Thoughts: Being a Little Guy at a Big Convention
September 14, 2011
I’m a small author. I have no illusions. I have my small but loyal fan base, and every day I add a few more, but it’s a lot of work. Keeping your brand moving is like a hamster running on the wheel–as long as the hamster is moving, the wheel turns, but, the moment he gets tired, goes for lunch or–God forbid–takes a day off, the wheel refuses to turn any further. It really would be nice if the wheel turned by itself. Keep on turning, you wheel you.
A key component of spreading the plague that is my brand is showing my smiling face: craft shows, bake shows, car shows, any place I can set up a table is fair game. And, truth be told, those lowly roadside shows can be a virgin goldmine: “You wrote this??” they cry. “Really?” An author standing proud amid fresh fruits and salted meats is a real novelty, and out comes the wallet and off goes the book sitting merry in its bag. Everybody wins.
A convention, on the other hand, is a whole different sort of cat. You got mind-scanned people coming and going in droll waves, you’ve got costumes and flashing lights and buffets of questionable foods … and you’ve got authors left and right, coming out of the baseboards, reading, speaking, standing in front of their tables, hucking and shucking. Wow! At a convention, being an author isn’t really a big deal. It’s pretty normal.
And then, you’ve got the handful of “Name Brand” folks moving about, the authors who are rather Big and have an Established Following, messiah-like amid the eager faithful. Just like in Lankhmar on the Street of the Gods, the bigger gods take their place at the end of the street and all the little gods and ragged priests line up nearby, hoping to snag a wayward or drunken worshipper or two. In such an environment, being shy and coy simply will not do. You cannot simply wait for the fish to jump into your boat, you’ve got to trawl for them.
My good friend Pete Grondin, author of the McKinney Brothers murder-mystery series, is a master at it. People pass by and Pete fearlessly casts his line: “Hey, lady! You like murder?” he asks to astonished stares and quickening paces. But, occasionally, people stop: “Yes, I do like murder,” they reply and the sale is transacted. So I sigh and give it a go: Hey! You like Science Fiction?? No? You like Fantasy? How about Romance … I got `em all!”
Oh is it tiring…
For me, the greatest value of attending a convention is the contacts and genuine friendships I make. I walk around and talk to the authors and show genuine interest in their work. I listen to them. I support them either with a pledge to mention them at future events or with my money. I speak on panels, and occasionally people remember that. I’ve met some great people. I met the incredible Shandahars–Tracy Chowdery and Ted Crim, and Denise Verrico. I got to know Nic and Fiona Brown of “Werewolf for Hire” fame, I met the sweet and misunderstood Elizadeth Hetherington (is she ever tall) and, of course the amazing and also upbeat Stephen Zimmer. I come out of these conventions exhausted, a little soiled, but enriched–people who didn’t know I existed before know me afterward and that is worth it all.
I sometimes wonder what it might be like to be the Brand Name, the Big God sitting at the end of the street entertaining throngs of followers. Does the Big God know the names of his followers, can he recall their faces?? Certainly, it can’t be as fun and fulfilling as snagging that select person or two and making a real connection. Now that’s a happy ending.
Bowl Naked
RG
I took my dog to the Death Room today
September 4, 2011
This post has nothing to do with my current book series, the Temple of the Exploding Head. This is just a musing …
When I woke up this morning, I thought that was it. There was blood all over our bed; not thin pinkish nosebleed blood–this was deep red and thick, from the heart.
Our dogs: (From Left to right) Badger, Baby, Lucy and Ginger
And this blood thing seemed to be the last straw. I called the Vet and explained that … maybe it might be time to … give Lucy peace. I thought I was taking my dog to die today.
When we got there, they showed us into the little room where dogs and cats go to … you know. It was small, just a couch with a little table. A water slide gurgled and a miniature rock garden sat nearby spewing aroma therapy. And there were pictures on the wall–of dogs and cats who’d seen their lives come to an end in that room. There was Buster, a Basset Hound and Jenny, a white-masked Golden Retriever. There was Snookers and Flo and Penny and an old tabby Gabbs.
The pictures were like a huddle of tombstones in a quaint yard washed in sunshine. There was plenty of space for more pictures, more tombstones. Would a picture of Lucy in her happy, barking younger days soon join the others?
Lucy: June 14, 2000 – Sept 3, 2011???
The Vet came in and sat on the floor.
Lucy trembled
Lucy, the day we brought her home from the store
She asked about her appetite. Good, Great–Lucy never misses a meal.
The Vet prescribed a doggie version of ibuprofen for Lucy and an antibiotic for her leg. She thought Lucy still had a lot of life in her.
So Lucy came back out of the Death Room, blind and silent, but alive and with the promise of more life.
We took her home and gave Lucy her first dose of medication. Soon, she was walking around again. Soon, she was splitting our ears with barking like she used to. We bought her a new toy and she took it and squeaked it and shook it around. Right now my dog sits at my feet, asleep, resting her head on her new toy, carrying it with her everywhere, just like she used to.
I don’t know how much longer we’ll have Lucy with us, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll never forget the day I took my dog to the Death Room, and she came back out again with a new lease and a lesson for the landlord.
Bowl Naked
RG
Thank You, Adam Ant
July 14, 2011
Adam Ant
The simple truth is a lot of things added their influence. The League of Elder series is a veritable Rabbit Stew elements thrown together to form the bedrock of my ever-growing universe. My home in Ohio provided much of my inspiration, my wife, Erin, as well provided a grand contribution, and the usual bits stuff also added to the pot (movies I’d seen, books I’d read and the subtle weave of morning dreams that refused to fade from my memory).
But, undoubtedly, a big part of the colonial-retro look of my stories comes from one singular source: Adam Ant.
Adam Ant--Punk Rocker and Self-Styled Madman (From Prince Charming)
In the mid-Eighties, Adam Ant was taking that well-travelled step from being a speck on the fringe of things, from a punk-rock freak a-la David Bowie whom all parents fear, to a force in the establishment, accepted and welcomed into the pop culture with open arms.
Adam Ant, all Pop'ed-Out in Friend or Foe, a very influential album for me
To me Adam Ant was the embodiment of cool, of sexy and fresh, or daring and bold and I wanted to be him. I wanted to be just like him. I painted my face and grew long my hair (I didn’t quite succeed and ended up with the eponymous and dreaded mullet).
Captain Davage--Ant-like in his dress
I hope Adam Ant continues his recent comeback from years of obscurity, mental health issues and other set backs and once again thrills young people, as he did me.
Bowl Naked
RG
On Perseverance
May 13, 2011
Every writer, everywhere eventually faces moments of trouble–there’s no getting around it. The issues writers face can be truly vexing, be it Writer’s Block, Writer’s Corner (or writing one’s self into a corner) or, that most daunting of Foes: Procrastination.
A completed written work is a testament to perseverance, to overcoming the blank screen and the heavy eyelids, the burning pot on the stove, the exciting football game on TV and focusing on the task at hand.
Today, my fellow author Gary Wedlund shares some of his experiences encountering a problem while writing and how he persevered:
Ren asked me to relate a time when I encountered a roadblock to a project. Wow, he must be living next door. Every time I write it’s a problem trying to come up with what to write next. The issue probably relates to how much I utterly hate plans. In story lingo that’s called working without an outline.
I’ve always been this way. I used to play my guitar on open stages. My approach to writing songs was to write them entirely in my head then get up on a stage and for the first time, see what they sounded like while everyone looked at me. Practice singing the thing? Are you kidding me? That could prove embarrassing. No way did I want my family seeing that.
I’m an anti-plot person to the extreme. Everything I write is experienced by me just like it is by the reader: A complete and utter surprise. Somehow this works for me. Many a time I’ve written a scene, only to sit back and smile, saying, “Oh, so that’s what happened!” Without those moments, writing wouldn’t be nearly as fun.
My view of writing is kind of like those old electronic football games. You know the kind with the vibrating fields. You wedge the wax football under your main player’s arm, set him on the table and hope he at least goes in the right direction and doesn’t fall over.
Take what I’m writing right now. It’s called The Condotte’s Daughter, a gun toting, fantasy, romance adventure. The book features a young lady who is erroneously drafted into the all-male army of a warlord, but who’d rather just go home and start her life. I am 60,000 words into it and I swear to the Goddess, I’ve been clueless regarding where the story is going more than two pages ahead for the whole thing.
Finally, at 60,000 words, last week, I had a brain-fart and saw the ending up there in my head. Scene, scene, scene, story-worthy problem resolution, scene, surface problem resolution, the end.
The only problem is, I want to bring this monster in at 80,000 words in order to make it easier to attract a publisher, and I’m seeing 120,000 words in my head, like everything else I end up doing. All that writing in 3rd person when I really wanted to do it 1st person (another thing the publishers like), for nothing.
Right, so anyway, here’s my way of overcoming this problem of never having a plot until one falls in my lap. Make sure the little man you wedge the wax football into is the sturdiest little guy in the set. Make him so awesome-strange and compelling, your readers don’t care one bit what’s happening around him, just as long as they get to come along for the ride. Once you do that, all you have to do is forget everything I just said and make the plot rocks regardless of how you come up with it.
Gary Wedlund
Copyright 2011, Gary Wedlund
The Surreal 6×9
March 4, 2011
IT IS A SUBLIME EXPERIENCE HOLDING YOUR OWN BOOK IN YOUR HAND FOR THE FIRST TIME.
It’s difficult to describe. You feel happiness, of course, and a bit of pride as well along with satisfaction and a tinge of sadness for having come to the end of a long journey
.
For me, it’s surreal. All the daydreaming and planning, pacing a trench in the patio stones, all those late nights typing away, all the editing and tweaking, all the fuss. Drafts and drafts–revelation and innovation. More editing. More hair-pulling.
There’s the moments of frustration and indecision, and you cry aloud: “Is this really worth it?” I used to have hobbies and a semblance of a life. My annoyed wife waiting to go to the movies. The world outside my basement and the more nefarious one churning in my own head.
And then there it is, sitting in your hand, bound and glossy. A rectangle of you all painted and pretty.
Bowl Naked.
RG
The Gray Note
February 12, 2011
Perhaps you’ll understand what I’m about to share with you, and perhaps you won’t.
I often seek something I call The Gray Note. What is it?? It’s a sound that, when you hear, it takes you away, time forgotten, and your mind begins working at an incredible pace and in a rare harmony. My mentor at Ohio State told me about the existence of the Gray Note–that it was something he experienced once years before and had sought it out ever since. You never simply hear the Gray Note, it pulls you inside, like the embrace of an ancestor, and once you’re there conception is unbound and you’ve access to places in your own imagination never visited before–places you didn’t know existed. It’s like unlocking a hidden floor in a department store, full of treasures, where the public normally isn’t permitted to see.
Roebling Bridge (Cincinnati, Ohio)
I often returned to the Roebling to try and recapture The Gray Note, but it never was the same, and I’ve looked for it ever since, always elusive and just beyond my reach. I’ve hunted it, like King Arthur’s Questing Beast.
Today, I found the Gray Note again, in an unexpected place.
My wife wanted to stop at Target and get a few things. I really didn’t want to go, but she insisted. We went inside and she grabbed a cart and started shopping. We made our way to the vast frozen food section, all the cases full of whirring fans, that droning staccato sound they made.
Target
As we moved down the aisle, there it was, in just the right spot, I re-discovered the Gray Note, rich and proud, full of life and creation.
As before, I fell in. Vast new worlds opened up, I created entire novels, beginnings and endings. Whole lives danced in front of me. I could have died there …
And then my wife shook me and it was gone. She said I was standing there in a stupor, like I was catatonic.
And there I was, back on Earth.
“Did you hear it?” I asked her.
“Hear what? I just hear noise.”
And my hunt continues …
Bowl Naked
RG
The Yoda Way
January 20, 2011
Antioch College
Yellow Springs is a pocket of profound liberalism tucked deep in the conservative gullet of Southwestern Ohio. Founded with the intention of being a Utopian Society, it’s like a weird Austin Powers movie brought to life where long hair, bad teeth and men who wear skirts is the norm rather than the exception. Ground Zero of all this strangeness is Antioch College, which often seems more like a bizarre cult or Celtic tribe right out of the Dark Ages rather than an institution of higher learning.
Near Antioch College is a very nice bike and skating path that goes fifteen miles all the way to Xenia, passing through haunted Medway where Tecumseh was born. I used to skate that path every day. I could do it in about two hours.
On the approach to Yellow Springs, the path dives into a thick forest full of deer and wild turkeys–I liked to call it the “Sherwood Forest of Ohio”. One day I saw a man dragging another prone man off the path into the woods. I didn’t know what I was seeing–possibly a homicide in progress. I didn’t have anything to defend myself with, but I couldn’t allow it to go on unchallenged.
As I got nearer, I saw the man being dragged along the ground was actually a dummy made of cloth and rags. He was dressed in a plaid shirt and filthy jeans. He had on a werewolf mask and a pair of woolly clawed hands from a costume shop.
I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to know what was going on. I ground to a halt. “What are you doing?” I demanded.
The man doing the dragging was a typical Yellow Springs guy–unbathed, rather stinky and generally unkempt. He was wearing a hooded butternut robe that went down to his ankles. He wiped his brow and explained that it was his son’s tenth birthday.
“So?” I said.
Yoda
Only in Yellow Springs …
I thought about it a moment and started laughing. I laughed so hard I nearly fell down off my blades. “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard! You’re going to take a hackneyed Jedi Force test from a movie and apply it to your son in real life and hope that it somehow has a profound effect upon him?? You’re dumb! You’re so dumb!” I said, hardly containing myself.
The man waved me off and continued his work, dragging the dummy into the woods. I finished my skate and had no further thought about the matter.
Years later, I sit here in the basement wondering about the future. My wife wants to have a child. She’s working very hard at it, and it’s very challenging. I wonder, if we’re successful and actually do have a child, possibly a son, what will I do to teach him between good and evil, right and wrong? I actually have no idea. I can preach and cajole all I want, I can punish and rage–will any of it work??
Maybe the Yoda Way is the best way after all.
Bowl Naked
RG
Don’t Forget about Paris …
January 13, 2011
"The God of the Basement" by Ren Garcia
Is it 2 … 3 … 7 … ?
I could not remember my mother’s phone number. My mom’s had the same phone number for thirty years. Land-line, old school. I know that number backwards and sideways. I’ve known it since I was a kid, when Mom used to write it down on a scrap of paper for me to take. “Now, call home if you need anything,” she said. I didn’t need the paper–I knew it cold.
I knew it cold …
And now I’m standing there with the phone in my hand and I can’t remember mother’s number. I could, of course, grab my Smartphone and speed dial it out of the Contacts list, but what would that prove, that my mom’s nothing more than a blip on a screen.
I stood there completely blank.
Why? What happened? I’ve spent so much time locked in the basement like a family secret, writing my stories in millions of words and reveling in things that never were. I am a god in the basement where I create all things. I step out and what am I? A creature who’s quickly forgetting many of the things that matter most.
You cannot spend so much time in the make-believe that you forget to exist in the real world. I promised my wife I’d take her to Paris–and I have not taken her to Paris. I’ve made lots of promises, how many have I broken?
My Honeydo list is intolerable.
I stood there with the phone, the dial tone converting to an accusing howl. I clicked the switch and started over and forced the unreal from my head. I forced myself to remember my mother’s number, seeing the digits in my head, tracing it out on the dial pad with my finger. One digit at a time, then: “Hello?”
“Hi, mom …” I couldn’t even recall what I was calling about . It didn’t matter. I’d remembered my mother’s number.
So, to my wife–I will take you to Paris. I’m sorry, my love, please forgive me.
To my mom–I will never forget your number again. Oh look, your birthday is coming up. I won’t forget.
I swear it.
UPDATE: 2014
So, here it is just a little over three years since I posted this cathartic little item when I became distant from the people I love. I’m happy to say I kept my promises to myself. I still remember my mother’s phone number and I took my wife to Europe last year(just not Paris–that’s next trip!). This post was a harsh wake up to myself reminding me not to allow the unreal to dominate my time and thoughts, at least not to the point of madness and obsession. I have since changed my writing process. I migrated from the basement to upstairs in the bright lights of the loft where my wife watches television. I stand at a podium with my latest WIP while the giant TV blares. I talk to my wife. I ask her about her day. We laugh. I peck away at the WIP.
I still create a host of strange things, just not as quickly as before. I keep things in perspective.
You cannot allow yourself to become like I did, a wraith in the basement possessed with an imaginary world. No matter what your personal situation is, it’s simply not a healthy way to carry on. Ask yourself some tough questions: Have you broken any promises? Have you forgotten important things? Have you neglected yourself and your health?
Be honest in your answers. Change things up, alter your process, adjust the mood. Take a day off every so often. Set yourself a limit, I usually don’t go much past 2000 words a day. 2000 words is good. Very good.
While creating the lives of imaginary people, don’t forget to live a little yourself.
Bowl Naked
RG
Sam’s Chain
January 8, 2011
Detail of Sam's Chain, from "Lady Sammidoran of Monama" by Fantasio
Such is the case with the incredibly talented German artist, Fantasio. Fantasio painted me a great pic of Sam some time back. I gave Fantasio a detailed outline of what I wanted and he came up with a very gothic, stately looking Sam.
One odd thing. He added a chain to the skirt of her gown trailing off into the fog and hung it with bird skulls and keys. A pretty cool artistic detail, but nothing more. I didn’t describe Sam in the book as having a chain attached to her skirt.
"Sam's Vision 1" by Fantasio
Hmmm. I thought it over and added it to the cannon of the story:
“She was wearing a crinkled black gown covered with intricate black-on-black designs, low cut, showing off arms and shoulders and a fair amount of her cleavage, pulled tight into an hour-glass shape. The final strange touch was a chain wrapping around the skirt portion of her gown and dragging on the ground.”
So, I stuck the chain in and meant to leave it at that, just a weird detail, nothing more. But then, my little pea-brain began wondering: what’s the chain for? It had to be there for something. I added the exchange:
“What happened to your clothes?” Kay asked.
“My clothes? I lost them,” she said, her whispered voice trembling.
“Lost them? What’s with the chain?”
“Oh, it’s a tradition. Don’t pay it any mind.”
I thought to leave it at that. But then, I was at the tail end of a thirty-hour editing binge and my addled head went off in a strange direction. Quite without my consent, the purpose of the chain came into clarity:
She snorted. “We’ve played this game before. You can’t hide from me. Hide anywhere you want and I can find you like that!” She snapped her fingers. “And …” she took a deep whiff, “I can smell you, Kay.” She licked her lips.
“I think this time you’ll be a bit more challenged.”
She got off and huddled up on the dusty ground. “All right. Go hide, Kay. Hide anywhere in the castle you want. You have an hour. Oh, and Kay?”
“Yes?”
She seized a piece of old mortar and shattered it in her hand. “You best get that chain and don’t be afraid to use it when I find you.”
So, that’s what the chain’s for. Still a little fuzzy. How about this:
She pulled the chain off her skirt. “You’re going to need this …” She threw the chain over her shoulder. Kay made to get past her and grab it and she tackled him.
Ah, love …
Bowl Naked
RG
copyright 2011 Ren Garcia and Fantasio
On Immortality
January 5, 2011
I write for entirely selfish reasons.
I want to live forever–simple as that.
I got a call from a good friend of mine yesterday.”Hey, did you hear about Dave?”
“No,” I said.
“He’s dead,” my friend replied.
Wow. Forty-three years old. Dead. It makes you wonder. It doesn’t really matter how you prop yourself up. You could hedge your bet by living a righteous life, denying yourself every pleasure, swallowing vitamins and sucking down soy milk, and it just doesn’t matter. Your number’s up, it’s up, and there’s no getting another one unless you choose to downgrade and head over to the Butterfly Line.
So, that’s why I write. That’s why I spend five hours every evening in the freezing cold basement dreaming up things that exist nowhere except in my head. It’s a pretty selfish thing, to want to be immortal, to want to reach out and be heard beyond the fair allotment of life I was given.
Through my words, the concrete vault that will be poured over my coffin one day means nothing.
My grandfather was gone before I was born. Heart attack. Happens in my family–in fact, I’m probably several million beats overdue. Who was my grandfather, I ask my dad every so often. And he sits down and shows me pictures and tries to recall his father as best he can, but the memory fades and the anecdotes don’t seem real. All I had for a long time were faded black and whites of a strange man in a strange suit from a time long gone. And then, my mom found an old suitcase in the attic full of musty old things. Mixed into the sundries was a crinkly old note written in my grandfather’s hand to my older sister.
“You need to quit acting up in school, and stop giving the nuns such a hard time. A sharp paddling is for your own good, and don’t you forget it. I want you to stand there and take it like a Garcia and don’t cry.”
So there he was–the long gone man had a voice fresh and new, leaping out from the past demanding strength and virtue under fire. Apparently he wants my sister to quit acting up. He didn’t get his wish, much, but, his words keep his wants alive. “Stand there and take it.” Maybe they should have put that on his tombstone.
So, I write. When my suitcase comes down some day in the future, it’ll be full of a whole trove of my words and my voice waiting to be heard again.
Cast a spell, write a verse, and let your voice be heard from the vault of death. Be immortal.
Bowl Naked
RG
The Temple of the Exploding Head 