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Elbow Room for the Holidays

Posted in Books, Low Tech, Writing, tagged , , , , , on 02 Nov 2022| 3 Comments »

In late 2019, I felt my mental acuity begin to falter. I would lose track of days, couldn’t always remember whether an event was yesterday or a few days before, failed to recall conversations, and so forth. I didn’t think it was dementia (though that is one of my big fears), but rather, I felt it was a function of a stressful decade that had been filled with deaths, turmoil, and a job with a team I loathed. In short, I had a lot on my mind and I was having trouble keeping things organized.

To help with this—or at least help with keeping the days straight in my memory—I purchased a Five-Year Journal. You might have seen them; each page is dedicated to a single calendar date, but divided into five sections, one for each of five years. So, Page One is January 1st, and holds an entry for 2020, 2021, 2022, etc.

Throughout my life, I have never been a reliable journalist. Generally, I’d start a journal during difficult times—breakups, relocations, end of semester panics—using an empty composition book or something similarly cheap and utilitarian. I’d fill page after page until the crisis began to abate, and then the rest of the book would remain blank. But with this Five-Year Journal, I figured I could keep it going because (primarily) the entry slots were small, just six lines that I could fill in a couple of minutes at the end of each day. In addition, it had the added attraction of allowing me to see what happened on a single date, year after year.

I’m three years into it, now, and it has helped my memory and recall. Days have a definite division, now, as the act of summarizing them each evening sort of “cements” them in my mind. And it is a very well-crafted book: sturdy, medium-weight paper, nothing fancy or unnecessary.

However . . . an issue has arisen.

The entry slots have become too damned small.

When I started, six lines was often more than enough room to hold the mundanity of my life. When I started to write more, though—here, and elsewhere—even when using a needle-thin ballpoint and my tiny, tiny scrawl, my entries regularly began to curl up into the margins in order to finish a thought.

To fix this, armed with my nearly three years’ habit of regular journal-keeping, I went in search of a larger format. One day. One page. I wouldn’t have to fill each page (some days, six lines is still more than enough), but if I wanted to, it’d be there, ready to capture every last, tedious detail of my suburban life.

There were many to choose from. I discarded “planners” right away; I do not (thankfully) have a life that requires planning. I also decided against the “page-a-day” journals that have the hours printed down the margin because, to be honest, if I have two things to do in a single day, that’s a full day, and an hour-by-hour breakdown is serious overkill.

No, what I wanted was just one page for each day, lined, with no extraneous frippery like icons for the weather, mood indicators, or “visioning” pages. Optimally, it also needed to have paper thick enough to handle my fountain pen, had to lie flat when making a mid-year entry, and it needed to be either hardbound or sturdily paperbound. Marker ribbons would be nice, too.

It took a while (the struggle is real), but eventually I found one that ticked almost every box, including the “not stupidly expensive” box.

I present to you, the Wykeham’s Executive 2023 Daily Journal.

Don’t be off-put by the “Executive” appellation, as it is surprisingly void of any “strategic” thought pages, address books, tabs, and such. In fact, the only thing it has that even smells of the Executive are pages for tracking expenses (one per month, all up at the front and easy to ignore).

In the front sections, it has an “at-a-glance” calendar, the aforementioned expense pages, a “by month” calendar (two facing pages for each month, large enough to list birthdays and vacation schedules, but not enough to track the kids’ soccer games and doctor appointments), and then a full set of clean, lined, 5.5 x 8 inch (14 x 20 cm) pages, one for each calendar day. It’s bound in hard(ish) boards covered with faux leather, has a marker ribbon, an elastic band to keep it closed, and opens flat on every day of the year.

And, at less than $25, it won’t break the bank.

For me, it is the perfect choice. If it wasn’t already November, I would have bought one for the remainder of 2022. Looking ahead, I’d buy a 2023 edition for every journal writer as a holiday gift, but I don’t have a lot of them on my list, at least not who share my tastes and requirements.

However, if you have such a person on your list, check it out. (It comes in black as well as this English tan color, and ships in a nice hard box for easy gift wrapping.) Of course, the Five-Year Journal would work for many, too.

While I won’t have the chance to see what happened on March 2nd, five years running, I think the elbow room the larger space provides will outweigh that lack.

Especially now that “writing” is playing a greater role in my life.

k

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What Price Vanity?

Posted in Books, Hi Tech, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 06 Oct 2022| 5 Comments »

This has been a week of ups and downs—society, family, health, the future—and, to be honest, right now I’m on the down-side of it. So, fair warning.

In last week’s post, I admitted that my Fallen Cloud Saga needed new covers. This led to other considerations about fixing some of the content (e.g., typos, minuscule factual errors, and one extremely overwritten prologue), but primarily I spent this week focusing on the covers. I scanned sites and services. I downloaded several apps. I contacted artists whose work ticked a lot of the project boxes. Also, realizing how it’s been a long while since I formatted content for a novel, I solicited advice on the state of play as regards the best formatting tools for books (print and digital).

Sadly, rather than this activity working to ratchet up my enthusiasm, the reverse has happened, and the Black Dog has come to visit.

The reason? The costs.

Artwork, software, hardware, I’d need to license/commission/purchase/upgrade almost everything, and for what?

For vanity?

Brass tacks: Money spent refurbishing the covers of my Fallen Cloud Saga will never be recouped. The idea of making them more attractive to the passing eye and thereby increase my readership is, of course, a real and possible goal, but the money spent will not be earned back, not when taking past sales into account. Then, I have to add in the cost of decent formatting software. Everyone swears by Vellum, but it’s Mac-only, and it isn’t cheap, so I’d need the software and either a Mac-mini or a subscription to macincloud (and I loathe subscription-based software models). Alternatives to Vellum, like Atticus, have their adherents, but as with most charts that compare the enthusiasm coefficient of Apple-heads vs Windows-thralls, the Mac comes out orders of magnitude above.

So, in large part, it comes down to this: How much am I willing to spend to indulge my vanity?

My wife, bless her, has encouraged me to recast the discussion in several ways.
—I’m not buying covers, I’m buying artwork (something we’ve done plenty of times in the past).
—This would finally raise my Fallen Cloud Saga to the state I’ve always wanted it.
—Software and hardware could be used for future projects, as well as all my other titles.
—If she’d asked for something similar, I’d have already written the check.
. . . and the kicker . . .
—”I’ll be mad if you don’t.”

I’ve never been good at spending money on myself, at least not beyond a the cost of a good bottle of whisky. This, though . . . it’s different. Where a bottle of whisky is sipped into extinction, a professional presentation of the entire Fallen Cloud Saga would be something I would enjoy until the day I die, even if no one ever bought another copy.

Vanity? Perhaps.

Or perhaps it’s love, love for the saga I spent years creating, the love that drove me to write the fifth and final book even after the publisher had dropped the project, the same love that is shared by a small but ardent group of readers. It’s not something I owe myself or those readers, and it may not be something we even deserve.

It is, though, be something we would all enjoy.

Isn’t that enough?

Onward.

k

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Post-Signing Reevaluation

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on 29 Sep 2022| 5 Comments »

Last weekend’s author-signing event went surprisingly well, but it was not devoid of lessons to be learned.

I say “surprisingly well” only because of my standard introvert’s dis-ease when facing the public, plus the fact that this was my first signing event in nearly a decade. The fact that I sold any books (and to strangers, no less) was also a surprise. Admittedly, we spent that revenue on books from other authors/artists at the event, but let’s be honest: I don’t do this for the money.

Another entry in the “went well” side of the ledger was using Square for accepting payments. When you consider the fact that a week before the event I had no way to accept credit card payments, Square was an excellent choice. Fast, easy, with a top-notch app and high-confidence from customers, I was able to set up an account, enter my inventory, and get a card reader with a few days to spare. I was also prepared to use Venmo and PayPal, but they weren’t needed, as every customer was very comfortable with using Square.

Aside from these plusses, though, there were a few negatives.

First, I need a “pitch” statement. The author at the next table, J.P. Barnett, was able to sum up his books in a single sentence. (“Two college roommates chase monsters instead of going to class!”) While I’m sure this oversimplified his work, the pitch gave potential customers a quick way to know if his books were something they might enjoy. To be fair, all of J.P.’s books were from the same series, so he only needed One Pitch to Rule them All, whereas my books vary in content, style, and genre. That’s just an excuse, though; hearing J.P.’s pitch and watching his customers’ immediate comprehension of what lay before them showed me the value of a pithy catch-phrase.

I also learned that even though we all say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, we all most definitely do. To that point, I had to admit that the second edition covers for my Fallen Cloud Saga were not doing the job (even though minimalism was all the rage a handful of years ago). By far, the busier, more eye-catching covers on my table got the most attention.

The third lesson was that, if you have a series, bring more copies of Books One and Two. I foolishly brought an equal number of all titles, thinking (wrongly) that people would want to buy the whole series. With one exception, what they did buy was just the first in the series. In retrospect, this makes perfect sense; I’m an unknown quantity, and who wants to lay down cash for a series that they might not want to finish. Luckily, I didn’t run out of “first in a series” books, but it was a near thing.

Each February, Page Turner Books puts on a big signing event, which draws about six hundred sf/f readers, all eager to browse and find new authors. That’s about five times the traffic we saw on Saturday, and I’m seriously considering taking a table. There’s a lot of work I need to do, though, based on what I learned.

As I said, my motivation to participate is not financial. I want more readers rather than more bucks, so as long as I cover my costs, I’m happy. Watching people evaluate my titles, noting their reaction to my (admittedly) long-winded descriptions, and then seeing them walk out with one of my books under their arm, well, that’s the point, for me.

Onward.

k

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Signing Event: 24Sep22

Posted in Books, Creativity, Seattle, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on 16 Sep 2022| 1 Comment »

Between work, weddings, and assembling IKEA furniture, it’s been a busy week, but somewhere in there I also managed to wrangle an invitation to an “author appreciation” festival put on by a local independent bookstore (details below).

Kent is a town south of Seattle, and Page Turner Books is a used/new bookseller in the downtown area. PTB takes pride in being a “by the nerds, for the nerds” business, specializing in speculative fiction of all stripes, plus gaming, collectibles, and comics. They often have author and convention-like events, and next weekend they’re putting on their Fall Festi-Con Fair, with (so far) about a dozen authors and artists hanging out to sign books and chat with readers.

Now, anyone who knows anything about me knows that I heartily dislike public appearances and speechifying. Back when I did attend conventions, I went through a lot of preliminary psychological prep, and a ton of after-action recovery. Signings were even worse, in that I wasn’t sharing the stage with other writers; it was all me, and the (usually) empty ranks of chairs were a reflection of that.

Not that I haven’t done the occasional event in the years since then. I even got invited to a panel on writing historical fiction (also in Kent, if I remember correctly . . . hmm) that was a good day, but in general, no.

In short, as an author, I don’t get out much.

But sharing the venue with a dozen creative artists is definitely something I can manage, and so, if you’re interested (and in the PacNW), here are the details:

Fall Festi-Con Fair
presented by Page Turner Books
Saturday, 24 Sep 2022, from 2-7pm
314 West Meeker Street, Kent, WA 98032

Event Page on Facebook
(includes list of authors and artists, plus details)
Event Page at City of Kent
(details, map, etc.)

Bring your books or pick up a new one (I’ll have some from my stash), or just drop in to say Hey.

k

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Pushing Back

Posted in Books, Culture, Politics, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on 10 Feb 2022| Leave a Comment »

These past few weeks, a large cadre of Americans has been decrying the “cancel culture” that is coming down like a ton of bricks on Joe Rogan and Spotify, whilst simultaneously applauding the RNC’s censure of politicians with whom they disagree. In addition, this tranche of the conservative mind-bank is paving the way for suing teachers and school districts, should they have the temerity to teach kids about social issues, as well as—surprise surprise—continuing to indulge in its penchant for banning books.

Frankly, I was surprised that the RNC was so stupid as to believe they wouldn’t get any blowback for characterizing the January 6th riot as “legitimate political discourse,” but it definitely did not surprise me that conservatives are still into banning books.

Banning books—banning any type of artistic expression, really—is the worst way to control said expression. Know why I went to see The Last Temptation of Christ? Because of the furore raised by the so-called “religious right.” Know why I read Lolita? Because someone believed it would scar me for life. Know why, this week, I bought a copy of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale? Because a Tennessee school district banned it and I’m too old to have had the opportunity to read it in school. (In fact, in the weeks since Maus was banned, it has risen to the top of bestseller lists, and I’m pretty sure some of those purchases were made by families who specifically wanted to get it into their children’s hands. So, not a great model for successful social engineering.)

This all got me thinking about the practice of banning books. Who does it, and why? At the outset, it’s clear that books have been challenged by factions on both sides of the political spectrum. The left has challenged books here and there, for use of the n-word and for racial stereotypes, but by far these actions trend more heavily to the conservative side.

The American Library Association has for decades tracked the most challenged/banned books, and has compiled lists of the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books, by decade, since the ’90s. The reasons books have been banned break out as follows (multiple reasons can be given for a single title, so the percentages total more than 100%.)

  • 92.5% — Sexual content
  • 61.5% — Offensive language
  • 49% — Unsuitable for age group
  • 26% — Religious viewpoint
  • 23.5% — LGBTQIA+ content
  • 19% — Violence
  • 16.5% —Racism
  • 12.5% —Drug, alcohol, and tobacco use
  • 7% —”Anti-family” content
  • 6.5% — Political viewpoint

I researched some of these more deeply and found that of those deemed unsuitable for an age group, the books were intended for juvenile and/or young adult readers. I also found that for books tagged with the “political viewpoint” reason, many of the complaints were not about the political views put forth in the book, but were in regards to the personal views of the author. One book, The Grapes of Wrath, was banned—and I’m not kidding—because it portrayed Kern County, California in a negative light.

Yesterday, I went around the house, pulling banned books off my stacks and gathering them together. I found about two dozen, from the Holy Bible to Jack London to Stephen King to George Orwell. While some of them are still TBR, I’ve read most of them, including many that I read when I was in school. Banning them, taking The Great Gatsby or Flowers for Algernon or To Kill a Mockingbird off the shelves at my school would have done nothing to further my education. And good luck keeping me from reading The Lord of the Rings.

Sheltering our youth from ideas in the name of education is both a folly and a disservice. It’s also a fruitless exercise because kids will find a way, and banning a book is a sure-fire motivation for a curious youth. I mean, do you think I was over 18 when I saw my first Playboy? Do you think I was 13 when I saw my first PG-13 movie? Do you think I was 21 when I had my first beer? Hehe . . . no, to all of the above.

Now, I do not think that all art is appropriate for all ages. Some books, due to their themes or topics, should be introduced with curation and context by someone familiar with the age group and the subject, someone like, oh, I don’t know, maybe a teacher. But what one particular 15-year old may find disturbing, a different child of thirteen might handle fine, especially when supported by teachers and family.

I once met an 8-year old girl who told me she loved my Fallen Cloud Saga. I actually winced when I heard her say that, because I really did not intend those books—with their occasional scenes of violence and sex and themes of prejudice and racial hatred—for a prepubescent audience. But the girl’s mother was standing right behind her, beaming over her child’s precocious intellect and, talking further with them both, I had to admit that the mom’s decision to let her daughter read my books was fine. For her daughter.

And there’s the rub. Not all kids are alike, not in any way. There are all sorts of ways to tailor curricula to address specific parents’ concerns and fulfill individual students’ needs, all without banning certain books for all students.

Banning books is stupid and does not advance the intended goal. One wonders why they even bother anymore.

k

PS. If you’re wondering where I come down on the Joe Rogan/Spotify fracas, I dropped my Spotify membership. And if you’re now wondering why I’m okay with “banning” Rogan but not okay with banning books, consider that:
(a) I’m not banning Rogan; I’m merely refusing to support him and his exclusive carrier, and
(b) there’s a big difference between banning a book because it has uncomfortable truths in it, and refusing to support Rogan’s continued pattern of providing a platform to spread lies and misinformation.
—k

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In Defense of the Formulaic

Posted in Books, Movies, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 20 Jan 2022| Leave a Comment »

I was in a foul mood all last week, so when a friend offered her opinion of a movie I’d recently enjoyed, deeming it “fairly good, while predictable,” I took it as a passive-aggressive reference to my low-brow viewing choices.

Naturally, she did not mean it that way and (thankfully) I have a strict “reread before hitting enter” policy when posting to social media, so no damage was done, but it did get me thinking.

The movie in question is of the “coming of age” variety and my friend’s evaluation was, to be frank, pretty spot-on. The movie is predictable, as we follow a young man growing up, navigating the pain of early adulthood until, at movie’s end, he comes to terms with his father’s history of absence and utter unreliability.

Predictable. Trite. Cliché. I’ve used these words to describe (in negative terms) both books and movies. I’ve done so here on this blog, and usually I’ve not been kind about it. So, why do I look down my nose at some formulaic works, yet enjoy others? Why do I consider some works to be entertaining, even though they are utterly predictable?

We’re all familiar with the old argument about story archetypes, how many there are, and how old. According to common wisdom, there are only seven archetypal plots (though opinions differ, and widely so). Whether this is true or not, formulas are used to build stories, especially in film—the coming of age plot, the rom-com, the murder mystery—and they are often followed to the point where you can set your watch by what happens on screen. Eighteen minutes into an episode of Murder, She Wrote? A body is going to drop in three . . . two . . . one . . .

Why do we enjoy such stories, even when we know how they’ll work out? And when do we not enjoy them?

I returned to the movie under discussion, and found that my enjoyment had nothing to do with the story’s predictable nature. I knew the boy would grow up and be happy. I knew the boy’s father would remain an irredeemable two-dimensional deadbeat dad. I knew the boy would have some sort of confrontation with his father and, in so doing, accept his own adulthood. I knew all this would happen, and to be honest, those were the least engaging sections of the film.

What grabbed and held my interest were the differences, the ways in which the writers deviated from the expected. As one example, it was how a collection of men—grandfathers, uncles, and pseudo-uncles—cooperated to raise a boy, communal fathers to an abandoned son, a composite role model that was both counterpoint and counterpart to the flawed original. The formula, that’s the foundation on which the whole is built, the scaffolding that supports what is new, but it’s the differences that set it apart.

Absent these differences, that’s when formula is a problem. That’s why the 1998 shot-for-shot remake of Psycho was a flop: simply filming it in color wasn’t enough of a difference.

But with sufficient differences, ah!, now we have variations on a theme, the same story told from a different point of view, and we enjoy the result. Otherwise, we’d never watch another rom-com, see a new staging of Macbeth, or read another mystery novel. We’d be all “Been there; done that,” and set off in search of the totally new (and good luck with that).

Some will argue that there are no original stories; that everything is an interpretation of one of the seven archetypes; or a fanglement, a mash-up of two or more to fashion what merely seems new. I disagree but will allow that, in most cases, it is true. We do tell the same stories, over and over, and we enjoy the retelling, the predictability.

So, when I begin to fret that my current work-in-progress is just another old tale retold, I’ll make a point of remembering the differences I’m working into it. Style, setting, sub-plot, backstory, characterization, tone, structure, pacing—differences large and small all adding to a unique outcome.

Formulas just are; it’s how we employ them that determines if they’re worth the time.

k

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Firefly: Carnival — Book Review

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , on 30 Dec 2021| Leave a Comment »

Back when I was a panelist at writing/sci-fi conventions, I would occasionally pop in at the workshops, where pros read/critiqued story submissions and provided a professional’s view. The critiques were honest assessments, often served with actual “pro tips,” but the stories submitted were usually—to be honest—pretty awful.

On one such occasion a pro author/editor I knew provided a critique that was both the shortest I’ve ever heard as well as the definition of “damning with faint praise.”

Her critique: “It’s very nicely typed.”

The newest title in the Firefly novel ‘verse is Una McCormack’s Firefly – Carnival, from Titan Books, and sadly, the best thing I can say about it is that “It’s very nicely bound.”

I’ve complained loud and long about previous titles in this series—the lone exception being Tim Lebbon’s entry, Firefly: Generations (also the only one with a title that comes with a colon instead of an en dash . . . go figger—as the entries written by James Lovegrove have been massive disappointments. Learning that this title was penned by a different author gave me hope.

Misplaced hope, as it turned out.

The basics of the plot are: Mal and crew are hired to provide security for a shipment and escort it across town from the train station to the space port where, once loaded, it flies off and they get paid. Naturally, things go wonky, the shipment goes astray, and two of Serenity’s crew are taken hostage—by the employer who hired the team—as collateral pending return of the goods or compensation for the loss. Failure, within 48 hours, and the “collateral” will be sent back in boxes.

Now, if that’s not a goofy enough setup for you, it gets better. Or worse. Example: the job pays 200 platinum (a ridiculously high wage for a few hours’ work) but when the crew is told they have to cover the losses, the sum is only 500 platinum (more than they have, of course, but 200 Pl is an unreasonable chunk of that profit margin).

The story unfolds and we learn that (unsurprisingly) nothing is as it seems, and therein lies the tale.

McCormack is a best-selling author of many television and movie tie-in novels, but reading this I came to the conclusion that those titles were best-sellers based on an established fan base and not on the style or content because . . . damn.

For any book set in the Firefly ‘Verse, you have to deal with the show’s excellent use of dialect and language. As with other books, the occasional sprinkling in of “g-less” gerunds (i.e., shootin’ and flyin’) helps evoke the tone from the show, and the reader fills in the rest. Lovegrove, for all his faults, did this well. McCormack does not. They pop up all over the place and, most troublesome, she throws them into non-dialogue sections, including those that are straight narrative and not part of a character’s internal thoughts. In addition, she decided to spice it up with other dialect elisions, such as “platinum” becoming “plat’num” which (to my ear at least) has no audible difference and only disturbs the eye as we trip over it. (In her defense, McCormack is a Brit who may very well have better diction than we Americans, so this may have made sense to her.)

Stylistically, the prose is pedestrian and flat, without any beauty. At regular intervals—presumably to evoke a feeling of action or a character making a quick assessment of surroundings—McCormack drops into a paragraph of fragment sentences. This in itself isn’t a bad practice, as it reads with more urgency, but when she drops pronouns and subjects from the beginning of the sentence, we have to re-read to make sure we get it, which obviates the point of the fragments.  In fact, McCormack often creates sentences where the syntax is imprecise or vague, and it can be read with one of two (sometimes opposite) meanings depending on inflection. This is simply poor writing, and should have been caught and fixed.

Sadly, the editors seem to have taken holiday on this book. And, halfway through, the proofreaders seem to have gone to join them. This is less McCormack’s fault than Titan Books’, though the author is not off the hook either. Content errors. Out-of-place references to current pop-culture. Missing punctuation. Typos. For all of these, the author gets proofs, too, and there are simply too many errors late in the book to deny a lackadaisical process from start to finish.

In short, it’s a hot mess and I found myself remembering Lovegrove’s less-than-stellar titles in the series with something approaching fondness.

The Firefly novels are now one for six, with Lebbon’s book being the only one worth the time. It’s sad, but it’s clear at this point that these are simply revenue streams—something I should have figured going in—hackwork without interest in the actual art and craft of writing.

Frankly, I don’t know that I’ll bother with any future titles. My love for the show, its original use of language, the depth of its characterizations, begins to suffer from such low-bar fare.

In short, these books are beginning to damage my calm.

k

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