50 Reasons

Blatantly stolen from the brilliantly-titled Bookgasm,

50 Reasons No One Wants to Publish Your First Book

(click the 50 Reasons to go straight to the post-- the bookgasm link takes you to their latest entertainment!)

A few of my personal favorites:

#46. Historically, books written solely to settle a bar bet seldom make it to print, especially if they were written during a seven-and-a-half-hour period in the same bar where the bet was made.

#43. Writing a 97,236-word thesis arguing the inherent superiority of Wolverine over Batman is intrinsically flawed since no intelligent person could ever take it seriously. I mean, c’mon, Batman would kick that midget Canuck’s ass every single time!

#25. A young-adult novel set in the behind-the-scenes world of network reality television featuring over two dozen characters, graphic underage sex and dead prostitutes? Are you fucking kidding me? No, seriously, are you fucking kidding me?

(that one made the whiskey fly out my nose!)

and...

#6. The world isn’t quite ready for an illustrated children’s book called SOME MOMMIES ARE INTERNET PORNSTARS



How bout y'all? What's your favorite???

In a Peanuts State of Mind...

I love, love, *LOVE* Charles Schutz's PEANUTS. I learned to read from those strips, and spent many a drunken night playing pool on the site of Charlie Brown's dad's barbershop.

Later, my life's rhythms danced to the music of Frank Miller and Charles Bukowski, among others...

So of course, I was delighted to see Peanuts, in a Sin City sort of way:

(Click for big'uns!)

And Peanuts if it was written by Charles Bukowski!


Come to think of it, that one strip recounts a conversation I've had with more than a few people...

Enjoy!

Watchmen, Watched

It came. I saw. It conquered.

If you take nothing else away from this post, take this: see the movie. See it in the theater, where the screen is enormous and the sound system rattles the seats. Leave the kids at home. This is one superhero movie that is *sooooooo* not for them. It's a movie for those who felt The Wire was too uplifting on the subject of urban blight, and that The Shield was too soft about police corruption.

This isn't a review. I've loved this story for over twenty years, and I loved its translation to the screen. Fucking gorgeous. Go see the damn movie. That's my review.

A few impressions:

1) The new ending was pretty damn brilliant. Translating this MASSIVE, structurally complicated story to screen was no easy feat. Even at three hours long, certain cuts needed to be made. For me, they worked. Though they did change the essential theme of the story, at least as I saw it they did.

Watchmen the graphic novel featured a story-within-a-story, a pirate/horror tale as savage and chilling as anything I've ever read. The ending of that tale, along with the original ending of the main storyline and the extra coverage and depth given to the anti-superhero riots, reinforced a strong moral theme that mankind is its own enemy, and its own savior. Our fate has always been in our own hands.

The movie's ending was more elegant, and quite frankly better done. It also left me with a distinctly different impression, much more difficult to express. To be honest, I need to see it again...

2) The world has changed. The movie did a beautiful job of evoking that nuclear terror that haunted the 80's. Annihilation was never more than moments away for all of us back then, and it was interesting to think about how much the world has changed since. Disaster threatens closer, but it's also a more intimate thing: two office buildings is a far cry from the entire surface of the Earth rendered into molten glass....


3) And it turns out I've changed too. Back in the day, Rorschach was my man. My determination to make a career as an artist was every bit as cold and ruthless as that trenchcoated psycho's refusal to compromise, even in the face of Armageddon.

Revisiting the material, I was surprised to find myself identifying with Dr Manhattan. Something about the blue guy's bafflement, the way that despite all his considerable power he just didn't get it, resonated with me. Maybe the Rorschach-like intensity of my youth led me to focus on art and miss out on people. Or maybe it was just the day I was having.

I know... It was appearance. Glowing blue and bald aside, that guy was just a few sit-ups shy of my own Full Throttle Physique! ;-p

The Pause That Refreshes

One downside about living on a Wee Ridge of Island at the Back of the World is that it's a fair hike (and then some) to see art masterpieces. So when a lovely collection of Impressionist paintings comes anywhere nearby, even if it's the next island over, I'm making that trip.

It. Was. Wonderful.

I mean, yeah, the stuff I went to see, the art exhibit, was awesome. So was much of the public art scattered around town. (and Wellington has *plenty of public art, especially down by the waterfront.
(I think if you click on the pix, you might see bigger versions!)


But just as inspiring (maybe moreso) were the activities the Tiny Dynamo picked: an afternoon in a Victorian-era Botanical Gardens up on a mountain overlooking the city and a day at Wellington Zoo.



And the city itself is bloody interesting. Wellington is a city where you really feel the presence of a large, intellectual underclass.

I don't know if it's a matter of size, concentration or profile, but the bohemians in Wellies make their presence felt. Used bookstores abound, their shelves full of Ibsen and Kierkegaard, well-thumbed art books and Victorian sensation novels. Shop windows show few mannequins in pastels and beige, more in knuckle-duster-print jackets and tartan bondage pants. For the serious vintage shopper, the place is a gold mine.

And the grafitti: all I can say is, wow. There's plenty of adolescent tagging, sure, but there's a whole lot more serious work, sometimes whimsical, often political/philosophical in nature. I love the way these folks dig in and 'art it up' on their own!

Being in Wellington always kind of freaks me out. For years, this sort of William Gibson-esque grunge was my world. These little bohemias waited for me everywhere I went, and even today, they remain comfortable and familiar.

Nowadays, I surround my self with green spaces and gardens. I work in quiet, in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility. But every now and then, it's sure refreshing to get back to my roots.

BEHOLD!!

The EEE has to be the *teensiest* laptop in the whole, wide world, so small and cute that it made the Tiny Dynamo's eyes sparkle!

At last, a laptop that doesn't make the Dynamo look like a child wrestling with a large folding table. (Well, not *as* much-- she's still not much bigger than that dollar bill!) But the EEE, it fits her wee hands beautifully, folds up in her purse, and takes her wirelessly onto the interwebs without a whole lot of grief and bother.

That's right, the interwebs. Her time in the unwired Wilderness is over, the Racketsport Terror is now plugged in. First it was celebrity gossip. Then the online auctions.

Now, at last, my Dynamo's gone Full Throttle!

By the power of Dynamo, she haaaaaaaasssssss the POWWWWWWWERRRRRRRR!!!!



I haven't heard much from her these last few days. Mostly little giggles, occasional questions or comments on years-old blog posts and the occasional cry of "LIAR!"

To which I humbly explain, I am not a liar. I am a fabulist.

She'll be reading this post, so let's all give the Wonderful Wee Elf a BIG round of applause!

Shouts

All right, all right, I admit it: it's been awhile. How are you doing, anyway? Have you lost weight? You look great!

Until I get this current pass done (the last before the new work goes out to the Tiny Dynamo and all the Beta-Readers), internet time is strictly rationed. Strictly. Rationed. My apologies, and you really do look great. Something with your hair, maybe?

The lovely and talented Shauna Roberts and Barbara Martin *both* awarded me the Premier-Dardos. I feel humbled that you find something of worth and value in the clicks of my keyboard. I'm supposed to pass this on to other worthies, but there are simply too many of you, and too few of me doing the typing. Please feel free to accept one on my behalf...

Speaking of worth and value, I recently finished Where Serpents Sleep by our very own CS Harris. Holy Smoking Joes, it was like a master class in how to write a thriller, and how to keep a series thrilling. Pace. Suspense. Action. Intrigue. Heroes. Villains. If I were the type to teach Creative Writing classes, my students would find her work required reading.

And on the heels of my godawful incoherent post (I humbly promise never, never, NEVER again to drink and blog), Candy's historical thriller shows *exactly* how to make research feel authentic without bogging down. Bloody marvelous.

There's more I want to talk about, so much more. Sidney's new podcasts. Wayne's offbeat, lyrical and poetic photo essays. The way that like the cartoon mouse Savoir Faire, Charles Gramlich is everywhere.

Sadly, I'm out of time. I doubt I'll even get to the 103 unread messages in my Google Reader at the moment. Yup, 103. I blame the rationing.

And the war. Always good to blame the war.

I know what it is. You've been working out, haven't you?

Barriers Fall

Over on her blog, thriller writer CS Harris quoted an article on the future of publishing.

I can, kind of, maybe, see where the writer's coming from. Just not sure if I agree. Or I do agree, but only kinda.

Seems like he's trying to extrapolate the changes in music onto book publishing... in the Dickensian era. Or maybe I'm getting it wrong.

Yeah, as the e-reader becomes ubiquitous and novels-on-paper attenuate, barriers to entry will lower. (Basically, a barrier to entry is something, land, equipment, information, a printing press, necessary to enter and compete in a certain business. Keeps the riffraff out. More here.)

And lowering barriers of entry always changes the game, any game.

One time this happened with books was the late 40's, early 50's, when some clever fellow noticed that GI's would tear the covers off their books to make them more portable and thought to market a book small enough to stick in a pocket, with a cheap paper cover.

The paperback made publishing cheaper and easier. This lower barrier of entry made it economical to publish 'trashy' stories to regular folks. There was a hue and cry then, too: death of quality, who will find the good stuff in a sea of lurid covers, etc.

And yeah, those pulpy paperbacks of the 50's-70's did give us a lot (A LOT) of best-forgotten trash, but they also gave us some fine authors who might not have found a voice without that cheap platform making the risk worthwhile.

On a side note, those trashy paperbacks are gone, but my understanding is that it was a problem with the distribution companies, NOT the publishing houses.

I believe the rise of the e-book will make for one big change, but it's a doozy: Publishing houses will cease to be Distribution Monopolists, no longer protected by the fact that they can afford a printing press and fleet of trucks. They will be Quality Portals, providing a certain amount of signal to rise above the noise of your Aunt Bee's Online Cookbook.

And even when the barriers fall, the early competitors often start with a significant advantage in the form of big pots of money earned before any dirty old rascal could join the game. The same advantage Random House now employs to make sure their picks are front and center when you walk into Borders will be the same advantage they employ to be at the top of your screen when you shop at iBooks.

The only real way the existing houses can fail is if they refuse to change. It does happen. But somehow I doubt that *every* major house today will fall by the wayside. More likely, one or two may fall, most will change and continue, and a new house or two nobody's ever heard of now will grow to be a major player. It's just how these things play out.

Sure, it's easy to imagine a wild and woolly future democracy where the new literary stars emerge by offering their books free on MySpace, but this crusty old cynic still sees those brash young lights jumping at the chance to be picked up by someone with the marketing muscle to, you know, pay them.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!