Exploring Personality: Part One -- "Who Am I?" (an IWM post)

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

Oscar Wilde

The search for self is central to the human condition. Selfhood is our first great struggle in life. Differentiation. "Who am I?" "Why am I?" I am not just an extension of my mother and/or my father. Okay, well, after potty training, the struggle to establish an independent identity, to become "me," is our first great obstacle in life. Some people, perhaps most people, as Oscar Wilde says, never become "I;" they remain, in some form or another, "we" and "us."

Actually, that's a true thing that most people never really become themselves, but we'll get to that and the research around it later in this series. However, it is that thing, that thing where people are mostly other people that has always struck me about the Bible's use of the term "sheep" in its description of humanity. But I digress...

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To find out what I digress from, you'll have to follow the herd right over to Indie Writers Monthly. You know you don't want to be left out, so head on over.

The Casual Vacancy (a book review post)

It took a long time, but I finally finished The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling.

My first impression of the book remains my impression of the book now that I've finished it, that Rowling was trying too hard to be "adult." It's like the stereotypical starlet who goes out of her way to do as many nude and/or sex scenes in her movies as soon as she turns 18. Or, you know, like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears. Or, prior to them, Drew Barrymore (if any of you remember when she went through that stage and posed in Playboy and all of that). It's not that there is sex in the book, it's that any time there was anything sexual, she conveyed it in the most crude and vulgar way possible. Like the detailed description of a young girl's genital area in a quasi-sexual way. It just seemed to me like a cry of, "Look! I can write adult stuff! I can!"

Aside from that issue, though, it's quite an interesting read. At least it is for a while. Well, it's interesting like a traffic accident is interesting. I mean, none of the characters are what you would call "good." So here is the spoiler warning before I go on.

The most interesting thing about the book is that the only "good" character, the protagonist, dies. No, not somewhere along the way; he dies right at the beginning. That's the inciting incident. And, no, he doesn't come back to life nor is he a ghost or anything like that. He's just dead. The rest of the book is about this election because of his vacated council seat and, along the way, we find out how he influenced his community. We find out just how good he was, which shows us all the failings of the people around him as they are set up against the person he was. I suppose the effect is like taking over a new job and having to listen to everyone go on and on about how great the previous person was. You form a picture of that person (distorted, sure) without ever meeting him.

On the other side of that, none of the other characters are really likable, so there's no driving force to keep reading. You're just not rooting for anyone. So, although the book is really well written and interesting in the way it's put together, it's really hard to feel any empathy for any of the characters. As soon as you start to think, "well, this one's okay," that one will do something horrible to someone and it becomes, "well, never mind, then." I suppose the closest we get to a character we want to see make it is Krystal Weedon, but that's only because Fairbrother (the dead guy) wanted to see her make it. You do feel sorry for her from time to time, but she's also not a very nice person, with reason, so it's difficult to retain that bond with her.

There are two main failings of the book. The first is perspective. It's third person omniscient, but it's kind of all over the place. There are a lot of characters, so there is a lot of shifting perspectives, which isn't really the problem. The problem is that Rowling has no pattern she follows for this. Sometimes, she takes the characters by section by section so that there is a clear change in character perspective. However, sometimes, it's like being at a party with a video camera and the perspective changes as you walk around and film different people. One paragraph you're with one person and the next, because someone more interesting walked past, you're following someone new around. If Rowling had used just one of those formats, it would have been okay, but switching back and forth made it a bit muddled. Still, if this had been the only issue, it would have been fine.

The other issue is the one that makes the book not really work for me in the end. Even though Fairbrother is dead, he serves as the main character for more than 75% of the book. Near the end, though, it's like Rowling decided that she just needed to end the story (which she did), and events quit revolving or being related to the death of Fairbrother. (And double spoiler alert!) It is not, however, because events gradually diverge; that could have worked. Instead, she just starts killing people. Everyone comes into a personal crisis all on the same day, and she resolves the crisis of the book not by resolving the crisis of the book but by delivering arbitrary death upon characters. It was just... unsatisfying. It wasn't even death in a Shakespearean sense where everyone kills each other. There just needed to be resolution, and that's how she did it. I suppose there's not a better way to bring a character's story to an end. Unless you start with that character's death, I guess.

So... great writing on the micro-level. The characters were well-developed and fascinating, just not likable. But the perspective changes and failure at the end made the book just not work for me overall. Few of the characters really learn anything or have any character growth; it just ends. I suppose that's because the death of the one character we're supposed to want to make it, the thing that would have made Fairbrother's life mean something, brought Fairbrother's story to a close. But nothing felt finished even though there was nothing more to say.

I suppose that's real life, but, although I want realism, I don't read a story for real life. I want a story arc, not just a bunch of stuff that happened to some people.

Being Round Table (an IWSG post)

Pizza is a pretty miraculous thing. It comes in so many shapes, sizes and forms, but, yet, it is pretty much always recognizable as pizza. Even dessert pizza, which is in no way actual pizza, is recognizable as pizza and counted as such.

Possibly the best thing about pizza, though, is that kids are just as enthusiastic over cheap pizza as they are for expensive pizza. In fact, they often prefer the cheap pizza. Until just recently, my younger kids would generally choose Little Caesar's over anything else. Which, you know, is nice for the wallet. Not that we get pizza all that often, but, when we do, it is usually just for the kids (which has many causes but is frequently because there is something happening that will cause some kind of delay to dinner but they, my daughter especially, can't make it without something before the delayed dinner). Grabbing a couple of $5 pizzas is kind of a great thing.

And Little Caesar's is great for birthday parties and play dates and stuff. I mean, basically, every kid will eat either a Little Caesar's cheese or pepperoni pizza, but, if I get something more expensive, there are always kids that respond with "I don't like that kind of pizza," even if it's cheese or pepperoni.

So, see, cheap is good. It's... mass level pizza (it's good for the masses, see?). Even adults, who may not prefer it, are generally willing to eat it. Well, except my wife. She has standards. She won't go for anything less than Round Table. But I'll get to that in a moment.

It's been interesting to watch my kids develop, to watch their tastes mature. Here's a basic rundown of how it went:

• At some point, all of the kids preferred Little Caesar's. (So we'll call that the "lowest common denominator pizza.)
• My oldest is at that age where he will eat almost anything (I think I could squirt some ketchup onto cardboard and sprinkle it with cheese, and he would eat it); however, he prefers this place called Mombo's, which I think is awful (I'm pretty sure they do use cardboard for their crust which is why I think I could get that past my son).
• My younger boy still loves Little Caesar's (because, hey, it's pizza), but, when he gets to choose, he picks Papa Murphy's. (I'd call Murphy's a good mid-range pizza place. Their most expensive pizza is still cheaper than Round Table's cheapest (at an equivalent size).)
• My daughter has moved all the way up to preferring Round Table (but, then, she is our child that is most invested in food). If not Round Table, though, she prefers Little Caesar's, while the boys would both pick Papa Murphy's (because Mombo's, although not as expensive as Round Table, approaches Round Table and, well, no one other than the oldest will eat it).
• My wife eschews it all if it isn't at least Round Table (I say "at least" because my wife prefers an even more expensive pizza from a place called La Vera, which is not a place the kids like at all (my younger son mostly refusing to eat any of their pizza) and, although I will eat it (it's good, just not that good), I prefer Round Table.)
• For a short while, the family liked, as a group (including my wife), Papa John's (my daughter, especially, loved it for the stuffed crust and dipping sauces), but the owner guy started spouting off at the mouth, and we no longer support them.

Here's the thing, though, everyone (in my family) pretty much agrees that Round Table is the "best" pizza even if it isn't the particular "favorite" pizza of that person. For instance, my younger son agrees that Round Table has better pizza than even his favorite pizza at Papa Murphy's; it's just that Papa Murphy's has a particular type of pizza that Round Table doesn't offer that my son really likes. My wife agrees that Round Table has better pizza because it doesn't cause moaning from the kids. My oldest agrees that Round Table is better because they have all kinds of extras that Mombo's doesn't have. And my daughter and I just like Round Table better anyway.

But, see, if we're going to the mass appeal thing, I can't do something like serve Round Table at a kid-oriented birthday party for one of my kids (as opposed to the family-oriented party), because 1. it's too expensive 2. not all the kid guests will eat it.

Which brings me to my point, some books are very "Little Caesar's." They appeal to a broad spectrum of people and, although many people may not think it's the best, they'll eat it. [Of course, you have people like my wife who just won't and people like me who sometimes might but, later, will wish they hadn't.] It's low quality but easy and cheap. And you have books that are "Mombo's" or "La Vera's," which appeal to a much thinner spectrum of people but people who really love it. And there are "Papa Murphy's" books which are bit higher quality than Little Caesar's but require more work (you do have to cook it yourself) and some people just aren't interested in that kind of time investment. And, then, you have the "Round Table"s which most people will agree qualify as "good" books but not all people are willing to read (because, we'll say, of the intellectual investment; those are more complex). And, of course, you get the "Papa John's" which people boycott because the author is a complete gashole (which is the hole you use to put the gas in a car, see) no matter how good the product is (like the controversy surrounding Ender's Game).

Authors have to decide where on that spectrum they want to be. Cheap and easy with mass appeal or higher quality which places them out of the intellectual price range of some people. Maybe most people. Or, even, some niche market where the author may develop very loyal fans but there won't be very many of them. Or be so high concept that most people just won't care (sort of like Moby Dick). I say it's a choice because it's very rare that a Rowling will come along and present something that is both high quality and have mass appeal. Her further endeavors have shown just how rare a thing like Harry Potter is. Of course, sometimes, the author doesn't get to decide, because the author just isn't capable of writing anything other than the kind of thing that the author already writes (like, I think it pretty unlikely we will ever have any high quality, literary work from E. L. James (so, yeah, that's a judgment, but I think it's a safe one)).

Personally, I'd like to be Round Table. It's quality pizza but affordable enough that people can, at least, splurge on it for special occasions. It's not going to turn most people away other than kids that are still stuck on the blandest of cheap pizzas (like Little Caesar's and, from what I remember (though it's been years since I had one), Domino's). I realize that means that I'm not aiming for some blockbuster, mass appeal novel, but you know what? I'm okay with that. I want to be the pizza that people remember and wish they had more of, not the pizza that people settle for.

Now, speaking of pizza...
I think I'm hungry...

This post has been brought to you in part by Alex and the IWSG.

How To Win at Magic: Part 2a: Building the Deck

As I mentioned last time, the first thing you need to be able to win at Magic is Magic, but I guess that's really kind of obvious. Still, I felt like the point needed to be made. Basically, in a lot of ways, anything has the potential to be "the next big thing." Richard Garfield only developed Magic because he was trying to sell some other game. Rowling was just trying to make ends meet when she wrote Harry Potter. George Lucas thought Star Wars was going to be a flop because sci-fi had been out of fashion for over a decade and no one cared. Still, they all had a vision for what they wanted to achieve with their separate projects and worked to make those visions as close to reality as possible.

But, now that we have Magic, what do we do with it? [I suppose, really, some explanation as to what Magic is and how it works is probably in order, but that would be a whole other blog post and I still couldn't get all of it in, so I'm not doing that. Let's just say it's a card game (a CCG (collectible card game), as they used to be called; the first CCG, in fact) and leave it at that. If you want to know more about how it works, you can look it up.]

Building a Magic deck is a lot like writing. No, really, it is. Sure, it's nothing like writing in that there is no actual writing involved, but there is that level of construction that is very similar. You could say that the cards are like words and the colors like genres. So let's get some basics down. There are five colors of magic in Magic that each use a specific (basic) land type:

• white/plains -- life magic
• blue/islands -- mind magic
• black/swamps -- death magic
• red/mountains -- chaos magic
• green/forests -- nature magic

There are also some forms of colorless magic such as artifacts (machines) and some other stuff that was introduced after I mostly quit playing. At any rate, before you can build a deck (write a story), you have to decide what kind of deck (genre) you're going to build. Yes, you can mix colors (blend genres).

The basic building block of any deck is your land. You have to have land; it's where the power for your spells comes from, and you have to have the right mix of it to not get stuck not drawing any or drawing too much. This is rather like word balance in your story. There are some words that you just have to use, but you don't want to use the same words so much that your readers get tired of seeing it. For instance, don't start every paragraph with your characters name; that's like having too much land. The balance of your land mix is one of the most vital parts of making a deck.

Actually, this whole land mix, achieving the proper balance, could be analogous to any number of things in writing, so we'll just look at it as having your writing balanced properly for whatever it is you're doing.

I used to do a lot of helping people build decks, and the most prevalent issue was not enough land. There was this one kid that couldn't ever win a game, and I mean never, so he brought his deck to me for help (a black deck). For one thing, he played with about 80 cards (sometimes more), which was too many (but more on that in a moment), but he only had about 15 lands(swamps) in his deck. Land concentration is dependent upon the type of deck you're building, but, as an easy way of dealing with it, let's just say 1/3 of your deck needs to be land. He was playing with less that 20% land, so it was not surprising that he couldn't get any land into play and always lost. I upped his land count to about 22 and dropped his deck size to about 62, and, guess what, he won some games. However, the next time he came in, he brought his deck to me again and told me that it had "quit working" and wondered what had happened. Had he done anything to it? Only added in a few cards. So I took a look at it, and it was close to 100 cards, and he hadn't added any more land to it, so he was, basically, back down to that 20% land mix he'd had before. He was so stuck on using particular cards (devices) in his deck (writing) that he couldn't make it work. (I think this is not an uncommon problem for writers.)

Jumping back to deck size... the minimum deck size is 60 cards (except in some variations), and, generally speaking, you want to stick to something around that size. Your deck should be designed with a purpose, a selection of a few cards or card types that the deck works around with other cards to support that theme (you can think of those as your cast of characters, if you want). When you get too many cards in the deck, you can't depend upon getting to the cards you need quickly enough for the deck to do its job. There are, of course, exceptions in increasing deck size as long as what you're adding is still working toward your purpose and you continue to keep the deck balanced as you do it.

But let's say you want to break some rules. You're a writer, right? Who needs to follow rules? Oh, wait, no, we're playing Magic, so let's break some rules. One of the guys I worked with and I were discussing unique deck constructions one day, and I suggested making a landless deck. I bet even those of you that have never played Magic are thinking, "What?!?" at this point. Let me clarify: non-basic lands were okay, but many of those only give colorless power (mana), so it was going to be a stretch. So we talked it out, what specific cards would be needed, non-land sources of mana, cards that didn't require mana, that sort of thing. I helped him get a few of the cards that he needed, and he built the deck, and we tested it. He played it in the next tournament, and it was worth it for the shock value alone. People couldn't believe he had a landless deck. It was great even if he didn't win with it. Admittedly, it was a difficult deck to play, but it was a lot of fun because it was something different. So, yeah, sometimes, it's good to break with the conventions.

To recap, here are the steps to building a winning Magic deck:
1. Decide on your colors. (Choose a genre.)
2. Choose your theme. (This is like a plot.)
3. Balance!
4. Don't put in too many cards. (It clutters your plot and throws the balance off.) Likewise, put in enough to support your theme (or your plot).

And, now, we'll talk about the deck I became known for. Now, pay attention, this has all kinds of good lessons.

When we first started getting our cards, I was drawn to blue. Blue is about controlling what your opponent does, rather than simply pounding him until he's dead, and manipulating your own deck so that you can get cards faster. To put it simply. It was my first intention to focus on blue... BUT!

It was early '94 before we were really starting to get our cards, and, by that time, the first expansion, Arabian Nights, had come out. This card was in the set:

One of the guys in  the group looked at the card and said something like, "well, it's okay, but you couldn't build a deck around it," and everyone seemed to agree with him. He tossed the card on the table, and everyone dismissed it. Except me. I knew exactly how to build a deck around it, and, so, I abandoned blue as my color of choice right then and there and picked up red and green instead.

Red/green is still my color combo of choice (Not that I really ever play anymore. I probably haven't built a deck in ten years or more.). It's what I became known for playing, and it was the red/green deck I built around the Kird Ape (or variations of it) that took me to being the top ranked player in north Louisiana throughout 1994. Not that I didn't play other things, too, but red/green was my standard. And I never quit playing with the Kird Ape despite the monkey boy, ape boy, and worse nicknames.

The point here is that you shouldn't listen to what other people say can't be done. Everything is worth trying. Even building a deck with no basic lands was worth trying. Some things just take a little bit of imagination and effort. If you believe in something, don't let people tell you it won't work. Figure out how to do it. You might also just discover something you didn't know you'd like.

For fun, here are a few of the other cards from the deck:

The Taiga helped make the Kird Ape even more powerful. With an ape and this land in the initial draw, you could drop a 2/3 creature on turn one.

Once Legends came out, Blood Lust went into the deck. Potentially, you could hit your opponent for 6 damage on the second turn with this.

The Elven Riders was just for fun. It was one of my signature cards that I included in pretty much every green deck I played.

Palladia is one of my favorite cards ever. He's expensive, and, mostly, he'd just sit in my hand if I drew him; however, I never lost a single game when I got him into play.

Reviewing "Christmas"

It's Friday, and, mostly, I don't post on Fridays. I'm making an exception today, because I got my first review for "Christmas on the Corner."

You can go read the review here or click the "Christmas" link above and read it on Amazon. I just want to quote one bit from his review, but, really, I think you should just go read it (and, then, of course, read the novella yourself):

"What I liked best, and what surprised me most about this story was the amazing depth of emotion. I'm not crazy about YA fiction, which is what Leon claims his books are -- but I read his because I don't think they're YA, really. Like J. K. Rowling, and Tolkien, Leon manages to write a story that can be enjoyed by younger readers, but the depths and range of emotion, as well as the darker elements in this one particularly, resonate with older readers."

So that's my spiel for the day. I'll have another post on Monday for Briane's blogathon with more FREE! stuff as well as a special, surprise guest appearance from a certain homeless writer. Y'all have a great weekend!

Merry Christmas! 

The Cat Came Back (part 3): The Cat Reader (and the Dog Writer)

I wish I had a picture of the cat with a book for this post, but the cat has proven to be very troublesome

when it comes to pictures. Anytime he hears the camera turn on, he immediately stops what he's doing. Just before the above picture, he was "hugging" the arm of the couch, but, as soon as the camera made a noise, he sat up like, "What? I wasn't doing anything."

Which brings me to my point. Readers are like cats.

Seriously, ask someone what they're reading, which is likely to be something "trashy," and they'll start making excuses as to why they're reading it. "It's for my reading group." "Someone gave it to me." "My best friend said I had to read it." "I don't really like this, but it's so popular I had to read it." Whatever. It's like people have to make excuses because they're not reading something "better." Sort of like the cat when I try to take a picture of it doing something insane. "What? No. That wasn't me. You have the wrong cat. That cat just ran out of the room."

But it's more than that. As I said in my last cat post, science believes that cats adopt their owners, not the other way around. That is certainly true of readers. As a reader, I've done this myself. When I was in middle school, I adopted Piers Anthony as "my writer" and kept him around for six or seven years at least. Right now, I have two that I've adopted: Neil Gaiman and Mary Doria Russel.Gaiman is good in a way that Anthony never was in that he doesn't always write the same old stuff over and over again. Russel is good in another way in that her writing is just so magnificent. And deeply human. As a writer, the best thing we can hope for is get adopted by a reader and, hopefully, a lot of readers.

But the thing is, cats are finicky. It might be a cliche, but it's a cliche because it's true. You can feed a cat something one day, something the cat barely stops to breathe for while choking it down, but give that same thing to the cat the next day, and it's "blech! Why are giving me that crap? I hate that!" Actually, that sounds kind of like my daughter, too. At any rate, it's hard to know what a reader will want at any given time. Yesterday, it was vampires, today it might be zombies, and who knows what it might be tomorrow: anthropomorphic frogs, maybe.

To make it worse, they're demanding. "We don't know what we want, but we want it right now!" Okay, sometimes readers do know what they want, but it often goes like this:
The cat demands food. The cat demands food again. The cat demands food very loudly. The cat demands food loudly and constantly. You finally get up and give the cat some food, which may or may not be what you gave the cat the day before. The cat looks at the food, takes a bite, and turns his tail on it while giving you that look. If you've never been given that look by a cat, you won't know what I'm talking about, but it loosely translates into "You suck. I hope you choke on a hairball. How could you give me this crap?"

I haven't read The Casual Vacancy yet, but I kind of think Rowling is going through this right now from what I've read of reader reaction to the book. Finicky.

On the other hand, I think young readers tend to be more like dogs; they'll eat anything you throw at them.

Cats also want to get all up in your personal space, but not in a friendly way like a dog does. I mean, a dog just wants to cuddle and be with you, but a cat... well, the cat wants the space. You are no longer you, you are just a pillow. They pop out those claws and start kneading you and molding you and trying to get you to move around into a shape they want. Who cares about whether that's comfortable for you or not, right? And, even when a reader likes what you've written, many of them will tell you how you could have changed it to make it better for them. With those little claws, working you over. Of course, the reader next to that one has completely different suggestions, and that one is working you over with his claws, too.

But writers are much more like dogs. Have you ever been to the animal shelter and seen the little doggies just waiting for someone to love them? Really, they'll take anyone. They're back there like Donkey (from Shrek), jumping up and down and yelling, "Me! Me! Pick me! Pick me!" And, even though readers are cats, writers are still back there saying, "Read me! Read me! Like me! Like me!" There may be less jumping up and down, but, then again, there may not be. And, really, writers will just take anyone. The only thought in a writer's head at that moment is, "Someone to love me!"

Of course, then, you don't want to make writers mad or mistreat them on an ongoing basis, because, then, they become that grumpy, old dog down the street that doesn't like anyone and just growls at anyone that gets near, "I don't care if you like my stuff! Get away from me before I bite your hand off!" I'm not sure if that's any less literal with a writer than with that dog.

But, mostly, dogs are just lovable and want to be loved. They want someone to play catch with and to scratch them behind the ears. They want someone to tell them "good dog." Yeah, that's writer equivalent of buying your book and leaving a positive review.

And, honestly, dogs are so much easier to feed than cats. They'll eat almost anything.
Except my dog, of course; she's picky. Unless the cat is around, then she'll eat anything.

And don't forget: Go sign up for the Oh, How I Miss You blogfest! It's this Friday; that's just two days away. Go now! Don't miss out!

Gender Shift in Reading

Over the last few decades, something has happened to the reading world. Some people probably  think it's about time and, in some ways, that's true; however, that doesn't make it a good thing. Maybe it's a necessary thing; I don't know.

Historically, reading (and writing) has been a man's game. Like so many things, reading was for men and writing was done by men, and that's all there was to it. Part of that is because education was for men. Sure, girls got some basic education, but higher education was for men, and, therefore, writing was done by men. This is not to say that there were not exceptions, like the Bronte sisters, but, by and large, it was all for men by men. Even Frankenstein was somewhat of a fluke, because what Mary really did was manage Percy's career, so to speak. She was never trying to be a writer; she just ended up writing that one, excellent novel.

Then the 20th century came along and equal rights for women and everything began to change. Not noticeably at first, but most changes don't happen all at once; they happen by degrees, and you don't notice them until you've been boiled like a frog. Which is not to say  that I think we have been boiled like frogs, except, maybe, men have been boiled like frogs with these current changes.

I'm not going to go tracing back through all of what I think brought us to where we are. There are really only two important things of note:
1. Women began to realize that they could write, so they did. Mostly under male sounding pen names, at first, or using their initials. This is still somewhat true today in the midst of our female-centric writing world. Note J.K. Rowling, because the publisher didn't want to scare away male readers.
2. Because women began writing (women like Judy Blume), girls began reading. Not that girls hadn't read prior to that, but the ones that did read read the same stuff aimed at male readers. When women began writing, they began, more and more, to gear their writing to female readers, so girls started reading more.

From that point on, it became a cycle rather in the same sort of way that a hurricane starts, and, so, now, we are in the midst of a storm of women writers and girl readers. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem at all with women writing and girls reading; I'm all for it, in fact. The problem, though, is that boys have quit reading because of all of this. In effect, reading has become a woman's game, and men don't want to play anymore.

Of course, culturally, we want to blame it on the boys. As if it has always been a problem getting boys to read, but that's just not true. I don't have any statistics for you (because, frankly, I couldn't find anything that appeared even remotely reliable (everything seemed geared toward proving whatever the author of whatever study wanted to prove with the study)), but there are a few things that were consistent among several reports:
1. Girls (traditionally and currently) begin reading fiction at an earlier age. In fact, girls begin reading by reading fiction.
2. Boys (traditionally and currently) begin reading non-fiction. (This was certainly true for me. I started out reading about things I was interested in: dinosaurs, astronomy, historical figures.)
3. Traditionally, girls' interest in reading would taper off as they got older and interested in whatever it used to be that got girls got interested in. That's where the stereotype of the nerdy girl that read all the time came from; it used to be weird for a teenage girl to be interested in reading. Not so anymore. It's rather expected, these days, for girls to be reading.
4. Traditionally, boys' interest in reading would morph from non-fiction to fiction and boys would continue to read. Not all, of course, just like not all girls continue to read these days, but it was normal for teenage boys to be interested in reading, i.e. not seen as weird. However, today, boys are no longer morphing to the fiction stage. Instead, they are losing interest in reading.

Let's focus on point 4 for a moment.
There are all sorts of arguments about why this is happening and they encompass everything from TV to video games to the fact that "boys are boys," as if that should be enough to explain it. But I really don't think any of that is what's at the root of the issue. Sure, there are many distractions to reading these days, but there have always been distractions to reading. I read a lot when I was a kid (as in I won the school reading contest in 4th grade and should have won it in 3rd grade, but that's another story (and I didn't win in 5th and 6th grade because I changed schools)), and it was still the last thing I did every day. I mean, I only read when I didn't have something more exciting to do, so distractions have always existed. Also, parents are no less likely these days to encourage reading than they've ever been, so that, also, is not a factor. So what's changed?

Books have changed. Yeah, yeah, I know. All of those older books still exist, but you also know that people don't naturally gravitate to what's older. I mean, you don't see anyone out there boasting about their Atari 2600 anymore, right? Or, even, their Wii. Generally speaking, people become invested in what's new before they begin to explore what's old. At least, if they're left to do it on their own, as most kids are with reading.

What this means is that you get books that are new and hot and geared toward... girls. Like The Hunger Games and Twilight, books that boys just aren't all that interested in. Not that no boys read them, but most boys do not. Most boys have no interest in those stories. We have a remarkably feminine market, and it doesn't have a lot of room for boys at the moment.

The writers are women. The agents are women. The publishers are... well, they're probably all old men, but they're just in it for the money and probably don't read anyway. And, so, if you're trying to sell a book through traditional publishing, as most people are still trying to do, you're writing to the market. Just recently, I was reading through the first couple of chapters of a book I was asked to critique by a male author. Good voice. No real grammar issues. Female main character. Why? Because that's what the market wants. At least, that's what we think the market wants. (And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with guys writing female leads, but, really, unless you have a specific need for that, why not write what you know?)

Oh, and before anyone says "Harry Potter!" at me, yes, I know. Harry was a male lead character, but, really, who was the backbone of that story? Who got Harry through all of his predicaments? Who was it that was talented and strong and smart? Let me just say, it wasn't Harry.

So what am I getting at here? You know, honestly, I don't know. This is all from a series of conversations I've had with my wife about how books today are not the same as books when we were kids. Honestly, when I was a kid, I didn't read anything aimed at my age group. I did read new stuff, but I shopped in the sci-fi/fantasy section of my book store, because there wasn't really a young adult section. Well, there was, but that's not what it was called, and it was full of teen romance books aimed at girls. Stuff I had no interest in. The books in the young adult section are not much different from that today. Mostly. They're still teen romance stories, they just have a bunch of paranormal stuff and killing thrown in to disguise them. So it's no wonder that boys aren't interested.

What we do know, as a society, is that we want kids to read. I mean, we say this, but we don't do much about it. Especially, right now, we want boys to read. This is not something that needs to be an either-or situation. It's not either girls read or boys read. There should be plenty of opportunity for both. Bringing boys back into the game is going to take two things:
1. Parents willing to invest the time to make their boys read. Yes, I said "make." Learning to read is like learning to ride a bike; it's hard at first, but it's easy once you get the hang of it. If you've ever taught a kid to ride a bike, you'll know that it's (generally) not a pleasant task. We used to enforce reading on all of our children just like we made our kids learn to ride bikes. It was never a fun thing making the kids sit and do reading, but, now, all of them do it because they want to do it.
2. Getting guys back into the writing game and getting them back into writing their own stories, not stories for the market. I think guys have it a bit rougher in the publishing world, right now, because of the whole thing from agents about needing to "be in love" with the story before they'll give you representation. Most agents are women. I'm not going to spell that out for you. You're smart people. I'm sure you can figure that out on your own. At any rate, what it means is that stories geared for boys just aren't making it out into the market.

I'm not preaching any kind of conspiracy here. That's not what I'm saying at all. There's nothing nefarious going on. What is going on is human nature. However, if we really want boys to start reading again, we have to start making the reading world a place that's more friendly toward boys than it currently is. And that doesn't mean pandering to them either. Boys aren't looking for books about action and mindless violence. When they want that, there are plenty of video games that do that better than a book ever will. Boys want books that speak to them, about the kinds of issues that they face, just like girls want books that speak to them. They want something deeper and more meaningful than a video game. They want something real.

Maybe it's time we start giving it to them...

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: the Internet and the Invisibility Cloak

Today, you get a double dose of incredible science that has come from fiction. Why? Because I just couldn't make up my mind between the two. Not the things themselves necessarily, but they stories behind them.

First, the Internet:

Not to get too detailed, but Internet research goes back into the 1960s. However, it wasn't until the '80s that it really began to develop. Before people really knew about it, it was already becoming a huge Idea in science fiction. William Gibson latched onto it so early that his ideas about what the Internet would or could become in such works as "Johnny Mnemonic" and Neuromancer are completely indistinguishable from the development of the actual technology to such an extent that he's often credited with the actual Idea for the Internet. It's impossible to distinguish how much of an impact his early writings may have had on the development of something that was barely even begun, so there may be truth in that. We also have to acknowledge the movie WarGames (1983) which is the first movie to really put the Internet in our faces (as well as AI (see this post)).

That movie gave my mother nightmares for weeks.

But let's take a step back... back to the end of the 19th century and a man by the name of Samuel Clemens. Clemens was fascinated with science and technology. He even wrote a novel about time travelling and was great friends with Nikola Tesla. The two spent great amounts of time together in Tesla's lab. Of course, Clemens is better known to us as Mark Twain.

In 1898, Twain wrote a story called "From the 'London Times' of 1904" in which he has a device called the telelectroscope. The device is based on the telephone, which was still a new thing and fairly rare, and allowed the user to view and interact with people all over the world. The Internet. In fact, the telelectroscope made the daily doings of the globe "visible to everybody, and audibly discussable, too, by witnesses separated by [any amount of distance]." That sounds a lot like facebook and skype and... well, any number of other things.

So... yeah... Mark Twain dreamed up the Internet and social media. And he hung out with Tesla. We really don't know what all Tesla was into, but Twain wrote a story about time travel. It makes you wonder how he might have had an idea about the Internet. Just sayin'.

And, now, the invisibility cloak:

After flight, invisibility may be man's longest running fascination. To be unseen. From a literary standpoint, we can look (again) to H. G. Wells. The Invisible Man (1897) takes a remarkably scientific stance in its approach to making a man invisible. There is no "magic potion" here, just optics research that results in a man being made to be invisible. With disastrous results. The end of the 19th century seems to be full of warnings about messing with science that isn't really understood. [Except for Twain's Internet story. In that one, technology is used to solve a murder.]

Invisibility and the quest for invisibility was a familiar theme throughout the 20th century in both literature and science. It includes, but is not limited to, the One Ring in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, any number of super hero stories and movies, and, recently, Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter, invisibility takes the form of an invisibility cloak.

And how cool is that? Because, unlike flight, anyone can use an invisibility cloak. No skill involved.

So... science has been looking at ways to make things invisible for a while now. Since World War II, at least. We can make objects (like airplanes) mostly invisible to radar and other light waves not in the visible spectrum, but who cares if a plane doesn't show up on radar if I can still see it with my eyes, right? There have been attempts at things that are like invisibility, but most of these are just fancy ways of camouflaging things.

Like the one they are really excited about right now:
It involves using crystals. Two crystals working together can cause the light to split and... well, it's not important. Here's what they can do with it, right now: the can make an ant or a grain of sand invisible. Basically, with this technique, the thing being made invisible is only limited to the size of the crystals being worked with. And they think they can make bigger crystals. The problem? You can see the crystals! What's the point of that, I, again, ask. What good does it do to conceal something if you know there's something concealed? You may as well throw a blanket over it.

Speaking of which...

There is another method being worked on, and, supposedly, the Idea for this one was inspired directly from Harry Potter (I couldn't find the original article I read about it, though, so I can't confirm that). Basically, someone said, "Why not make it like a cloak?" And they started trying to figure out a way to do that.

What they came up with is carbon nanotubes. These are strands of carbon tubing about the width of a hair. The thing about carbon is that it cools very rapidly but also conducts heat extraordinarily well. The tiles on the bottom of the space shuttles were made of something similar to this, and I've personally witnessed one being heated until it was glowing red and been invited to touch it as soon as the heat source was removed. Cool (yes, it was cool, but the tile was also cool to the touch just moments after being heated by a blow torch). Anyway, they have these carbon nanotubes that are very similar to thread. When heat is passed through them, they undergo something similar to heat waves rising off of hot sand in the desert and become invisible. Like this:

They can't sustain it for more than a few moments, at present, but it's a step. And it's a pretty cool step if you ask me.

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans

Some ideas are so good they deserve to have a life outside of the pages in which they came to life. J. K. Rowling's Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean is one of those ideas.

I mean, I loved the chocolate frogs, but, really, it's still just chocolate. [yeah, yeah, I know... just chocolate... you know what I mean. The frog doesn't get up and walk around, so it's just chocolate.] And the trading cards with the moving pictures? Well, we sort of already have those. But Bertie Bott's... what a neat idea! It's the kind of idea I wish I had come up with. [Of course, Rowling had a lot of those ideas, clever ideas, that all of us wish we'd had.]

So, yeah, the actual candy treat that Jelly Belly came up with is not quite as good as the "real" thing, but it's as close as we're likely to get without real magic being involved. And you can't say they haven't come up with some interesting flavors.

Well, those are just some of the early flavors. Horseradish isn't on this list (and I like horseradish), but a horeseradish bean is one of the few things I've put in my mouth that caused me to run to the bathroom to spit and then want to scrub my tongue. Truly, truly nasty.

Of course, that was years and years ago, and I haven't had any of these since then (being a sugar-free (mostly) house tends to diminsh the opportunities for tasting vile candies). I looked over a list of current flavors, and a few really stood out:
bacon bagel, baking soda, caterpillar (How did they determine the flavor of caterpillar? Do caterpillars all taste the same or is it dependent upon what kind of butterfly they'll be? If so, what kind of caterpillar is the Bertie Bott bean?), copper, glue (every child's favorite), lucozade (because I have no idea what this is), mayonnaise, mucous, rotten egg (because smelling them isn't bad enough), sulfur (because it smells like rotten eggs, so what does it taste like?), and toe nails.
If you want to see a full list, you can go here. Well, I don't actually know if it's a full list, but it's the best list I could find.

I'll just leave you with this:
"Ah! Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans! I was unfortunate enough in my youth to come across a vomit-flavored one, and since then I'm afraid I've rather lost my liking for them -- but I think I'll be safe with a nice toffee, don't you?"

He smiled and popped the golden-brown bean into his mouth. Then he choked and said, "Alas! Ear wax!"

The Cliche Monster

Face it, we all fear and hate the Cliche Monster. All of us. It doesn't matter if you're a writer or not, no one wants to fall into a category. No one wants to be a cliche. At least, not post-high school. During high school, I think about 95% of people want to be a cliche of some sort or another. We even had a group of guys, yes, guys, in my high school that was referred to as the "dime-a-dozen" group. At some point, though, we pass through that stage into the stage where we all hold some inane belief of our own individuality: "We're all individuals!" Except this guy: "I'm not!"

Yes, I do believe it's inane. If it wasn't inane, marketing wouldn't work so well and there wouldn't be demographics. But, face it, most of us, nearly all of us, fall neatly into some demographic or another. A cliche.

It's kind of a funny story:
When my brother was in high school, he went through his "rebel" phase. It would make me laugh. He'd come into my room with his ripped jeans or whatever else and boast to me about how much of a rebel he was, because he was going to go to church like that. I tried to explain to him on more than one occasion that by doing his whole rebel thing, he was just fitting into the whole rebel mold and, therefore, was being the exact opposite of rebellious. He was just fitting the image of the rebel, and, when you're striving to fit an image, you can't be being a rebel. He never got it.

However, I think writers may fear the Cliche Monster more so than your average joe. I mean, there is no greater horror than to have your work labeled as cliche. Typical. Fitting the mold of your genre. Maybe that's why there are so many cross-genre works coming out right now... people trying new ways to not be cliche while falling into the trap of not being cliche in the same way that everyone else is trying to not be cliche. Just like my brother.

Let me just say, right now, that the Cliche Monster is not so fearsome as everyone thinks it is. He's not a ravening beast out to devour your soul and your creative work, but he's actually kind of cuddly. Sort of like Sully from Monsters, Inc. Sure, he can be all fearsome and stuff, but he doesn't have to be.

I see you all out there, right now, dropping your jaws at me and thinking that I'm crazy or that I've lost it. Don't get me wrong, I hate the whole cliche thing, too. Just like everyone else, I think I'm a pretty unique individual. Except, in my case, I know it's true. (heh) And I do it without even trying. (double heh) Which is the best way to be unique.
But, wait, if I'm going on about how unique I am, why am I saying it isn't so bad to fit in. To be a cog. To be a regular, old round peg in a regular, old round hole. Not like the not-even-square peg that I proclaim in the title of my blog?

Let me tell you a story:
When I was in 4th grade, I ran out of school. The problem was that there were still two more years to go in elementary school, but they had nothing left to teach me. It was an interesting situation, because there were three of us like that in the school, and we were all the same age, same class. They had to transfer us to a different school with special classes for smart kids. They called us "gifted and talented," and we got to be in a class full of other kids like us from all over the Parish (because that's what they call counties in Louisiana), and we had a brand, new sparkly teacher. I sort of think, now, that this was the first year they had done this sort of thing, because it was my teacher's first year being a "gifted" teacher, and it was a new program that was being tested (new to the whole country, not just Louisiana, which is a bit ironic considering that Louisiana was 49th in education at the time (but, maybe, they thought they had nothing to lose in Louisiana because of that)). She used to say to us all of the time that she was not a gifted teacher, as everyone called her, but just a normal teacher of the gifted.

She was wrong. She was a gifted teacher. We had her for 5th and 6th grades, and she, along with the science teacher they brought in for us for 6th grade (who worked part time for NASA (how cool is that? (in fact, he was one of the guys that was involved in setting up Space Camp (how even more cool is that?))), changed my life. Opened my eyes. Challenged me in ways that I had never been challenged. In fact, it was in this class that I really learned about reading. Not that I didn't read prior, because I did, but it was in this Gateway class that I really discovered the breadth and scope of books. Something I hadn't really known before as I was completely satisfied with my Hardy Boys books. But, really, that's beside the point.

Anyway... my teacher taught kindergarten when she first started teaching. She said she didn't want to be one of those cliche kindergarten teachers that had the same old, same old clowns and balloons and stuff on the walls year after year. She didn't want to be boring. She wanted her classroom to be unique and original. Not just in general but every year. So the first year she taught, she came up with a theme and decorated her room around that theme, and it was great! The second year, she thought of a new theme and re-did her classroom, and that was great!

After a few years of that, thinking of new themes became a challenge. Having something new and fresh became more and more of a challenge. And that's when she had an epiphany. Although having the same thing in the room year after year might get boring for her, it wouldn't be boring for her students. Every year, they were new students, and, therefore, it didn't matter how she decorated the room, because it was new to the students. Each year, it was their first time to experience it. Especially since she had kindergartners. Nothing she ever had in her room would be cliche to them, because it was a brand new experience every year. So it was clowns. And she left it that way.
[Actually, I don't remember that it was clowns, specifically, but I do remember clowns coming up in that conversation, so it's a good enough example. Don't anyone go all ballistic over the clowns.]

The lesson here is that she embraced the cliche and used it. Turned the ravening beast she'd been fighting into something cuddly. It's an important lesson, and it's stayed with me for three decades.

Let me give you another example:
My introduction to fantasy writing came through Piers Anthony. Not that he was the first fantasy I read, but it was Anthony that prompted me to delve into fantasy for the first time. Anthony lead me to David Eddings and The Belgariad. The Belgariad is one of the absolute best fantasy series I've ever read. Probably second only to Tolkien. The catch? It's completely cliche. Completely. And it was on purpose.

Setting out to write the adventures of Garion, Eddings decided he was going to do an experiment by writing what would be a conventional fantasy novel. Literally, he took all the conventions and worked them into his story. Here's a sample of a check list of the types of things he included:
It's a coming of age story about a boy.
The boy is an orphan.
The boy has a heritage he doesn't know about.
The boy has powers he has yet to discover.
There is a prophecy about the boy.
There is a princess fated to the boy.
There is a party of adventurers. One of them is a scoundrel.

Do you see where that's going? Eddings looked at what was cliche about fantasy, and he embraced it, and he wrote one of the most magical fantasy stories ever. The characters are great. The writing and dialogue are superb. If you like fantasy, it's hard not to like The Belgariad. Even if you know going in that it's designed to encompass everything that's common to the fantasy genre. It is the definition of cliche, but Eddings made it work in a way that I've never seen done by anyone else, and I can't help but suspect it's because he did it on purpose.

Here's the thing: your story... it's not original. My story... it's not original either. No one's story is. Sure, sometimes, you get elements put together in new ways, but, really, none of the... stuff... none of the elements... are new. As Bono says, "Every artist is a thief."
I see people stressing all the time about finding out someone else has already written the story they have in their head or have halfway finished or, even, all the way finished. They find out someone else wrote something that is too close to their story for their comfort, so they shelve their story. Give up on it. "There's no way I can pursue this, because it's already been done." That... that is a mistake. Everything has already been done. If you let that stop you, you'll never write anything.

Take a look back up at that list. That's just a tiny bit of what could be a full list of conventions in fantasy writing, but how many of those apply to Harry Potter? Let's see:
It's a coming of age story about a boy.
The boy is an orphan.
The boy has a heritage he doesn't know about.
The boy has powers he has yet to discover.
There is a prophecy about the boy.

I could even make a case about the party of adventurers with Fred and George being the scoundrels. Does anyone think of Rowling's work as being cliche? Not that I've ever heard. But, yet, there it is. Cliche. But she makes it work.

I'm not going to lie, there are some cliche elements in my book The House on the Corner. Some of them, I even chose on purpose. There are some very Narnia things, because I wanted it to have some very Narnia things. There is a sword not quite in a stone, because I wanted there to be a sword not quite in a stone. I wanted those elements in the book. I wanted something of the familiar there, the things that resonate with us and bring us back to our childhoods or awaken dreams in us as children.

Look... here's what I'm saying: stop stressing over being original. Things that are really original don't come along very often, and they usually don't happen because someone is trying to be original. They usually just happen. Acknowledge that the story you have has been told in some form before. Acknowledge it, and do it anyway. Just because that story's already been told, doesn't mean you can't write a great story. If Rowling had looked at her Potter story and said, "oh, geez, that's been done before" and just given up...? Well... can you imagine, now, a world without Potter?

Tell your story. Tell it the best way you know how. Don't worry about whether it's been done before. It has. Go ahead and do it anyway.

The Wrong Answer To The Right Question

There was an interesting article, last week, in the Guardian all about whether writers can survive without publishers. Or, more specifically, the advances that they pay. If you want, you can read the article here, but I'll give you the short, sweet version in case you don't want to. Ewan Morrison, the author of the article, says, "Writing, as a profession, will cease to exist." There you have it. The summary of the article. Let me explain.

No one can deny that digital publishing is changing the industry. Morrison speculates that ebooks and e-publishing (Now, tell me, why is "e-publishing" hyphenated while "ebooks" is not. That seems unfair to me.) will bring about the end of paper books within the next 25 years. I'd have a hard time trying to argue that with him. Although I believe there will always be a demand for paper books, the expense required to produce them is going to become high enough that the average person will not be able to afford them, at least, new ones, and, for all practical purposes, bring about the demise of paper books as a "thing." Oh, well... it will save some trees, at least. I suppose, I will have to be happy with that. [However, there's a whole aspect of the ease with which censorship will be possible that I am completely uncomfortable with, but that is a topic for another time.]

This shift from the physical to the digital brings with it a price. The price of "free." There's a lot of controversy around this statement, but you can't really argue with it. Already, we're seeing the advent of the $0.99 ebook. Sure, for the most part, it's first timers just trying to get someone, anyone, to buy their book, but it causes a domino effect and the gradual de-valuing of the art form as a whole. People begin to expect that the value of a book is only $1, and, so, will not pay more than that. There's not a lot of room between $1 and free. Again, we're in a situation were the publisher (Amazon with the Kindle or B&N with the Nook) makes a ton of money selling millions of these $1 books but the individual authors making very little. Morrison goes into all of this in more depth, but, the end result, will be the degrading of quality in published materials and the loss of the "professional writer" from culture.

Of course, his premise is that the "professional writer" lives off the advances that the publisher pays for work that is not, yet, produced. Basically, author goes to publisher, "I want to write a book" and publisher responds, "Okay, here's some money. Go do that." While I don't disagree that this does fit the definition of a professional writer, this seems to be his only definition of a professional writer. I think that most people that make a living as a writer (writing is their profession and they make enough from it to be considered a "living wage") would not agree that this scenario holds true for them. However, Morrison seems to be saying that this is the only way that quality writing happens. It takes the publisher there to support the writer during the writing phase to enable works of quality to come into being. Therefore, if traditional publishers die, so, then, will professional writers and the quality works they produce.

Morrison is asking a valid question in all of this, "Can writers survive without publishers?" Or "Can the profession of writing survive without publishers?" His answer is "no," and he ends his article with a sort of call to arms for writers and publishers to band together and support each other and see the other through these, oh, so difficult times. Only together will writing prevail!

I'm not sure, exactly, which planet Morrison is living on, though. Or, maybe, I'm just not sure what floor he's living on. His supposition is incorrect on so many levels, I hardly know where to begin. Just to start off, though, the idea that a writer can only do his job if there is a publisher there to give him an advance is laughable. Yes, there are some writers that live that way. The elite writers. And the money is paid to them to lock them into a contract with  the publisher so that they won't go somewhere else. It works more like an incentive. At some point, Morrison says that a writer can't live off of royalties alone (the advance is a requirement), but that makes me think he doesn't understand what an "advance" is. It's an advance against royalties. Technically, when living off of an advance, the writer is, indeed, living off of royalties. They're just royalties he hasn't earned, yet.

Here's the thing: no publisher gives someone who has never written a book an advance in  the hopes that they will, in fact, write a book. The writer has to show, first, that he can, indeed, write said book. Yes, the writer has to in some way provide a living for himself during this time period, but, if the writer writes, and the book sells, the writer earns royalties and can concentrate on more writing. And here's where the advance comes in: if the publisher thinks, based on previous performance, "hey, this guy might actually make us some money," they will offer the writer an advance. This serves to allow the writer to focus more on the writing, but it, more importantly (for the publisher), keeps the writer from taking his book off to some other publisher to make the money for someone else. The writer sacrifices that amount of the royalties that come after the book is written making him dependent on the next advance. Do you see the problem here?

Just to make it clear, though, most books (and when I say most, I mean nearly all (more than 9 out of 10)) do not earn back their advance (or sell through their first print run) making it much more difficult to get a second advance. So, really, when Morrison talks about how the professional writer is dependent upon the publisher for advances in order to do his job, he is clearly only talking about the writing "elite."

Which brings us to our second problem: Morrison's supposition that only the writing "elite" can turn out quality material. I'm going to have to actually say that the exact opposite is true. At least, in most cases.

For example, William Gibson. I hate to pick on him, but I'm going to do it anyway. Neuromancer, his best and most significant work was his first novel. The novel he wrote when he was still struggling to become a professional writer. The novel that was written without the huge "elite" advance. Gibson, now being one of the writing elite, can command huge advances, because his name being on a book will cause a stir and create sales. However, Pattern Recognition, while interesting enough to keep me going, never reached a real climax and just, sort of, ended. I was left completely unsatisfied. For some reason, I picked up Spook Country anyway. I barely managed to make myself finish that one. And I haven't bothered with Zero History at all, even though I like the title. Clearly, the introduction of an advance has allowed Gibson to spend years working on individual books, but it has not increased the quality of his work. Based on the moanings I've heard, I would say the same is true for George R. R.

And there's David Eddings, whom I love. Well, used to love. The Belgariad is one of my favorite fantasy series ever. The only thing better is Tolkien. It was the series that made Eddings' career. Not his first work, but it may as well have been. Everything that came after, all the books that came with the big advances, are lesser works. To the extent that I had to quit reading him, because everything was the same, but not as good, as Belgariad.

I could go on... I mean, there's Watership Down, the first book by Richard Adams, and one of the greatest books ever written. Have you even heard of anything he wrote after that? There are more than a few. Anyway, I could go on (and on), but I'm sure you're getting the picture. The picture that it does not, in fact, take an advance from a publisher to enable a writer to create quality work or even create at all. Rowling did create Harry Potter in the midst of poverty and living on welfare.

Not to mention that Tolkien was never what one could consider a professional writer. He was a professor. Writing was just this thing he did after he went home from work.

Still... Morrison is not wrong about his assessment that people will come to expect their books for as close to free as possible. You can look at the music business and the movie industry for evidence of this. It takes low prices to have any chance of combating piracy, and even that doesn't really work. The only real solution to piracy is offering everything up for free. So how is a writer to live if people expect that the writer's work shouldn't have to be paid for?

That's the real dilemma we're facing. Not "can writers survive without publishers?" but "can writers survive in a world of valueless art?" There are answers to this, though. One of those will answers will have to include an awareness from people that artists (writers, musicians, whatever) deserve to be supported in their work. That they provide something of value and deserve not just recognition but the ability to sustain themselves by providing that value to people. Right now, we are still caught up in the super star mentality that has evolved through  the world of the corporate machine, and we see these people as undeserving of our support because they already have the big bucks, but that attitude will change. I think. I hope.

I'm also certain that advertising will play some part in a writer's ability to provide himself a livelihood. Advertising is increasingly the way everything online supports itself. And everything points to a future where we are even more inundated by advertising than we are now. But there are other options, too, like the way some established authors are, basically, drawing their advance from the people. "Pay me to write my book." Once they have achieved whatever payment they're looking for, they release the book for free. And, I'm sure, other options will evolve as time goes on.

The one thing I am sure of is that story telling won't pass from existence, although I do wonder if it will change form, but that's a topic for another time...

To Start Infinity

Let's start out all metaphysical: infinity is finite. Why? Because anything with a beginning must have an end. Considering that some infinities are larger than others, I think we have to believe, that, although infinite, the infinite has boundaries. Yeah... I don't want to get into it, either, since that's not what all of this is about, but it is fun to think about.

What, then, is all of this about? That's a very good question!

Last year, over a six month (or so) period, I wrote a novel. I'm not going to say it's the hardest thing I've ever done, but, having written it, I do know why more people don't write. Writing is... well, it's just hard. It's sort of like running a marathon or climbing a mountain. It doesn't matter how many times you've done it or how good you get at it, every time you do it, it's hard work. People can't always see that, though, since anyone can run a bit or hike a bit, but no one who has climbed Everest or run a marathon will ever tell you that it was easy.

The best part about all of this (and I do mean that sarcastically) is that writing the book was the easy part of all of this. And that is why there are so many more authors than published authors. We'd like to think that it's because of quality. That makes us feel better. "He's not published, because he's crap." That frees us from any sort of responsibility toward the author. But it's just not true. I'll point to Emily Dickinson, first. Most people believe that she wasn't published during her life because she didn't want to be, and, while that's not exactly untrue, she did try to get published early in  her career, was turned down, and didn't continue to pursue it. Of course, we know her as one of our most beloved poets. Then there's Stieg Larsson. I just want to say that I don't want to be posthumously "discovered."

So, back to the question: what is all of this about?

The first thing it will be about is discussing writing, the writing process, and the publishing process. In no particular order. I'll pretty much go with whatever I feel like addressing on any given day, so this could mean that I will go off on tangents that have nothing to do with the above. In fact, I can say fairly definitively, that it will mean that I will go off  on tangents that have nothing to do with the above. But, hey, it's my blog, so I get to do that if I want to.
The other thing it will be about will be convincing you, the (currently non-existent) audience, that you want to check out my book. Being someone who reads, because every author must read (we'll get into that, later (possibly, even, next time), and speaking as someone who reads (from an objective a standpoint as I can achieve), I know my book is good. No, it's not Harry Potter (I don't think I'll ever approach the wit and cleverness of Rowling), but it is better than, well, most of the similar offerings on the market.

Having said all of that, here are the details about my little book:
The House on the Corner (copyright 2010)
It is currently available for the Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/House-Corner-Tower-Hill-ebook/dp/B004LROL7Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1296767388&sr=1-1
There is a preview of the first chapter available: https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1077220
It will be available as hard copy soon (within weeks). I am awaiting my proof copy, as we (I) speak. And, I have to say, it is very difficult to await that proof copy and not just release the book for sale! It will be available through Amazon and Amazon's Create Space branch. Links will follow as soon as the book is available.