and around it, what appeared to be a dark suit. She blew up and enhanced the
image taken from the passenger side window and could barely see through the
reflection of the fire station on the window what could be interpreted as a
bullet hole in the side of the skull.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Whoever
had died in that fire engine wasn’t a fireman and he certainly didn’t die from
radioactive fallout. Like 99% of us, Val Zola’s first instinct was to alert the
authorities. But this was the most radioactive place on earth, a region that
would remain uninhabitable for, best case scenario, 300 years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Who
would investigate it?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
was perhaps a short term mercy that Valentina Zolatovsky couldn’t see in the picture
of the engine’s passenger side another reflection, this one coming from behind
the fire station.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
would’ve seen another man in a coat, looking right at her.</div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-69669977110215038522012-11-17T16:16:00.001-05:002012-11-17T16:16:39.902-05:00The Toy Cop prologue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: red; font-family: ToyBoxBlocks; font-size: 24.0pt; line-height: 150%;">P</span><span style="color: #4f81bd; font-family: ToyBoxBlocks; font-size: 24.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-themecolor: accent1;">R</span><span style="color: #ffc000; font-family: ToyBoxBlocks; font-size: 24.0pt; line-height: 150%;">O</span><span style="font-family: ToyBoxBlocks; font-size: 24.0pt; line-height: 150%;">L<span style="color: #0f243e; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;">O</span><span style="color: #9bbb59; mso-themecolor: accent3;">G</span><span style="color: #f79646; mso-themecolor: accent6;">U</span><span style="color: #c00000;">E</span><span style="color: #d99594; mso-themecolor: accent2; mso-themetint: 153;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">(<i>Highway 36, Tooele, Utah, five years ago</i>)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b><i><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i></b><span style="font-family: ToyBoxBlocks; font-size: 24.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">A</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> desert carpeted with caskets.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If Jigsaw
Hannigan had any literary or poetic pretensions, that’s how he would’ve likened
it. Actually, the caskets were the countless storage magazines, or igloos, that
spouted outside the main gate of the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility
just off Utah Highway 36. Even more arresting was the mountain range many miles
beyond that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sacrifices
to Echtghe, the Irish Mountain goddess, worshipped by his blue-faced ancestors
who ran howling through the woods of ancient Hibernia.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Timothy
“Jigsaw” Hannigan, his brother Seamus, O’Leary, Ditch and Brigit were camped
out on Highway 36 between the Tooele facility and the Dugway Proving Grounds.
In spite of the chill of the approaching night, moist half-moons had formed
under Jigsaw’s arms and his blue denim shirt dug into his armpits. The black
road unspooled into the mountains like errant videotape and Jigsaw looked down
it for headlights before thumbing the talk button of his walkie-talkie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“All clear
on Victor Xavier.” Translation: No sign of the transport.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Keep your
eyes peeled, Jig.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>Yeah, no
shit. Why d’ye think I’m freezing me stones off in this Godforsaken wasteland?</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sitting
uncomfortably on the undercarriage of a ’92 Mercury <i>Sable</i>, Jigsaw lit a
Woodbine cigarette and looked for his brother Seamus, who was camped with the
rest behind a rare and handy dune beside the road. The tan tarp over the 25-foot
lorry also camouflaged them from the eventually oncoming Army semi. The plan
was disturbingly simple, bordering on the simple-minded. In fact, Jigsaw had
almost accused his sibling of cribbing the harebrained scheme from any of three
dozen cheap American action movies. Fake an engine failure, make skid marks
across the highway, then flag down the driver as they approached the stolen car
that they’d deliberately overturned. The only thing missing was Scarlett
Johansen flashing her thighs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He let his
mind play with that visual for a minute as he sat watching the necrotic sky
deepen from purple to black, enjoying what might be his last smoke.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Seamus had
promised that once the truck had halted they didn’t need the drivers to get
out, which was probably a violation of their protocol, anyway. All they needed
were clean head shots from the dunes. Jigsaw would’ve preferred tranqs but he
was sure that the windows would remain rolled up and bullets would penetrate
much better than darts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All in all,
Jigsaw would rather be building fieldstone walls in their hometown of Belfast.
Even while fighting shoulder to shoulder with his brother against the loyalist
forces, his real heart lie in masonry. There was something deeply satisfying in
the puzzle-like nature of the oldest form of that profession, in fitting the
right stones in the right places and making an even, flat surface with
capstones. He never used mortar. Mortar was for idiots who weren’t possessed of
the abilities or the patience to jigsaw the proper stones together. And, to his
jigsaw mind, this plan stank worse than month-old haggis. Seamus hadn’t seemed
to take into account the soldiers inside the transport might immediately draw
their guns or at least think it suspicious that a civilian vehicle was on a
highway used primarily, if not exclusively, by the U.S. Army Materiel Command.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jigsaw
ground his cigarette into the asphalt and checked the highway again. He
pictured the transport moving through the night, the light from its headlamps
splashing the desert road, its Army occupants talking about baseball, their
last sexual conquest, anything but the load of chemical nerve agent named VX
riding ten feet off their asses. VX killed in fifteen minutes and all it took
was a little blob the size of a quarter to knock off a man. It stayed deadly in
open air for a week. A smear on a leaf was all that was needed to spread it.
The locals were nervous about the outdated munitions heading to Tooele for
incineration since over 6000 sheep had been accidentally killed by VX in 1968.
It was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation when you considered
the alternative. The VX had to be moved. It was contained in outdated munitions
that had to be handled by civilian safety engineers or qualified Army hazmat
teams wearing moon suits.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There wasn’t
much chance of mistaking for a civilian vehicle the transport that would be
carrying the nerve agents. This particular highway had been all but reserved
for use by the Army on their various milk runs. However, his brother had found
that in order to not call attention to their payload, the semi wouldn’t be
accompanied by MP jeeps. According to the disposal schedule, the warheads
should be coming down the road any minute.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jigsaw
thought about using the walkie-talkie again but caught himself. There was
nothing to report but the sound of the night life of the desert beginning to
stir. He knew what Seamus would say if any doubts were voiced. Instead, he
focused on a tiny moving object that just caught his eye. The lizard skittered
across 36 then froze perfectly, its mouth wide open. Even in the deepening
gloom, Jigsaw could see that the lizard’s claws were gripping the tarmac as if
preparing to be dislodged by some irresistible force. This reminded him of a
poem he’d read in middle school by a Yank who’d written about a lizard at a
nuclear bomb-testing site but he couldn’t recall the poet’s name. Did the
lizard sense something in the wind that even Seamus couldn’t?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Not to worry,
he’d say. And he’d say it again for emphasis. Mum always half-seriously
considered Seamus the idiot of the two while they were growing up in Belfast.
Timothy was astounded that the two of them shared the same DNA.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>Yeah an’
who’s the idiot now? It’s me in the line of fire with fake blood on my forehead
like it’s fuckin’ Halloween while Seamus is safe behind the dunes.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Earlier,
Jigsaw had taken his Glock 25 and bashed the inside of the windshield to
simulate a head trauma. If Seamus had any other reason for pulling off this
stunt than the one he had, Jigsaw would’ve told him to take a flying leap in a
pint of Guinness. But family is family, after all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Headlights,
about five miles down. The transport had left Dugway right on schedule.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Possible
visual confirmed on Victor Xavier.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Roger that.
Get in position.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yeah,
yeah.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The desert
was already colder than the Reaper’s nut sack and he hoped that the potholed
asphalt was warmer. Leaving the binoculars and walkie-talkies in the overturned
car, he obligingly stretched out on Highway 36 and remembered with a start that
he’d forgotten to ask Seamus if Army protocol allowed stopping for a human or
turning him into road pizza.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>Ah, shit,
I’m gonna kill you if this fuckin’ lorry doesn’t get me first. Watch me get
bitten on the arse by a rattlesnake or whatever else they have out here.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Still, he
had to admit, this was the most vulnerable the munitions would ever be. Back in
Ireland, they’d quickly ruled out entry in either facility. As good as Seamus’
IRA intelligence-gathering was, they hadn’t a chance of getting inside, even
though official reports had chided the base and others like it with sloppy
security. Sneaking in and shooting their way out was problematic, at best, but
you had to be careful with this shit. They’d been able to “appropriate” VX
antidote kits sold to and stored in an area hospital, the cocktail of three
chemicals needed to counteract the effects of the nerve agent. But Jigsaw
wasn’t sure if he could trust his brother or anyone in his motley crew to
inject him in the right place at the right time if worse came to worst and he
wasn’t very enthusiastic about field testing it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Propping his
head up in his right hand, elbow resting on the road that was still radiating
leftover heat from the sun, Jigsaw watched the headlights of the truck grow
larger. His stomach got tighter by the second. A chill grabbed hold of his
spine, like Death’s fist had wrapped around his tailbone and was traveling
north.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
contingency plan was to shoot out the tires if it didn’t look as if they’d stop
and Jigsaw couldn’t roll out of the way in time. It was always good to have a
contingency plan but this one was hairy. There’d be no telling where the
transport would end up. What was the stopping distance of a semi traveling 70
mph, with its wheel rims suddenly scraping asphalt? The thought of the truck
turning over on him was chased from his mind by an equally grim one: If there
was an accident and VX was released, he had fifteen minutes to make his peace
with God. Considering the company he kept, he figured it would take a lot
longer than that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When the
truck looked as if it was a mile away, he nervously looked to the dune on the
south-bound side of Highway 36 and hoped his brother and their chums brought
their “A” game tonight. Peter O’Toole never prepared for a role as much as they
did. But the missing piece was what was bothering him, the X factor. What would
the soldiers do?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The lights
began lapping over Timothy’s now-prostrate form as the truck climbed the last
rise. He anxiously waited for the sound of the pneumatic brakes and his
breathing got quicker and shallower when he didn’t hear them. The wind, sweeping
down the highway, hit his damp shirt and he shivered. The lights got more
intense and he coiled his muscles to spring out of the way. Out of the corner
of his eye, he could see the lizard opting for the more discreet form of valor
and it daffily scampered into the dunes. At least <i>someone </i>here had some
common fucking sense. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The hard
part was lying still.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>C’mon,
stop, you assholes.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Finally,
just as the roar of the diesel engine and the eighteen wheels began to shake
the asphalt, his nervous patience was rewarded by the low-pitched whine of the
air brakes being engaged. He lifted his head and the grillwork of the semi
blotted out the dark sky. He got up and began staggering to the truck, just as
the script called for.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“That’s far
enough! You’ll have to move your car, sir.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jigsaw
continued stumbling toward the man, dabbing at the fake blood on his forehead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I lost
control of my car,” he said in his best Yank accent, “and I hit my head on the
windshield. Damn coyote. Should’ve run it into the ground. Shit!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You’ll
still have to move your vehicle, sir. You’re impeding official Army business.”
The soldier, who looked all of twelve years old and whose Midwestern
accent<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>practically guaranteed that he
still had cow shit between his toes, opened the window all the way so he could
be heard. “We can call you an ambulance if need be but you’ll have to move your
vehicle.” Jigsaw looked behind him at the upside down sedan and back with a wry
look at the boys playing soldier. So far, the plan was working perfectly. They
couldn’t simply drive around the wreck without turning into the dunes and
Seamus was counting on them being smart enough to know they’d get stuck in the
sand trap.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“That’s the
problem, soldier boy. It’s dead. Like you and your boyfriend.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The young
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jigsaw
pulled out his Glock 25, steadied himself with a deep breath and squeezed off
two rounds into the passenger side. Both soldiers were still, slumped in their
seats. The dune disgorged the rest of the band and Seamus rejoined his brother.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“See? No
problems, just as the Aussies say.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Let’s get
this over with.” Jigsaw stepped away. He didn’t want his brother to see that
his hands were still shaking. That truck had come close. The heat of its engine
felt like a dragon’s breath.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“They’re over
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Switching on
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what they came all the way from Ireland for. The munitions were loaded into
various-sized slots like bottles of spring water. There were 4.2 inch
cartridges, 155 mm warheads, 750 pound bombs, 55 mm rockets. The only munitions
the plane hidden in a hangar at the Salt Flats could handle were the M56 rocket
warheads, which weighed a mere ten pounds apiece. Each warhead carried enough
VX to decimate half a small city or a very big township.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Small but
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They already
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as well as to more conventional munitions. But mere M56 grenades weren’t enough
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warheads, Seamus signaled his people into the seemingly abandoned box truck.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A muffled
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sting in his back. Blood began soaking his chest, which looked alternately
black and red in the truck’s headlights. The strength in his legs failed and he
dropped to his knees. He got out two words: “I’m hit.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He saw his
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say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>Always
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-20846044299698348672012-11-16T10:27:00.001-05:002012-11-16T10:27:13.887-05:00American Zen Prologue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</xml><![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> These
are the first two pages of the prologue of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B004D9FUZ4"><i>American Zen,</i></a>
or what I call the "hands" part of the book. I've given it a strange nickname
because I could never quite get it right. Without trying to equate my book with
a masterpiece of Western culture, this prologue nonetheless reminds me of a little-known fact concerning DaVinci's
"Mona Lisa." The Mona Lisa's hands was the only thing DaVinci
couldn't get right and he kept whiting them out and painting over them before
finally giving up. As great an artist as he was, his Achilles heel was hands. And <i>American Zen</i>'s prologue never quite sat right with me, which is why I'd finally settled on this, the 6th different prologue it's seen. If you like this, you may want to consider reading a few more sample chapters <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Zen-ebook/dp/B004D9FUZ4">here</a> and, if you like those, even buying it for $4.99.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Prologue</span></b></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "MV Boli"; font-size: 36.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "MV Boli";">A</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">pollo is smiling down on us tonight. He’s gotten with the times and has
traded his lyre for a plugged-in Strat. He’s playing through me, through all of
us, pleasingly pounding the marrow in our bones. It’s that kind of night when
even chaotic feedback is exploitable and my vibrating skeleton recycles that
energy through my fingers. Maybe Apollo had a hand in helping Jimi Hendrix
control and incorporate feedback. But he and perhaps all the gods are on our
side tonight.</span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s going to be a good
crowd, a barely-tamed beast hungering for hard rock, the music my band The
Immortals and I play. Our front man Dave finally got us another gig with a
sound board and he’s promised to record us off it, maybe send a demo to a
record label. </span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even our sound check is
inspired. While our drummer Billy was taking a dump, Jo Jo decided to play “I
Can Help” by Billy Swan. Dave put down his Les Paul and sat behind Billy’s kit.
We’re loose and casual and, as a band, never felt better. This must be the way
a baseball player feels during the National Anthem before he goes 5 for 5 with half
a dozen RBIs and several brilliant defensive plays.</span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Most people don’t have
days like this, ever, when their neurons fire in perfect sequence, as if
touched by the finger of God or </span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">a<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> god like Apollo, when
talent and good fortune conspire on a night that will be fondly looked back on,
a gem shining through the ash heap of the other 99.99% of our days that are
better left forgotten.</i></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Tonight’s such a night.
There’s no way anything or anybody can ruin this.</span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Billy returns and we’re
once again a complete unit. We launch into our first song, ZZ Top’s five
year-old “LaGrange”, and from the opening bar I know my sense of infallibility
is justified. Billy starts by tapping out light work with the sticks and Dave
follows with an equally light lead guitar. Then I come in with a creditable
impression of Billy Gibbons’ vocals. “Rumor spreadin' a-'round in that Texas
town 'bout that shack outside La Grange...”</span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then Billy sets me up
with the drums and I come roaring in smooth as a panther with my muscular Strat.
Big Rob’s fingers make his Fender bass burble like an East Texas crick. It’s
harder and grittier than ZZ Top’s original or any cover by anyone and that’s
the way we do things. Give the Immortals a chance and we’ll show you how hard
your music can sound.</span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The usually diffident Jo
Jo is not too fond of this song when it’s at the top of our set list because
there’s no keyboard and he doesn’t like to sit idle at the beginning of a gig.
But, like the rest of us, he’s willing to take one for the team. We’ve been
together going on 11 months, now. We’ve been professionals long enough to know
what needs to be done, what needs to be sacrificed, including musical ego. And
after tonight, the rest of the world would be impatiently awaiting us.</span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Hell yes, Apollo speaks
through us tonight and even feedback is made subservient to our needs. The
drunks below us at the Rock Garden are our acolytes. We’re not blessed with
impunity because we simply can do no wrong. There’s nothing that can stop us
now.</span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And then a fat ass Cadillac crunches up unseen on the
gravel parking lot, driven by an unctuous little man from Hollywood in a cheap
suit, carrying a briefcase.</span></i></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3006600908955730423.post-63885183847728636372012-11-15T10:43:00.000-05:002012-11-15T10:45:03.072-05:00Letter to Amazon's "Community" Staff<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kM6E5uze_os/UKULp6sDwyI/AAAAAAAAALE/E5Tzprklj_8/s1600/nazibookburning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="355" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kM6E5uze_os/UKULp6sDwyI/AAAAAAAAALE/E5Tzprklj_8/s400/nazibookburning.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I just got an email from Amazon.com ("We ban more authors by lunch than
Barnes & Noble does in a week!") how I can attract potential readers
to my author page (linked below. Hope that doesn't qualify as "spam"
and violating your precious, corporately-generated TOS.)<br />
<br />
Here's
the problem, in case you haven't sussed it out, yet: By summer last
year, Amazon had banned me, a longtime account holder (since 1999, two
years after Amazon launched) and someone who'd purchased countless
thousands of dollars of merchandise from you, no doubt making
incrementally more miserable the lives of countless temp workers who
toil their hearts out for little money in your sweatshop warehouses.<br />
<br />
Mere
months after I'd published my second novel through Kindle, I was banned
for life from posting anything on any Amazon domain anywhere on the
planet earth. This means no comments on message boards, no reviews, no
comments on reviews, nothing. Every time I've reached you people about
this issue, I get the same snotty, arch, canned response telling me you
have "no intention of reinstating (my) posting privileges" as you
hilariously call them. Furious, I set up a new account, only to be told
by your invariably automated system that I had to buy something first
before I'd get "posting privileges". Pay to play, in other words<br />
<br />
This
lifetime banning came about when a handful of right wing trolls,
realizing they couldn't engage me legitimately on the message boards,
decided to report me for "spamming". The "spamming" consisted of simply
providing permalinks to my product pages in my tagline. Quite often when posting a message, I didn't even flog my books, which is part and parcel of being an independent author. <br />
<br />
But
your fascist automated system and a handful of right wing trolls are
controlling the biggest, most pervasive bookselling site on earth. You
may sneer and scoff at that but the proof is in the pudding. The more
informed of us know that, as with Twitter, Facebook and virtually any
other dot com behemoth on the internet, your system is completely
automated and all it takes is for two or three complaints to come in,
however specious and fallacious, about one person and the system shuts
down that person with no appellate process and no chance to air their
grievances. It's a fascist, one strike and you're completely out for
life rule that alienates not only indie authors (off of whom you make
money, so you're just cutting off both our noses to spite both our
faces) but also your own customers.<br />
<br />
So, I asked the girl on the
other end of the phone today, how am I supposed to get people to go to
my product page if I have no way of getting the word out? I do not do
Facebook for much the same reasons I now refuse to buy merchandise
directly from Amazon (I go through independent vendors) and Twitter and
my blogs are problematic at best. You don't need a degree in marketing
to know that if you want to have a prayer of reaching readers directly,
you have to be able to do so at the bookselling site.<br />
<br />
So I was
banned for life by you fascist cunts for doing the same thing that other
authors do, something I was told I'd have to do when I published my
first Kindle novel. The agreement was simple and straightforward: We
publish your book for free, you do the publicity.<br />
<br />
But some right
wing trolls had a problem with a liberal who knew how to skewer their
arguments and make them look silly so they figured since they couldn't
legitimately engage me, the next best thing was to make me disappear. So
they gamed your automated system and got me kicked off Amazon for life
for doing something that an author is <i>supposed </i>to do: Publicize
their books. Only on Amazon.com can an indie author get banned for life
worldwide for actually trying to sell a book.<br />
<br />
I keep getting told by you people that I violated your TOS without you making the slightest effort whatsoever to explain <i>how </i>I'd
done so. It's obvious you haven't the slightest fucking idea what
you're talking about. I've reread your precious TOS with a fine tooth
comb. Nowhere does it say that permalinks to product pages for
legitimate books are a violation. Unlike the right wing trolls (who
pride themselves on not reading or buying books, btw), I do not peddle
hate speech. I am not a pornographer. I am not a plagiarist. I am a
legitimate novelist who'd been trying to do the same thing as a half a
million other Kindle indie authors: Trying to make a buck.<br />
<br />
And since your fascist system
is completely automated, you lack the wherewithall to suggest to these
right wing ass pirates that if they don't like a certain permalink, they
can go on to the next message or if they choose not to read comments
from a certain author, they can block them.<br />
<br />
Instead, your
automated system implements this scorched earth policy that begins with
censoring like the Nazis of old all "offending" comments followed by a
lifetime banning, like this isn't going to alienate authors who have a
network and tell each other of the inherent dangers of publishing with
an entity such as yours?<br />
<br />
All you're doing by alienating
legitimate indie authors is drive them to your competitor Barnes and
Noble and their Nook platform.<br />
<br />
In summation, your entire business
model sucks. You bully publishers, you bully authors, you bully your
customers, you bully and brutalize your warehouse order pickers and
shippers and it was with anger and extreme regret on my part that the
Justice Department dropped charges of price fixing against your
corporation. You use your bloated size to bully everyone on the planet
earth who doesn't see things Jeff Bezos' way. Entire publishers'
catalogs disappear if you don't get the deep discounts you demand.
Entire communities of authors disappear. You people are the Wal-Mart of
the bookselling world: You offer cheap books at the expense of authors,
publishers and warehouse workers. Frankly, I don't see how you people
can sleep at night.<br />
<br />
I only hope and pray that one day you get the
attention of the good folks at Anonymous and your website, fittingly,
also disappears forever in the ethers.<br />
<br />
Robert Crawford<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Crawford/e/B008MMC2P4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1">http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Crawford/e/B008MMC2P4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648745765233054498noreply@blogger.com0