Chapter 20: Greed is good. So is fantasy writing.

Been awhile since I last came on here. I've told myself to update every other day and, well, life got in the way. It happens.

Saw Wall Street 2. It was good. At points, even very good, though Oliver Stone is far from his heyday. Michael Douglas is still a beast, playing the ultimate evil yuppie fallen on hard times. Shia However-you-spell-his-last-name continues to land jobs in high-profile movies whose success has nothing to do with him. The flick does have a mega-happy ending that feels out of place, but by then I had enough goodwill that I didn't care.

So, new developments.

The audiobook is happening! Yay! I found a producer willing to help me record, and I'll keep updates on it every step of the way. The hardest part will be doing dialect for certain stories. To work on this, I've started listening to audiobooks of Uncle Remus tales and other folklore stories. If all works out, I'll have the CD done in time for west coast tour next spring. I've been playing around with podcasting, so I'll have some audio stuff up real soon, on this very blog.

Second edition of the book on the way. Still waiting for a corrected proof from my publisher. This version will undoubtedly be longer, since we're working on making the font a more consistent size. Creating this second edition has been a looooong process, but its finally come together.

I'm going to do a series of posts about the music I listened to while on tour. The station wagon only has a cassette player, forcing me to go prehistoric on the musical selections. Fun stuff. I think there's a video on Youtube of me and Dan McCloskey driving around listening to tunes, but I won't link it here, because in it I'm tired and blinking my eyes repeatedy like a cokehead.

Aaaand...I'm working on a collaboration with another writer. Christine Stoddard is an interdisciplinary artist who works in pretty much every genre there is. Film, photography, writing, comics, and many etceteras. A lot of her stuff is fairytale based, which of course I dig. You can check it out here: http://www.worldofchristinestoddard.com/. We're working on a project that harkens back to the old days of genre work.

If we were filmmakers it would be a double feature. If we were musicians it would be a split LP. Those two covers in the picture are two books pressed together. The Ace double novels are one of the coolest ideas in the history of genre publishing. They were all the rage in the 60s (And that cover art! Oh my God!). Christine and I plan on doing back-to-back novel-length books, for sale sometime next year. We aren't science fiction writers, so there won't be Martian men, but it will have some full-on fantasy. Its an exciting project with one caveat: funding. Right now I'm searching for artist grants. If that doesn't work, there has to be small press companies out there willing to put money behind ambitious projects.

Promise to post with more frequency from now on.

Chapter 19: In which I note...

Oakland High School is beautiful.

I take the bus to Mills College pretty much every day, and pretty much every day I see this high school. There are blacks, Asians, whites, Hispanics all there together. People colored golden brown and indigo, dark brown like an oak and light like a pine, the color of tea and coffee and flavors of ice cream. Multiculturalism is what I always viewed as the best thing about a public education, particularly in an area like the Bay. For much of my childhood, I was forced to go to a predominantly white parochial school, limited in terms of perspective, experiences and educational values. Going to public school in the eighth grade was living a dream, for me. I think how fortunate these kids are to be in such a place. And its sad, because I'm not sure if most of them know they're fortunate. Despite coming to this melting pot every day, they predictably break up into racial cliques. Do they know that they're surrounded by the beauty of the world's people?

Chapter 18: There Will Never Be A World Without Books

Period.

Apparently Barnes & Noble is going out of business. From what I've seen, Borders isn't doing too hot, either. Am I going to lament the loss of a company that rose to the top through market saturation and ruthlessly attacking smaller competitors? No. Is this some sign of the end of literature? No.

I've been in a few college writing programs, and the "death of writing" is something often discussed, mostly in lieu of the fading job prospects for English grads. We talk about how nobody reads anymore, or if they do its garbage like "Twilight."

Fact is, populist entertainment will always be at the top of the charts. At the turn of last century, children annually gobbled up L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books, long after the author himself stopped caring about the series. Year after year, he gave them what they wanted. Stuff like "Twilight" and "The Da Vinci" code will always be popular, because its designed to be popular. Popularity is the point.

They say Americans don't read. We read. We may not read what academics prescribe, or we may prioritize other entertainments, but the book will always be there. Books are part of the planet Earth's culture. Period.

Back to the death of the chain bookstore.

I worked at a Borders for about a year and a half. Its the same as working at a grocery store. There is no feeling that you're promoting reading, that you're contributing to a dialogue. Corporate gives you a list of bestsellers to push. Maybe once in awhile somebody gets to do a storytime with kids. And actually reading a book during your massive amounts of downtime at the cash register will get you fired. All this, combined with the low pay, made me a veritable master of "I don't give a shit." I have never felt so alienated from an artform I loved so much.

If giant chains that overextended themselves, stupidly thinking they could compete with straight-up retailers like Wal-mart, all go out of business, bookstores will still exist. The mom and pop stores they drove under in the 90s will still exist. Quimby's in Chicago will still have its market. Caliban in Pittsburgh will still have its market. Borderlands in San Francisco isn't going anywhere. These are stores that have secured their spot through investing in the community around them and building a reliable niche. The stock might get smaller, they may have to rely more on ordering from retailers, but they will survive because the much-maligned Americans will always read. There will always be somebody out there who wants a book. So books must be printed.

Since the beginning of civilization, the written word has been how we pass along our history. Its in our blood. Its in our subconscious. We cannot envision a world without this construct. And history is not just the affair of scholars. It belongs to all people.

As for the market, who knows? In these economic times, you have to budget wisely. I certainly don't buy as many books as I used to. There are people who are figuring out how to make the online thing work. Catherynne Valente wrote a novella that she put online, with people contributing what they wanted through Paypal. Today I was thinking; what if we found a way to print books without cutting down swaths of trees? Maybe a new material is out there. Or maybe the Kindle is the wave of the future. When I started hearing about online books as a child, I thought that was amazing. Now its both amazing and easy to carry. There are all sorts of new ways to look at publishing.

All this doom and gloom gets us nowhere. I was told freshman year of college that I would not be able to make a living as a novelist. So I don't anticipate making a living as one. As long as I get to write and publish, I'm happy. And there will be somebody out there to read my books, too. If I end up as a ditch-digger, as long as I'm a ditch-digger who writes books on the side (maybe winning a Nebula to put on my mantle to my digging trophy), I'll be fine. Because books are here to stay.

Chapter 17: In which I grumble

Just went through the book again. There are around 50 pages with significant formatting errors. Most of which weren't on the first edition. Hopefully these ass-sores will get sorted out soon.

Chapter 16: In which I talk about music vs. writing

I think I might need to stop listening to music when I write.

Ever since I've had internet access, I've put on Youtube or whatever to blast tunes while I write. It helps to get me excited when I have a soundtrack going. Like, playing some Morricone while I write a fable, or some 80s synth if I'm writing a horror scene. Problem is, I've come to see that I love listening to music and writing equally. They don't always coexist. If I put on some Nightwish, I could knock out X amount of pages. Or I could spend two hours looking up Nightwish videos. Maybe I should experiment with silence for awhile, no distractions. I'll see how it goes.

I won't start that experiment today. Not with these awesome tunes I got going.

Dead Teenagers

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