The Illusion of Plums (an IWSG post)

When I was a kid, I loved grapes. Which is not to say that I don't like grapes now; I do. But, when I was a kid, I loved them. There was no better option for fruit, not even watermelon (which I can no longer eat). Well... except plums.

Plums were like... they were like great, big, giant grapes (yes, I know those are redundant adjectives, but that's how I thought of them as a kid, and kids like to use redundant adjectives). That's what they looked like, anyway, giant, non-green grapes, so my cousins and I were always excited about the prospect of plums.

There was only one problem. They were always a disappointment. Plums were never as good as they looked like they ought to be. As I grew up, I continued to love the idea of plums, but the reality of them was always such a disappointment. They just kind of don't have any flavor.

I started to kind of hate them.

I thought the whole thing with the plums was just me, and, every so often, I'd buy a few just to see, you know, if anything had changed. Maybe, just one time, I would eat one, and it would be as good as it looked. That's never happened. At some point after some years of marriage, while doing that hopeful "maybe this time" thing, I found out that my wife felt the same way about plums as I do.

It wasn't just me! And, well, maybe it's everyone. People just eating plums because they look like they ought to be the most awesome thing ever when they're really not. My daughter, though, she likes them, but, then, she is the one in our family who really likes processed foods, and plums are the closest thing you can get to processed food flavor in a fresh fruit. So, well, maybe people really do like plums since people mostly really like processed stuff better than natural stuff. Hence McDonald's.

As far as I'm concerned, plums are merely an illusion. A fabrication of something better than they actually are. Sort of like people. Mostly, that's okay, that thing with people being an illusion of whom they'd like to be rather than what they really are. I think we just accept that and go about our business. But it's disappointing when you're actually forced to take a bite... um, I mean, deal with someone and you're confronted with the reality that we try to ignore on a daily basis.

I'm sure everyone has had to deal with that in some form or another. It's just difficult to avoid. Like that time in college when my cousin called me at 1:00am because he had a flat and would I please come change it for him. Because, really, me? as the mechanic guy? I'm just not that guy. But I dragged myself out of bed and drove the 45 minutes to where he was and I fixed his tire in the middle of the night. A week later, I needed a ride to somewhere we were both going, and I was mostly on his way to the place, and he totally blew me off and wouldn't give me a ride. Yeah, I'm sure everyone has had their "plum" incidents.

Back when I was first writing The House on the Corner, I ran into this kind of stuff a lot. I was reading chapters of the unfinished book in one of my kids' classes, so I had people asking me about the book all the time, about when it would be finished, and about how they just couldn't wait to buy a copy. So, eventually, it was finished and, then, it was available as a book... and, foolishly, I thought some of those people were actually going to buy the book. Sure, I knew not all of the would, but I expected some sales. I think I had two, so, I guess, technically, that was some. But it was very disappointing. It wasn't like I'd been pushing the book on anyone or trying to get them to buy it or anything. These were people that were coming up to me, initiating the conversation, and saying, "I can't wait." And, you know, I get that they were trying to be supportive, but they were doing it by offering me an illusion. By looking better than they were.

I was reminded of all of this through my recent experience with collecting the first five Shadow Spinner parts into one edition: "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1-5)." I hate asking people for favors or for help because of the... "plumness" of people, and that situation is why. It makes it difficult, sometimes, to think that any of this is worth the bother. [Not the writing, I'm not talking about that. I about talking about this. >spreads arms out to encompass the blog<] I mean, not that I went out in the middle of the night to change the tire on my cousin's car so that he would "return the favor" and give me a ride later--I didn't know I'd even need that ride--but you'd think that getting up in the middle of the night, driving nearly an hour, and changing a tire in the dark (and only the second flat I'd ever changed) would earn you some consideration, right? But that's the fault in the thinking. You can't expect any consideration or anything back. You do what you do because you do it, just like I would have gone to help my cousin even if I'd known he'd refuse to give me a ride the next week. And I'll keep doing what I do because it's what I do and I want to help other authors out by doing reviews and putting their stories in my stuff so that other people that might not normally come across that author will get the chance to do so and, well, whatever else I think of to help out.

But, still, sometimes it might be nice if people were more like nectarines...

[This is an IWSG post.]

The Serial Experiment

When I was a kid, I had this cousin... no, wait, I still have the cousin, even if I haven't seen him in more than 20 years. Let's try again:

When my cousin was a kid, actually, when he was a baby, his mother (that makes her my aunt) had trouble getting him to eat his baby food. He would do that baby tongue thing and just push it all out of his mouth. It didn't matter what flavor it was, he just wouldn't eat the baby food. Somewhere in trying to get him to eat, they discovered that he liked ketchup, so my aunt took to mixing it in his baby food to get him to eat it. Growing up, my cousin thought ketchup went on everything.

I mean that. When we'd all be down at my grandparents for the holidays, say, Thanksgiving, he'd get his plate of food and pour ketchup over everything on the plate. On the turkey and the ham. On the mashed potatoes and green beans. On the dressing (also known as stuffing for those of you that don't know what dressing is, except they're not really the same thing) and the sweet potatoes. The only thing that didn't get ketchup was the pie. This was just how he ate, and everyone was (mostly) used to it.

Until one Saturday morning when he and I and another of our cousins were down at my great-grandmother's house. One of the few things that didn't get ketchup (other than pie) was cereal. Except, on that particular Saturday morning, he decided he was going to put ketchup on his cereal. Yes, my other cousin and I were entirely grossed out by this idea, and my other cousin tried to pull rank because she was the oldest of us (and could also beat him up at need) and threatened him all the way to Sunday (which was only  the next day, so I guess it wasn't that big a deal) about the ketchup, but he wouldn't be dissuaded.

Finally, the bargain was struck that if he put ketchup on the cereal that he would eat it no matter what, that he would not under any circumstances leave the table until the bowl of cereal was consumed. She was going to sit there and not let him up until he ate every last bite. He had no doubt that he would eat the cereal, so he made the deal readily enough.

I wish I could remember what kind of cereal it was, but I don't, but that's only secondary to what happened next. See, the ketchup went on, and the milk started turning pink. And so did the cereal. In fact, it turned into a bowl of pink mush. My cousin wouldn't eat it. He did manage to try it, but it was as gross as it looked, like a lumpy bowl of Pepto-Bismol.

We sat at that table for a long time. A very long time. It was one of the few times in my life that I remember being bored. But my female cousin wouldn't let my male cousin up from the table. We all just sat there being completely miserable. And, then, we sat some more. My cousin, the ketchup eater, outlasted the enforcer. That was probably somewhat due to me and the fact that I kept saying, "Let's go..." I told you, I was bored. Finally, FINALLY, we, the girl and I, left. We left Mr. Ketchup sitting there with his bowl of... whatever it was with strict instructions that he was not to leave the table until he's eaten every single bit of that cereal.

Yeah, right.

He hid the bowl, joined us just a few minutes later, and convinced my cousin that he'd eaten the cereal. He his the bowl really well, too, because she went back to check; she even looked under the table, and she ended up being convinced. The ironic thing there is that the bowl was under the table, just not on the floor. Later, Ketchup Lad and I sneaked back in and retrieved the bowl of cereal and dumped it for the dogs. These were farm dogs used to eating just about any kind of leftover you can imagine.
They didn't eat that cereal.

Welcome to my first post for Indie Life. Just click the link to find out more.

At this point, you might be wondering what that story has to do with being an "indie" publisher. You wouldn't be wrong to wonder that. It all has to do with experimenting with serials. Actually, it has more to do with the willingness to experiment. My cousin had these two things that he loved: ketchup and cereal, and he decided he needed to try the two together. It didn't work out for him, but he was willing to give it a try. He was willing to give it a try even though he was being told not to do it, that he was crazy, and it was just gross. Okay, so it was gross, but we didn't actually know that until after he tried it. My cousin learned a valuable lesson that day: ketchup doesn't go with everything.

As I was working on my second book, Shadow Spinner, I came across an article that stated  in no uncertain terms that serialized works are dead and that no one should attempt it. I wondered why. Many of our greatest author published many of their greatest works in serial form, and, with our growing fascination with things that are short, serialization seemed to me like it might be something to experiment with. I decided that I would start releasing Shadow Spinner a chapter at a time to see what would happen. The experiment isn't over, yet, but I think it's going well. Actually, I know it is.

And! AND! After I started releasing Spinner serially, Amazon started up its own serial arm of its publishing business. Amazon believes that serializations may be the wave of the future as far as book publishing goes. I was too late to with Spinner to get into that without removing everything I'd already released and starting over, which I didn't want to do, but I do have another idea for a different serial when I finish with this one, and I will try out their serial branch when I get to that one. Only without the ketchup.

The point is... the point is don't be scared to try new things, especially if you're just starting out. Sure, they might not all work, but you'll know what not to do next time, right? And you might just discover the next big thing, like peanut butter and peppermint. Okay, so that's still not big, but my kids swear to me that it's going to be.