I’ve taken on a job
I am both
     loathe to do &
     wish were already done,
a job I am more than capable of
lowering myself
     and my standards
     and my
            productivity on
         my own work
to accomplish.
To do what I’ve been avoiding
   Working for someone else
   Building a generic
              corporate
              clone of a site
   Learning all that e-commerce
                     bullshit
   Sitting through meeting
             after meeting
             after meeting about it
   Waiting for groupthink
All in the midst of my own crippling
depression.
All instead of anything I’m interested in.
 (If I were to give the opposite of
  an Ignite Presentation
   (Talk about your passion!)
  I might talk for five minutes about
  modern web development.)
Troubleshooting the irrational behaviour of someone else’s CSS
/* Professionally-developed CSS */
frustrates.
I take long breaks.
I’m confident that with 8 good hours
I could show more results than their
last year’s work.
But there are so few
                     good hours
right now I’ll be lucky
to get 8 good hours all week.

I’ve taken on a job.
I wish someone else would.

 
—Teel McClanahan III

I don’t like the parts of running a small business that are the business side of things. Accounting/bookkeeping, paperwork, taxes, marketing, even some aspects of customer service. All of which are things which increase in time investment & complexity, the more business I do. With the books side of the business, the side most likely to be able to create working advertising for, the amount of extra work that needs to be done for each book sold seems disproportionate with the amount of income earned, especially in relation to the same ratio re: art sales. But how do you sell my original artwork via a 2-line text ad? What search keywords are going to be coming from people who will like my art and will click on an ad? Books are somewhat easier, though I doubt the word “zombie” comes cheaply…

If I were selling enough paper books directly (I earn 2x to 6x more per book when I sell directly, rather than wholesale, so hitting any $ target is less copies/marketing/et cetera that way) to say with any seriousness that I was making as much or more than I could earn via a traditional publishing company & contract, the time and effort it would take to physically process & ship the orders would nearly be a full time job in itself, leaving little energy left for creation of new works. That is a scary thought. That is what I’m somewhat afraid of: that I’ll be doing so much business that I won’t have time to create.

So, yes, perhaps I’m doing this writing thing “all wrong” and I ought to have gone the “normal” route where I let a publisher take most of the revenue in exchange for doing all the business-side stuff I don’t like, giving up the ability to do the editorial, design, layout, cover design, and web site design aspects of the job that I do like along with them. Except that doesn’t really end up paying much better than what I’m doing now, for most authors, since they’re putting their own money into the publicity efforts I’ve mostly been avoiding… Out of the advances they’ll be lucky to ever earn out. Maybe.

Success, though… For me, it’s more about being able to create. To create what I want to create, when I want to create it. I semi-recently had a conversation with my wife about it, where she (effectively the sole income-earner in our household) questioned the very idea that I ought to be trying to earn any sort of living from my creations. Like, “where did you get that idea?” And I think she was right, and well in tune to what I actually believe & want than my own behaviors and projected beliefs represented.

We’re closer now to a financial situation where we don’t have to worry every month about how we’re going to afford groceries than we were last year, and I’m decreasingly thinking about how to turn my creations into a regular income. I have faith in my work. I believe in the act of creation.

I don’t believe in the value of money, business, the market, or marketing.

And yes, this post is a messy ramble. I wrote it on my iPhone while my iMac was occupied with actual work.

• Lost and Not Found – eBook: 85 dl’s in Jan. (2 paid), 82 dl’s in Feb.
• Lost and Not Found – Podiobook: 2885 total/138 done in Jan., 1991 total/88 done in Feb.
• Dragons’ Truth – eBook: 103 dl’s in Jan., 92 dl’s in Feb.
• Dragons’ Truth – Podiobook: 1929 total/228 done in Jan., 1243 total/124 done in Feb.
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – eBook: 98 dl’s in Jan. (1 paid), 79 dl’s in Feb.
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – Podiobook: 5890 total/186 done in Jan., 4649 total/144 done in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book One – eBook: 94 dl’s in Jan., 93 dl’s in Feb. (1 paid)
• Untrue Tales… Book One – Podiobook: 4078 total/337 done in Jan., 3907 total/354 done in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – eBook: 66 dl’s in Jan., 84 dl’s in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – Podiobook: 4220 total/344 done in Jan., 4232 total/357 done in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – eBook: 121 dl’s in Jan, 67 dl’s in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – Podiobook: 3050 total/274 done in Jan., 1607 total/155 done in Feb.
• Cheating, Death – eBook*: 0 dl’s in Jan., 1 dl in Feb.
• Cheating, Death – Podiobook: 8853 total/687 done in Jan., 4758 total/358 done in Feb.
• More Lost Memories – full eBook*: 0 dl’s in Jan., 1 dl in Feb.
• More Lost Memories – individual story eBooks*: 1 dl in Jan., 4 dl’s in Feb.
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – eBook*: 0 dl’s in Jan., 1 dl in Feb.

• Total eBook downloads: 568 in Jan., 504 in Feb.
• Total paid eBook downloads: 4 in Jan., 8 in Feb.
• Total Podiobooks downloads: 30,905 in Jan., 22,387 in Feb.
• Total Podiobooks “finished”: 2194 in Jan., 1991 in Feb.

Getting month-to-month stats for the Modern Evil Podcast is basically impossible at this point, but I from looking at the stats I do have, I can estimate that between 40 and 60 people are actively subscribed to the feed. Older episodes of the Modern Evil Podcast keep getting downloaded though, currently at a rate of roughly four times a week, each… which is a totally inaccurate way to state that, since it seems that what happens is that every once in a while someone finds the feed & downloads 50+ back-episodes, all at once. Anyway, there’s the download numbers for electronic versions. Now, here’s the numbers for paper versions, plus revenue figures for paper books, for art, and for eBooks: (Podiobooks donations are paid out quarterly, so YTD PB income is $0 AFAIK.)

• I had ZERO direct sales of books and art in January, and ZERO wholesale sales of paper books.
• eBooks sold in January: 4
• My cut from eBooks sales in Jan.: $7.70
• Total gross income for January: $7.70

• Mini-paintings sold in Feb.: 4
• Income from art in Feb.: $45
• Chapbooks sold in Feb.: 7
• Paperbacks sold in Feb.: 1 direct (W1kV2), 2 wholesale (C,D & UTFBF1-3), 1 sent to reviewer (FWYCR)
• Income from paper book sales in Feb: $32.63
• eBooks sold in Feb.: 8
• My cut from eBooks sales in Feb.: $9.73
• Total from book sales in Feb.: $42.36
• Total gross income for February: $87.36

Not great, but by not going to Tools of Change this year, I’m way, way ahead in terms of net income versus last year, even without sales in January. I’ll be at the Phoestival (read: Phoenix First Fridays Art Walk Block Party, on Roosevelt between Central and 7th Street from 6PM to 11PM) this week, and I’ll be showing/selling my art during Art Detour on Saturday outside Eye Lounge (5th St. & Roosevelt from 9AM to ~5PM), so hopefully I’ll be able to make some sales there.

eBook downloads are up again, after an off year in 2009. February wasn’t as good as January, but it was also 3 days shorter… though that doesn’t account for the actual level of dropoff in total downloads, or the opposite experience in sales. These numbers bring the total number of my podcast episodes downloaded (PB+MEPod, all time) to 264,615 (YTD: 53,292) with the total number of “final” episodes downloaded from Podiobooks.com (a more accurate number, I think) to 14,893 (YTD: 3,774), and the total number of eBook downloads from modernevil.com to 9,494 (YTD: 1,072). Total number of books sold (eBooks+paperbacks+chapbooks+giveaways) YTD is 23. One way to read that is to say that for each person who has downloaded a free copy of one of my books this year, less than one in two hundred of them decided to pay. And I think that’s more than enough numbers for now.

Anyway, ‘Second Thoughts’ will run for 3 episodes. I’ve got it recorded but not yet edited. Then I had planned on alternating between episodes of the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut (on Fridays) and new poetry (on Tuesdays)… and when I drew up that schedule a couple of months ago, I’d expected to have been able to write the 5 new poems such a schedule calls for… but I haven’t written any new poetry.  I could grab 5+ more poems from my 3 existing collections. I could cut the podcast back to once a week. I could *quick* write some poetry in the next 2 weeks. I haven’t yet decided.

Regardless of what I do, after I finish podcasting ‘Second Thoughts’ and the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut, I’m out. If I only do 1 episode of LaNF-DC per week, I’ll run out of content April 9th. Including the presumed mid-week poetry episodes, that’ll be episode 167. I don’t have anything ready for episode 168. Yet.

Theoretically I could podcast the remaining stories from More Lost Memories… though I have been reluctant to do so. I could podcast all the remaining poetry from both volumes of Worth 1k… I could edit and polish the other stories from my unfinished collection and podcast them. I could … write a new book. I could let my podcast go on ‘hiatus’ pending new content. I don’t know.

I should be able to write a new book between now and then, but I have a lot of other things going on. A major factor of which is that the book I’m currently researching for … I expect not to be one of the quick ones. I expect to spend at least the next month researching for it, actually (though I suppose if I cut back on crochet work, I could get through my reading faster), before I write word one. I expect it to come out to be one of my longest novels yet, if I want to do a good and thorough job with it. I suppose I could do what some other authors have done before, which is to podcast the unfinished, unedited work as-I-write-it. Or I could write some other book in between researching for it, and podcast that.  I don’t know.

What I don’t want to do is podfade. To stop podcasting. I really would prefer not to go on hiatus. I don’t want to lose my momentum. I also don’t want the quality to drop, or the nature of the feed to change – it’s a podcast of my writing. It isn’t some guy jabbering, it isn’t an interview show, it isn’t topical or political or humorous or informative – it’s a podcast of all the literature I write. Twice a week, every week. I’d like that to continue.

In 2008 I tried listening to 7th Son, as read by J.C. Hutchins for Podiobooks.com, and couldn’t even finish the first episode. This was partially because I was trying, for the first time, to listen to podcasts while working at home  - when working at my last day job, I could listen literally all day without trouble; I found in 2008 that my current work mostly doesn’t allow for it. (I’ve recently been changing my working conditions somewhat, and have listened to a podcast audiobook or two while painting, so maybe I’ll get back to all the podcasts & audiobooks I paused in March, 2008.) It was partially because J.C. Hutchins’ voice is difficult for me to listen to. It was partially because the hook (4-year-old psychopath assassinates the president & uses swears!) didn’t hook me (actually, it was almost silly enough I quit in the first few minutes). It was partially because of the writing quality & tone of the next 25 minutes of the first episode. Anyway, I didn’t finish it and never managed to go back to it.

When Personal Effects: Dark Art was about to come out, in summer 2009, buying into the hype and all the rave reviews from the army of adoring fans that J.C. Hutchins was a good writer, not to mention that I’ve been following ARGs since I was a Cloudmaker from day 1 of The Beast, I pre-ordered a copy of PE:DA. I listened to the episodes of the Personal Effects: Sword of Blood prequel podcast story which were available at the time of PE:DA’s release with my wife, then read PE:DA aloud to her and went through the materials and websites with her, then asked J.C. Hutchins whether he would prefer me to avoid writing a 2-star review, since I didn’t want to hurt the sales of a fellow podcast author (or damage my standing in the very clique-ish podcasting community). Then I didn’t write a review.

Based on my experience with PE:DA, I decided not to pay for 7th Son: Descent until/unless I’d read and/or listened to it. So I requested that my library buy a copy, and I checked it out. And I let it sit on my shelf for a couple of months, renewing it without picking it up until someone else in town placed a request for it & I couldn’t renew it any more. It’s due back tomorrow, so, today I read the whole book. As I read it, I updated my progress on Goodreads. (warning: spoilers) Here are my updates:

• @ page 1/356: Trying to keep my expectations super-low, to avoid nigh-inevitable disappointment & frustration
• @ page 62/356: Time to stop for breakfast.
• (on twitter, probably on page 62): Have I mentioned I don’t like thrillers?
• @ page 106/356: As a fan of Dollhouse, it’s hard to like this, even knowing it came first.
• (on twitter, page 184/356): @rkalajian Note: It is distracting to see names of people I know, like yours, peppering the book.
• @ page 216/356: Lunch break.
• @ page 261/356: I feel like I’ve finally gotten past the prologue & into Act 1. Or into Act 2 of a 5-Act, if you like. Yet almost finished…
• @ page 279/356: Literally *just* got the stakes, ie: so far we didn’t know more than “villain is probably planning something.” This is ridiculous.
• @ page 319/356: Really? A Nazi? Sigh.
• @ page 356/356: Well, that was something. Most of the writing was better than expected & better than PE:DA, but I’m glad I didn’t pay for it.

As I stated, aside from the Prologue, Chapter 1, and Chapter 18, the writing of 7th Son: Descent was -overall- better than my entire PE:DA experience.  There were still the annoying italicized asides/thoughts/sounds, the J.C. Hutchins-coined slang, and a couple of characters that just reminded me of the ones that most annoyed me in PE:DA (and of Hutchins’ cloying voice, to boot). Oh, and have I mentioned I don’t particularly like thrillers? So the fact that the 7th Son trilogy is a thriller doesn’t thrill me. Last year, as part of my research before writing Cheating, Death, I ended up reading quite a few thrillers (& other commercial fiction), and I believe that J.C. Hutchins’ writing is on par with writers like Brad Meltzer and Jonathan Maberry, and is a better writer than the “Richard Castle” we were given in print.

Structurally I had some trouble with 7th Son: Descent, but I have a feeling that this is related to the entire trilogy having been intended to be a single story. This book doesn’t have a whole story. The majority of the 7th Son: Descent is setup, background, and exposition. What Maberry has over Hutchins is structure; the climactic showdown battle in 7th Son: Descent would have been early in a Maberry thriller, and would have been followed up by at least a couple of bigger, more thrilling, and higher-stakes situations. Oh, and then Maberry would give a resolution to the story, even if he were intending to follow it up with a sequel/series. 7th Son simply stopped, just as things were beginning to build momentum. Yes, thrillers are very formulaic, and yes, 7th Son: Descent follows the formula… as far as it goes; it just doesn’t make it all the way to the end.

And while most of what I don’t like about Hutchins’ books is in the characterizations and trying-too-hard-to-be-hip dialogue, it wasn’t as bad as what I’ve seen in other thrillers. Also, something Hutchins has over writers like Meltzer & Dan Brown (at least in 7th Son: Descent — PE:DA fell into this trap) is an avoidance of having characters (who are presented as smart) who, despite their best efforts, couldn’t solve their way out of a wet sack, only to have them save the day accidentally, by coincidence, and/or by failing altogether to act. So that’s a plus.

My family is making fun of me for writing book reviews over 1k words (I’m already over 1160), so I’m going to try to wrap up some of my other thoughts quickly: I’m not a fan of Kilroy. Period. I think putting a Nazi in the book was like terrible icing on a cake built from layer after layer of preposterous premises. I’m generally pretty ready to suspend disbelief, but that sort of thing makes it difficult. Chapter 1 is the weakest chapter in the entire book, and is a big part of why it took me 2+ years to get into 7th Son. It feels almost as though two totally different writers worked on this; one who wrote PE:DA, PE:SoB, and 7th Son: Descent’s Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 18, and an occasional line of thought/dialogue, and a second writer who wrote the rest of 7th Son: Descent. I found myself semi-frequently groaning at the writing, and (sitting alone in my room) verbally describing the book as “terrible” as I worked through it.

Have I mentioned I don’t like thrillers, or most mainstream commercial fiction? By the standards of thrillers and commercial fiction I’ve read, this book is reasonably-well-written, and represents a good Volume I of a three-volume book. If/when I hear the rest of the book won’t be making it to print, I may someday listen to the whole thing in audio form, but right now the story is not compelling enough and (to my ear) J.C. Hutchins’ voice is grating enough that I do not expect to experience the rest of this story soon. Just my preferences. (To be fair, I get a fair amount of complaints about my voice(s) on my podiobooks, myself. Different people’s ears experience narration differently, just as different people like different genres.) If you like thrillers and/or commercial fiction, and/or if you don’t mind J.C. Hutchins’ voice, you may be in for a treat. A lot of people like it, and you can always try it for free.

My website, wretchedcreature.com, is my gallery, I say. I do most of my sales online, I say, and a fair amount through the First Fridays Art Walk.

Then, about half the time, they want to talk about what other local artists I know, show with, and/or work with.

Sigh.

I don’t know this stuff. I don’t know how one gets one’s art into a gallery. I don’t know how an artist would select galleries they wished to show in; what are the criteria to judge it on? I don’t know how galleries decide what artists to show; what criteria are they judging artists on? On this latter count, I can make some guesses:

Past shows, prizes/grants/fellowships won, fine arts degrees held, notability/name-recognition, market value of work, and what other galleries are showing the work. To which, right now, I can answer: None, none, none, none, none, none*, and none. (*well, very low, compared to every price I’ve seen in an established gallery)

I’m aware that galleries expect to, like most retailers, pay the creator 50% of the list price for works sold. Same as books. Same reason I’m in no hurry to get my books sold through book stores. Same reason I don’t really try to drive sales even to Amazon.com. Please, buy from me in person or through modernevil.com or wretchedcreature.com. I’ll hand it directly to you, personally. If it’s a book, I’ll sign it to you. (The art’s already signed.) Theoretically, the benefit of having the art in the gallery is that then they’ll market it for you, I guess, since it’s in their self-interest to sell it so they can get their 50%. The more they sell, the more money they make. Theoretically they have a client list of people who they know buy art, who they can contact to try to sell my art. Theoretically they have open hours when someone can just walk in off the street and see my art, who wouldn’t have otherwise seen it. I’m just not sold on the concept.

Then again, I’m not sold on the concept of money, either. Which I can see, intellectually, is the point. Right now, with no galleries showing my work, few people see it, fewer buy it, and I don’t make a lot of sales – but when I do sell, I get the full sales price to cover my expenses (and maybe even make a profit). If I had my work in galleries, more people would see it, theoretically more people would buy it, and while the gallery would take 50% right off the top of every sale, the higher volume would (theoretically) end up giving me more money. Except if I were selling a higher volume of work, the overhead expenses would be equally higher, and profit would be more difficult to achieve. In fact, I’d be doing the same creative work for less money, and I would be less likely to have personal contact/relationships with the people buying my art.

That’s not taking into account that a gallery would almost certainly want me to raise my prices. On one hand, this would increase how much I was earning from each piece (perhaps even reaching into the realm of a reasonable hourly wage, even after expenses and the gallery’s 50% and the government’s chunk). On the other hand, it would price my work out of the realm of possibility of the people who have, historically, always been the fondest of my work – young people. I don’t know.

…

…my thoughts went off track there, and I wasn’t writing it, and I’m not going to write it all out, but it ended with “I wish I could just kill myself,” so you know this isn’t good…

…earlier tonight I was thinking of maybe looking into finding out what I’d have to do to get my art into galleries, but … This, I don’t need. In the last two weeks I’ve figured out how to get my family into a stable financial position; I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to see exactly what the numbers come out to, but everything looks to be 150% better than the last year, which was certainly survivable. (And that’s without any pressure on me to make more than $1 this year.) I feel I’m in a good place with my writing, with 4+ books queued up to be written (books I like the idea of writing, which is important to me) this year and months before I run out of already-written stuff for the podcast. I’ve just started something that could lead to a whole series of interesting and thematically linked paintings – something I’ve never really done much of, in the past, but have wanted to try. You probably saw my new year / old decade post; I’m in a generally good place, doing what I want to be doing.

Things that lead to suicidal thoughts, I do not need. F_ck that. I don’t need it.

I may make a post about what happened in my mind in the “…” up there.  It’s not an unoriginal line of thought, and may be more the source of the problem than this galleries garbage, so it’s worth investigating.  But not right now.  Not tonight. And I know I didn’t touch on the issue of validation or prestige associated with being shown, partially because I was side-tracked by my own brain, and partially because I don’t much care about either. Another time, another train of thought, but not now. I don’t need this right now.

They tell me that if I’d just let other people do B, C, D, E, et cetera, then I’d be able to focus on A. Depending on who I’m talking to, and what they think should be my focus, feel free to shuffle those random placeholder letters. Often without first-hand knowledge of my work, they assume that the quality of B, C, D, E, et cetera are insufficient – in fact, they also often assume that whatever A they’ve picked as my focus is also not up to par, on account of my spending so much time & effort on the rest of the alphabet.

Alas, I have an aversion to working with other people, and I never bought into the idea that any one human could only do one thing well.

So I spend most of my time alone. And I do most everything on my own. When I farm out part of my work to another entity, I try to farm it out to robots and other automated systems; when I put together a new book, it goes from a set of digital files to a book both in my hands and for sale anywhere without my having to communicate directly with even one other human. Even that, I’ve been considering doing myself. A few months ago I was looking into acquiring a small offset printer (& looking into binding solutions) so that I could print and bind my own books. It’s still something I’m considering. I like doing things myself. (Not to an extreme, such as making my own paper, weaving & stretching my own canvas, or creating my own pigments, but most of the way there.)

I write my books. I edit my books. I create the layouts. I design the covers. I write the copy and design the web sites. I record and edit the audiobooks. I compose the music for the podcasts. I sell most of the books by hand, standing in the street. When orders come through my web site, I pack and ship the books; I hand-address the envelopes. I paint my paintings. I photograph them. I put them online. I sell most of them by hand, often standing in the street. I am the creator. I do all the creating, then I personally put my creations into the hands of the readers and art lovers who want them.

In the few areas where my control ends and a human’s control begins, I have found that rather than getting excellence I get delays, complications, mistakes, and disappointment. I have come to accept that, for example, Podiobooks.com is not fully automated, so that whether my episodes go up on time is based on what’s happening in a particular human being’s life – a particular human being with no personal stake in their timing. So I stopped caring whether they went up on time there, and started my own podcast/site where I have full control over when episodes are posted. I have to work with people in order to participate in the First Friday Art Walk, where a significant portion of my sales take place each month. After the first few months doing it, I came to accept that things would never go as planned and to simply expect  and accept that some new problem will crop up every single month. The problems are always, always because of human error, and usually because of people with “no skin in the game” being the ones making the plans and decisions. Oh, and although I don’t usually talk to them, there are humans involved in the process of getting a book set up at my printer – so I’ve come to understand that it’s unreasonable to expect the book to be ready to print or available for sale on time, or even within the time periods contractually promised me.

I heard or read something recently that I felt clarified a point about goals I wasn’t well able to express in my long post about it. The idea was that anything you hoped to achieve, if it required someone other than yourself to do even as little as say yes, or say no, wasn’t a goal, but a dream. Things you could potentially achieve without relying on someone else are goals. But you can’t count on other people, you can’t force other people, you can’t know what other people are going to do before they do it. So things you hope to achieve that rely on someone else doing something particular, those are just dreams. Those are, at least partially, not achievable by you. Part of the point of making such a distinction is to set personal expectations appropriately. To recognize that sometimes other people don’t come through. Sometimes they do. People achieve their dreams every day. But not always. (I would say, not often.)

As easily as I can set (and achieve) the goal of writing another book, of doing everything to go from an idea in my head to a digital/physical product I can share with other readers, the getting someone to buy and/or read that book is just a dream. In the same way, every part of my work I hand off to another person to accomplish goes from being a goal I can achieve to something I have to hope & dream another person (or company, or group of people) will do their part to help me achieve. My time tables, my quality expectations, my creative vision, they go out the window and are replaced by those of the other people involved. (And the more I insist on any one of those aspects getting closer to what I want, the farther the other two get.)

The unreliability and inconsistency of other people isn’t the only (or even the primary) reason I don’t like other people, but it has a lot to do with why I don’t like working with other people. I’m anti-social, misanthropic, and -some would say- nihilistic. I don’t loathe everyone, and I’m aware that many people do excellent work – I’m also aware that it tends to be when they are working on something they care about and believe in, rather than “for money” or “for other people,” that people tend to do their best work. So… theoretically all I need to do, if I wanted to work with other people (aside from somehow overcoming my being generally anti-social), is to somehow find people who are passionate about and care about my creations, as much as or more than I do. Let me know if you see any.

• Dragons’ Truth – 11,458 downloads in 2008, 15,985 downloads in 2009: 27,443 total downloads
• Lost and Not Found – 2,906 downloads in 2008, 18,251 downloads in 2009: 21,157 total downloads
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 43,218 downloads in 2009
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 35,704 downloads in 2009 (~9 months)
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 27,178 downloads in 2009 (~6 months)
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 13,502 downloads in 2009 (~4 months)
• Cheating, Death – 11,899 downloads in 2009 (~2 months)
• Total downloads in 2008: 14,364
• Total downloads in 2009: 165,737
• Total of all my Podiobooks’ downloads as of 12/31/09: 180,101
• Total downloads of MEPod as of 1/8/2010: 24,229
• Grand total of Podiobooks + MEPod: 204,330

So there’s some bigger numbers. Still long-tail sized numbers. Even within podcast audiobooks, I’m a small fish. But 204,330 looks a lot better than the 11,119 downloads of just the final episodes of my podiobooks. Puts the donations in perspective; for every ~6005 downloads of my Podiobooks, $1 is donated. Podiobooks.com’s $0.25 cut wouldn’t cover the bandwidth cost of those 150Gb+ of downloads, so I suppose it’s a good thing they aren’t being charged for bandwidth.

One of the thoughts was related to the apparent ‘new decade’ (no need to get into technical definitions and ‘counting starts at 1′ – my beliefs about time are far and away less specific, & more meaningful and orderly) and the question of what one was doing 10 years prior. On Twitter this was often read as 10 years ago to the minute; I suppose it was fun for people to think about a 10-year-old party on New Year’s Eve. But a lot can happen in ten years. A lot happened in mine. Ten years ago…  Ten years ago I’d already begun painting again, a bit, though I still hadn’t re-started my writing.  Ten years ago I’d just begun creating online comics for the first time. Ten years ago I was living in Tempe. Ten years ago I cut my hair off: New Year’s Eve 1999 I had hair so long I could sit on it, New Year’s Day 2000 I had “normal” short hair.  Ten years ago this month I was getting fired (technically I quit) from MicroAge for insubordination for calling out my boss’s incompetence in front of the other employees (he & I & his boss & HR all agreed he was incompetent and that I was right about everything except saying so where the other employees could hear), and later that day I was getting hired at Realink. It was nearly ten years ago that Sara said yes. (Did you know she said yes, once?)

Since then, I’ve painted quite a bit more and by early 2002 I’d got back to writing again, though by September 2004 I’d stopped creating new comics. (I suppose that lasted exactly 5 years, from September 1999 to September 2004.) I did fun things with my short hair, bleaching it, dying it fun colors (blue, green, pink, and purple – sometimes all at once & in my own designs), et cetera. In 2002 I worked my way back into college, to try to pursue a BFA in painting, then got laid off from Realink (My insubordination there was turning down promotions I didn’t want. Repeatedly.) and, the economy actually having been sh!t (for normal people) this entire decade, I couldn’t find another job. I wrote Forlorn, my first novel, that year, “before I turned 25.”

Then, I moved to Pine, AZ at the start of 2003 and lived with my grandparents – my grandmother needed near-full-time care after her stroke (and a lifetime of increasingly bad heart problems), my grandfather had been doing alright taking care of her, but then his cancer came out of remission and on chemo he couldn’t do that and maintain the property up there, so I went up to help out as much as I could. And to escape from the world. To go live in the mountains. To retire from corporate life and to become a full-time creative. I edited Forlorn into Lost and Not Found, I began selling my art and my hand-made natural-form furniture from the family shop I ran there, I began getting commissions for new paintings, I wrote Dragons’ Truth, and I developed a deeper appreciation for my family, building a relationship with my grandparents before I lost the chance. I grew out my hair and my beard; I did not trim them at all for several years (though I did eventually start shaving my upper lip).

In 2004 the economy was truly in a slump; I had to drastically lower the prices on my art to keep sales up, and by the summer of 2004 I had to move back to Phoenix and find work. I ended up working in a travel agency’s mail room for half the pay I’d been getting at Realink. At first I tried literally to kill myself, then stayed there nearly 4 years. I wrote the first three books of the Untrue Tales… series during those years. I painted more. I fell in love again. I had actual sex for the first time. Then had it turned around on me, not just ripped away but twisted into a horror, and I was thrown into a painful emotional tailspin that devastated me for years. I cut off my beard and began keeping my head shaved. I wrote two collections of poetry. I started my own, official, publishing company, Modern Evil Press. In October of 2006 I met Mandy and then courted her over the course of the next year -no need to get into the emotional, sexual, and spiritual difficulties that year entailed in a post like this- and on December 1st, 2007 Mandy and I were married.

In March of 2008 I left my corporate job (I was fired for insubordination when my boss insisted that it didn’t matter what was right, only that I do it as she’d decided, and I insisted -rather loudly and violently- that if that were the case I couldn’t work with her any more) to retire once again to the life of a full-time creative. My wife, who I love and who loves me very much, has been willing to accept the relatively meager lifestyle of a single-income family (see yesterday’s post on Numbers) in order to allow me to do what I love and am passionate about. And to keep me from having to deal with the life-threatening difficulties of attempting to hold down a corporate job.  (Which is to say, we are both well aware that I would probably make additional attempts on my own life if faced with doing a job I loathe, especially if for an incompetent, unreasonable boss.)

Since which time I’ve written another two novels, a collection of short stories, recorded and serialized seven audiobooks from my novels, painted quite a lot more, and learned a bit of bookkeeping, business, and tax rules. I’ve shown my art and my books at most of the Roosevelt Row block parties on the Phoenix First Friday Art Walks each month, and have been an active member of the event’s Vendor Committee. I’ve only occasionally been insubordinate to my boss (myself), usually by doing things like suggesting that I write what people want to read instead of simply writing what I want to write. Oh, and I’ve begun regularly attending a church, an activity I haven’t done since … well, since 1996 or 1997, I suppose. I’ve even begun to read more books, again, which had fallen off quite a bit since moving back to the city.

Which brings us back to the present, and to the ‘new year’ ahead. 2010. This is supposed to be the year the aliens collapse Jupiter into a star and jump-start the intelligence of life on Europa, right? If it happens, I won’t be surprised. No, this year I’m looking forward to more of the same. What same, you ask? Well, let’s look back: Fifteen through twenty years ago I was creative; writing and painting and storytelling. Ten years ago I was beginning to get back into being creative; painting, drawing & writing comics, and writing online (my online journal posts go back to March 2000 – those 1995 posts are transcribed from a paper journal I was forced to keep for a class). During the last ten years there’s been a recurring theme of getting “back into” art and writing, of retiring from workaday life to be a full-time creative, and of my incompatibility with keeping a job and putting up with corporate bullshit. So more of the same is: working on my art, writing new books, telling new stories, trying to figure out how to get more money out of my creations (or at the least to lose less money on the books), and trying not to have to go get a literally soul-crushing corporate job.

In 2010 I want to read at least a dozen books on [Hitler, Einstein, and the 1918 Spanish Flu], then to write that zombie novel I’ve got lodged in my brain. Then see if I want to research for and write the [70's|80's] zombie thriller/mystery that follows it. Then totally write the teen/zombie/religion book I’d meant to write last year, but couldn’t on account of I need to write those other two books (the 2 I just said I want to write) as research first. I’d like to see if I know how to finish the second book I began for NaNoWriMo 2009, another book with an author for the main character. I’d like to finish Time, emiT, and Time Again – which calls for at least a couple more skewed-time-based speculative fiction stories. I know that’s five books already, but I’d also like to write some new poetry, this year. Oh, and I worked out that I only have to write a quarter-million-words a year to maintain about a half hour of original podcast literature per week, every week…

In 2010 I want to read many, many other books. I have a huge backlist from the library already, and hundreds of books on my shelves that I bought, intending to read, and haven’t read yet. I’d like to review most of them, too. Reading is good for you, you know.

In 2010 I want to paint more, and better, than I have before. I’ve even penciled in the finishing of the correspondence art course I bought and began but never completed (especially since I can’t possibly afford to go back to school right now). In addition to potentially improving my technique, I’d like to begin to consider the idea of “intent” and of “purpose.” Right now I paint because I’m an artist, but I understand that other artists create art with other reasons in mind. Most of them seem to have something specific they intend to communicate with their art. This is, generally, not the case with my work. In 2010, I’d like at least to consider the idea of whether or not I’d like to try to mean something.

I keep thinking about wanting to try my hand at making comics again. I don’t know whether 2010 is the year for it. Wait and see, I suppose. At the least, I’d like to build a working site for my existing comics, and put all the archives of my old comics up online.

In 2010 I want to work on being a better Christian. To pray more. To read the Bible more. To seek God’s will more. To soften my hard heart and my stiff neck, if it is His will. I’d like to be a better husband to my wife, and a better role-model as a life-long-Christian to her as a pretty-new-Christian. I’d like to learn to be a better member of my church, of the community. This paragraph represents the hardest of what I’ve listed.

I’m sure there’s more, but this post has gone over 2k words, all told. Quite a ramble. But if the point wasn’t clear: I’m in a good place. I’m happy. Even though I’ve been pretty bad lately, even in this deep depression, I’m happy. (If that doesn’t make sense, ask me about it. It makes sense to me.) I’m doing what I want to be doing, what I’ve been working on doing for a long time, and even though it isn’t exactly financially successful, it’s been successful for me and my family in the ways that matter to us. I’m happily married, and my wife loves me more than I’ll probably ever be able to catch up to. My God loves me, and is faithful and just. My family gets along with one another, loves one another, and that is a real blessing.

The last ten years have had a lot of ups and downs, but they’ve been good and they’ve brought me to a good place. The next year will certainly have more ups and downs, but as I said, I’m glad to hope for more of the same.

To begin, a snapshot of right now. As of 1/1/2010, I have 13 titles in some form of publication or other. 5 standalone novels, 2 poetry journals, 2 short story collections, 3 books in the Untrue Tales… series and a single edition containing those 3 books. One of the novels (the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut) is currently only available as an eBook. One of the short story collections (Time, emiT, and Time Again) isn’t yet finished, but I’ve released one of the short stories that will be contained in it as a standalone chapbook.  The 3 individual Untrue Tales… books aren’t technically “in print”, though I have a few copies, printed by Cafepress & sans ISBN. I am not counting The Vintage Collection, though it is another book I’ve put together, had printed, and sold at one time. (I plan to edit and re-release it at a later date.) Seven of my books are available as podcast audiobooks, and all but the poetry is available as eBooks.

Now. What would you like first, sales numbers, or free download numbers?  Sales numbers you say? Alright, free downloads it is! Early in 2008 I began putting my books online as free PDFs & txt files, and in April of 2008 (shortly after I returned to life as a full-time creative) I put all my novels (Lost and Not Found, Dragons’ Truth, and Untrue Tales… Book One, Book Two, and Book Three) as free eBooks in 7 different formats (PDF, galley-style PDF, txt, rtf, html, mobi, & epub) on modernevil.com, and made them available for sale on Amazon’s kindle. Here are 2008’s download numbers:

• Lost and Not Found – 1079 downloads, including 1 paid copy
• Dragons’ Truth – 961 downloads, including 3 paid copies
• Untrue Tales… Book 1 – 948 downloads, including 2 paid copies
• Untrue Tales… Book 2 – 964 downloads, including 1 paid copy
• Untrue Tales… Book 3 – 897 downloads, including 1 paid copy
• Total eBook downloads in 2008: 4849
• Total paid eBook downloads in 2008: 8
• Total direct revenue from eBooks in 2008: $22.71

Also in 2008, I began podcasting audio versions of my books. In June 2008 I released Dragons’ Truth all at once, and starting in September 2008 I began podcasting Lost and Not Found (finishing in December 2008). Tracking the # of people who have downloaded the podcast audiobooks is more tricky than eBooks, since each book is broken into many files. I’ve gathered data about how many people have downloaded the first episode of each book, as well as the number who have downloaded the last episode of each book. I figure counting downloads of the final episode is a fairly conservative estimate of downloads. Here are the numbers for all of 2008:

• Dragons’ Truth – 2334 downloads of first, 1271 downloads of last, $9.99 donated
• Lost and Not Found – 434 downloads of first, 80 downloads of last
• Total “finished” downloads of audiobooks in 2008: 1351
• Total direct income from podcast audiobooks (after Podiobooks’ cut) for 2008: $7.49

On 1/1/2009, I published two new books, Forget What You Can’t Remember and More Lost Memories. I began podcasting Forget What You Can’t Remember on the same day. It was complete by April, and I started Untrue Tales… Book One the next week. Book One was complete in June, Book Two ran from July to September, and Book Three ran from September to November. In September/October I wrote a new novel, Cheating, Death, publishing it as an eBook for sale while I was still writing it. Cheating, Death was in print by 10/31 and began podcasting on Friday, 11/13/09 (finishing 12/25/09). For the eBooks, I decided to treat Forget What You Can’t Remember like my other novels, and made it available as a free eBook in 9 formats (I added .lrf & .pdb) and for sale on Amazon’s kindle. Starting in January I also began putting my eBooks up for sale on Smashwords.com, beginning with Forget What You Can’t Remember. Then I decided to make More Lost Memories free only by direct request, and for sale (as a whole & with 7 of its 9 stories available individually for $0.99 each) on kindle and at Smashwords. When Cheating, Death came out, I put it up for sale and again said I’d give a free copy of the eBook to anyone who asked. (So far, only book bloggers have asked, and I sent quite a few of them free paper copies as well.) At the end of November I threw together the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut and put it up for sale as an eBook on the kindle and at Smashwords. Here are the numbers for all of 2009’s eBook downloads, with for-pay-only titles in italics:

• Lost and Not Found – 506 downloads, 5 of them paid
• Dragons’ Truth – 609 downloads, 7 of them paid
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 735 downloads, 13 of them paid
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 587 downloads, 4 of them paid
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 562 downloads, 3 of them paid
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 553 downloads, 1 of them paid
• Cheating, Death – 8 downloads
• More Lost Memories – 13 downloads, 7 of them the individual stories
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – 0 downloads
• Total eBook downloads in 2009: 3573
• Total paid eBook downloads in 2009: 54
• Total direct revenue from eBooks in 2009: $65.17

And here are 2009’s podcast/audiobook download numbers:

• Dragons’ Truth – 3231 downloads of first, 1616 downloads of last
• Lost and Not Found – 1523 downloads of first, 926 downloads of last
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 2711 downloads of first, 1150 downloads of last
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 5006 downloads of first, 2865 downloads of last, $10 donated
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 5173 downloads of first, 1843 downloads of last, $10 donated
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 1890 downloads of first, 1002 downloads of last
• Cheating, Death – 1786 downloads of first, 366 downloads of last
• Total “finished” downloads of audiobooks in 2009: 9768
• Total direct income from podcast audiobooks (after Podiobooks’ cut) for 2009: $15

Of note, the 366 downloads of the final episode of Cheating, Death actually occurred in a period of 4 days (I put it on my feed on Christmas, but it wasn’t on Podiobooks.com until the 28th). Speaking of my feed… I don’t have nearly as good of statistics for the Modern Evil Podcast as I do for the Podiobooks.com versions of my books. PodPress gives me total downloads of each file I put in the feed, and tracks how many are dl’d via the feed, direct from the site, and played through the flash-based player embedded in each post, but unless I’d been copying them out at the end of each month/year… I don’t know any way to get good breakdowns. Not to mention the number of downloads of each episode of MEPod vary wildly from one to the next. I’ve been putting all my novels into the feed, as well as quite a bit of poetry and some short fiction. Yet even when I put an entire novel up, one chapter after another uninterrupted, the numbers don’t make sense; most of my novels show more people downloaded the final chapter/episode than any other in the book. There are patterns like … the first few and last couple chapters of each book get downloaded several times more times than the others, even in the “feed” – which would mean someone (a lot of someones, actually – hundreds in some cases) had subscribed to the podcast & then selectively downloaded only a few parts of each book.

As far as numbers go, the Modern Evil Podcast seems to run at around …. 30 regular subscribers (ie: consistent & immediate feed downloads) but individual episodes tend to get downloaded… around one to two hundred times each… over time. With wild variations, as stated. Overall I might estimate that the Modern Evil Podcast has contributed an additional … perhaps 1000 finished podcast audiobook downloads to my total… including both 2008 & 2009 numbers together, since PodPress doesn’t break them out. But enough of the free download counts, let us move on to the money:

Beginning, again, with 2008, when I had 2 standalone novels, 2 poetry collections, and the 3 Untrue Tales… books plus the collected edition, for all of 2008 I sold:

• Lost and Not Found – 10 paperbacks by hand, 1 eBook: 11 copies for $143.11
• Dragons’ Truth – 3 paperbacks by hand, 3 eBooks, 1 giveaway: 7 copies for $47.74
• Untrue Tales Books 1-3 combined – 2 paperbacks by hand: 2 copies for $49.99
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 2 paperbacks by hand, 2 eBooks, 1 giveaway: 5 copies for $27.40
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 1 paperback by hand, 1 eBook: 2 copies for $14.70
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 1 eBook: 1 copy for $2.70
• Worth 1k — Volume 1 – 1 paperback by hand: 1 copy for $9.99
• Worth 1k — Volume 2 – 2 paperbacks by hand: 2 copies for $19.99
• Total copies sold of all titles: 31
• Total income from book sales in 2008: $315.62
• Paintings sold in 2008: 13 paintings & 5 mini-paintings: 18 original works of art for $1384
• Total from sales of books + art combined in 2008: $1699.62

In 2009 I added 2 novels, a short story collection, and some chapbooks; for all of 2009 I sold:

• Lost and Not Found – 4 paperbacks by hand, 3 paperbacks wholesale, 2 eBooks, 3 giveaways: 12 copies for $72.43
• Dragons’ Truth – 1 paperback by hand, 1 audiobook on CD by hand, 4 eBooks, 4 giveaways: 10 copies for $42.60
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 9 paperbacks by hand, 8 paperbacks wholesale, 9 eBooks, 18 giveaways: 44 copies for $153.98
• Untrue Tales Books 1-3 combines – 0 copies for $0
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 4 eBooks: 4 copies for $5.86
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 3 eBooks: 3 copies for 3.23
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 1 eBook: 1 copy for $0.53
• Cheating, Death – 6 paperbacks by hand, 6 paperbacks wholesale, 4 eBooks, 15 giveaways: 31 copies for $83.40
• More Lost Memories (full) – 8 paperbacks by hand, 5 paperbacks wholesale, 3 eBooks, 8 giveaways: 24 copies for $110.82
• More Lost Memories (individual stories) – 5 chapbooks by hand, 6 eBooks: 11 copies for $12.54
• Time, emiT, and Time Again (individual stories) – 4 chapbooks by hand: 4 copies for $8.00
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – 0 copies for $0
• Worth 1k — Volume 1 – 1 paperback by hand: 1 copy for $10.00
• Worth 1k — Volume 2 – 0 copies for $0
• Total copies sold of all titles in 2009: 145
• Total income from book sales in 2009: $503.39
• Paintings sold in 2009: 10 paintings & 19 mini-paintings: 29 original works of art for $1074
• Total from sales of books + art combined in 2009: $1577.39

Not very much, is it?  I also sold a few hand-screen-printed T-Shirts in 2009… but… yeah. So, a few notes: This summer for almost 3 months I reduced the prices of all my eBooks below $2 retail, to see whether volume would increase. Volume of sales did NOT increase. But that’s why, for example, I only earned $0.53 from Untrue Tales… Book Three in 2009; I earned 35% of $1.50. Also, I’ve included giveaway copies here because they’re copies that should have earned money.  I actually have another set of figures that examines the profitability of each individual title (mostly not, so far), but I’ve already put too many numbers into this post. Suffice it to say that for my in-print titles it costs me $200-$375 to get a book set up & to make an initial order of paperback copies (not counting the value of my time at all) and my highest-grossing book to date (Lost and Not Found) has only earned $218.36.  That examination is for another post, at another time.

In fact, I think I’ll save any thoughts/conclusions/analyses of these numbers for a possible future post, as well.  For right now, this is it.

If you’re the sort of person who would enjoy a book like Under the Dome, you probably already want to read it (or have already read it). You’re either a fan of Stephen King’s writing, or the premise of reading a thousand-page book detailing the devolution of a small town when it is totally cut off from the outside world by an inexplicable “Dome” sounds like fun. Everyone else need not apply. Seriously. If you have any doubts, stay away.

The main character of Under the Dome (and there are dozens of townspeople to keep track of throughout the book) is Big Jim Rennie, and he is undoubtedly the villain of the piece. (The hero isn’t even present for a good chunk of the story, and some of the most important actions taken in the entire book are at the hands of children; I certainly don’t count anyone as more central to the story than Big Jim.) Big Jim is a character that frustrated and upset me in practically every scene he was in, just as real people who behave in similar ways do in life. I simply cannot wrap my head around these sorts of people; he is willfully ignorant, he is manipulative, he is power-hungry, and he generally works from the position that it isn’t important whether a decision is right or good or rational, only that it is his decision.  Often Big Jim made decisions and put plans into motion, knowing that they would injure and/or kill innocent people, waste scarce resources, and otherwise ignore obvious harm (and better solutions for all), simply because he believed it would lead him to have more control, more power, and more respect from the townspeople. Every time he would do such things, I would find myself both uncomprehending -as though up were brown and black were trout- and recognizing the accuracy and truthfulness of Stephen King’s characterization at the same time, since I’m aware that there really are quite a lot of people who operate in this way I can’t seem to grasp.

The premise of the book, aside from the obvious “town cut off from the world by an inexplicable Dome,” is that Big Jim has put himself in a position of power in the town by surrounding himself with stupid, drug-addled, and easily manipulated people, one of whom is a nominally-in-charge rubber stamp, and that he sees The Dome as his chance to become dictator-in-fact rather than manipulative second fiddle.  The entire plot, besides many gruesome interactions with The Dome on the first day and a heavily-foreshadowed catastrophe that really ought to have killed everyone in the end, revolves around Big Jim’s manipulations to put himself totally in control, regardless of the cost. Military attempts to break through The Dome from the outside and the small, poorly-managed effort to see if maybe there’s something that can be done from inside are minor sub-plots; just distractions, to readers and to Big Jim’s machinations alike.

Except for me, it didn’t really work. I don’t like people like Big Jim in life, I didn’t like him on the page, I hated almost everything he did, and he was the book. I hung on throughout the book, but barely, leaping from one rare glimpse at the world beyond Big Jim’s games to the next – I liked things like examinations of what happens to the environment when it gets cut off, what effects extreme outside events had across the barrier, and until the “truth” was revealed, I was really interested in the cause of The Dome. The writing was on-par for Stephen King, sometimes great, sometimes cringe-inducing, and I felt he captured the characters of all the miscreants and evil people (especially Big Jim) far better than I would be able to. If nothing else, it inspired me to want to maybe, someday, be able to write a really good villain. Unfortunately, there was little else.

The environmental effects (ie: pollution building up, temperature going up, et cetera), the civilization-limiting effects (ie: running out of power, running out of fuel, running out of water, food, et cetera), and a meaningful examination of the source, purpose, extent, intentions, et cetera of The Dome – these were all left unfulfilled. The first two because of the much-foreshadowed catastrophe that ends things in a hurry, before the more interesting long-term effects became really relevant, rather than a thought exercise. It almost felt like King had more story to tell, that he would have written on and on, allowing Big Jim to fight for power against the few intelligent people left in town indefinitely, and that his publishers asked him to cut it off somewhere. Like they said “try not to go over 1k pages; that’s the effective maximum length of physical, single-volume books,” and with his opening and his ending already written, he just wrote middle until he hit that length, and stopped. Oh, and if you’re interested at all in the source of The Dome, you’re bound to be disappointed; Stephen King is, as he almost always is, rubbish with explanations. It would have been better, in my opinion, if there had been no explanation at all. “It just is.” –of course, then probably literally everyone dies. Sigh.

So, for me, Under the Dome was a frustrating book, full of frustrating characters, which had a maddening plot and a bad ending.  The ending was both unsatisfying and it was badly written. I’d say the last day’s worth of story’s writing felt unpolished, even rushed, which is unfortunate for such a high-profile release. When I started this review I’d thought I’d give it 3 stars on Goodreads. After writing the review, I think I’ll give it two. I’d maybe consider it two and a half, but they only have whole stars on Goodreads.

As if to start off on the absolute wrong foot, I’m going to review a book that isn’t really a book by an author who isn’t even a real person, a meta-book that isn’t even about what it’s about. Sorry.

Heat Wave – by Richard Castle
ISBN: 9781401323820 (Hardback, 199pp)
Borrowed from the Phoenix Library

If you aren’t aware, there exists a television show called Castle, currently in its second season on ABC. The premise of the show is that a famous and successful author of crime/thriller novels has used his connections and charm to  be allowed to “ride along” with New York City homicide detectives as research for a book with a homicide detective main character. The premise of the book (Heat Wave) is that it is the novel that the fictional novelist wrote, based on his experiences in the first season of the show.

I enjoy watching Castle, largely because the main character of the novelist is played by Nathan Fillion, and because he is given plenty of witty things to say and fun situations to play in. I’m not much of a fan of crime/thriller/procedural dramas that take themselves seriously, but as a comedy it’s alright. It’s certainly worth the 20hrs/year, and my wife and my sister also watch it. When we realized that Heat Wave, heavily featured in the 2nd season of the show, was actually a real book one could get and read, my wife requested it from the library. When it came in, Mandy read it, my sister read it, and now -since it’s coming due and there’s a waiting list (so it can’t be renewed) at the library- I read it.

If you are a fan of the series, it may be worth reading. If I were to give it a rating as an episode of the TV show, I would give it four and a half stars, primarily based on the storyline and the comedy. If I were to give it a rating based on its writing, I would give it two stars. It wasn’t so terrible I couldn’t finish it (see P&P&Z) but it was difficult to read – on a sentence by sentence basis, and as a whole. (More so if I were to pretend it was actually a novel by Richard Castle.) Some of this may be that I don’t read crime novels, I don’t like thrillers, and I’m not used to reading the style of book the (actual) author was aiming for.

I’m not going to give you a synopsis of the story, except to say that -aside from the brief sex scene wedged into the middle of the book- it exactly follows the basic structure of the show, and is like reading an extra episode of the show. The only variation from the formula for an episode of the show was Castle going home & having a conversation with his mother/daughter which suddenly gives him an insight that helps break the case. All the characters from the show have been renamed, but it’s literally like someone did a novelization of a teleplay of an unaired episode, then did a find/replace to change the names.

I think this is supposed to be satisfying to fans of the show, since the book delivers more of what the author knows they like, but it made the character of Richard Castle seem like a terrible author. Like he had no imagination and was just writing down whatever he saw and heard with no filter and nothing (but that sex scene) added. Ninety percent of the details in the book seemed to be pulled directly from the screen, and half the dialogue. This led to a lot of awkward sentences and situations, trying to wedge something we’d recognize from the show onto every page and into every conversation. This might have worked better if Castle on the show had been constantly taking notes, but the pseudo-Castle character in the book seemed to take notes more than the Castle character does on TV.

The awkward writing resulted in a reading rate about 50% slower than my average reading rate. I set down last night to read it in one sitting and it actually took over 5 hours to read the 200 pages. There were three short sections of the book that flowed really well and seemed well-polished. One was an action sequence (notable because one of the characters was nude – something they couldn’t have done on network television), which made it seem like the actual author (not the fictional Richard Castle) was more comfortable writing action-packed books than TV comedy/drama. One was the brief sex scene, which -since they gave the page number on an episode of the show- they could expect would be the most-read and most-closely-read few pages of the book, so it just seemed like they’d spent more time re-writing and polishing that scene and made the rest seem even worse. Then there was the end of the book: The resolution to the story also seemed well-written and highly polished; like they were counting on people’s whole impression of the book being based on the last thing they read. I know it’s true for a lot of people, but I wish they’d put as much effort into the rest of the book.

If Richard Castle’s writing was as bad as this, his character loses a lot of his charm and believability. And Beckett (the detective character on the TV show) loses hers, based on her impression of and experience with the book, in the series. They’re both supposed to be intelligent and well-read, but this book … doesn’t fit. Since I’m aware that this is actually just part of a marketing campaign for the show, the throw-away writing pandering to (and ripping off) the show at every turn (rather than being a well-written and imaginative story merely inspired by the fictional events of Castle’s experiences and written with an authorial voice on par with the Castle portrayed on the show), I can accept it. It is what it is. It isn’t what it pretends to be.

Okay. So I’m not very good at reviewing books, yet. I’ll keep reading, hopefully keep reviewing, and perhaps with practice I’ll get better at it. But there you go, some words about Heat Wave.

Let me try to put the problem in terms of its scale:

• A dedicated reader (of which there are few) will probably read around 3000 books in their entire life.  (1 book a week for 60 years is 3120 books… some people may read faster or live longer, but not by much.)
• A more average reader will probably read around 1000 books in their lifetime.  (1 book a month for 60 years is only 720 books…)
• Many adults (perhaps as much as 40% of literate adults) will read less than 1 book a year, and fewer than 50 books in their life.
• In the US in 2008 over 75,000 publishers published over half a million new books, averaging over 1500 new titles per day, every day.

To restate:  There are more new books being published every day than the average reader will read in their entire life.

The tough question that isn’t being addressed, the unsolved problem, doesn’t have to do with how much eBooks should cost, what sort of devices we’ll read eBooks on, or what format readers prefer.  It’s a problem of scale.  Kirkus is shutting down, which is sad, but they only reviewed about 5000 new titles per year – less than 1% of 2008’s titles and less than 2% of new titles in 2006 & earlier.  No one knows how to review all the books, or even most of the books.

The number of new books being created is only growing.  (38% year-over-year growth in number of titles since 2006 – I’m waiting to see if 2009 actually puts new titles in the 750k range!)  It’s easier and easier for more and more people to publish books, between eBooks and POD technology, and it’s only going to become easier and cheaper as time goes on.  There was some backlash recently when someone over at scribd suggested that we’d be better off with three million books instead of 300,000 -and I assume he meant three million new books per year- and a lot of book bloggers suggested that he was off-base, and that current output was already too big.  But we’re already on track for that.  I don’t know global numbers (is it possible the global publishing output is already 5x-10x the size of the US publishing output?), but I fully expect new-books-publishing in all forms to surpass 3 million titles per year within 5 years (10 on the outside).

When more new books are being published every three to four hours than the average reader will read in their entire lifetime, how do you choose what to read?  How does an author find an audience?  How does a publisher make a profit?  How does a bookstore compete with the internet / sell eBooks / et cetera?

It isn’t just old-publishing (hardbacks at $30, only as many books as fit on physical shelves) versus new-media (eBooks <$10, infinite shelving on the internet’s virtual shelves), it’s a problem of the amount of reading material dwarfing what anyone could ever read.  In the past, in the old model, this was “solved” by books going out-of-print – only the current season’s books were readily available, and anything more than a year or two old was generally unavailable.  Some books were kept in print on publishers’ back lists, but only a few from any given year.  This is why the fact that the number of books that have ever been published (Google estimates it around 100 million titles by the year 2000), though already impossible for any one person to consume or really consider, hasn’t previously appeared to be a problem.  Now there are groups trying to make all those books available to everyone all at once.  And forces at work that will increase the total by a larger and larger fraction every year.

Which of those hundred million books ought I to read?  Which of the three million new books published (in the US alone) in this decade ought I to read?  Solve that problem, and all the rest of publishing’s “problems” will seem easily resolved.

So I took some time on Monday and put together a quick “Director’s Cut” that had all the love story and fantasy adventure that had ended up being the last third of Lost and Not Found, cut out the few scenes that had connected it further to the confusing-and-irrelevant characters-who-get-found-and-forgotten, and re-attached the part of the story that goes to Skythia (released earlier this year as a short story in More Lost Memories). I wrote a few words about why I was creating the Director’s Cut, put them up on modernevil.com. I wrote a quick marketing summary so I could put the book up for sale as an eBook on Smashwords. Whoosh, from frustration at people misunderstanding my book to publishing a version of the book that those frustrated people would hate outright, in the space of an afternoon.

Yesterday I sketched for a while & then painted an image for the cover.  I’ve been thinking about doing this with other books (have you seen the covers of More Lost Memories and Cheating, Death?) and I’ve finally decided to do it with the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: I’ve put the painting I did for the cover art up for sale at a price that will allow me to fund a paperback release of the book. If you buy the art, I’ll make the book available on paper. ((Alternatively, if I can get, say, 25 people to pre-order a paper copy, I’ll make the book available on paper.)) Otherwise, it’s going to remain available only in formats that cost me nothing to make available: eBook (and probably audiobook, later this year, especially since I’ve already recorded most of it).

I’m thinking of trying this with some of my future books:  Release them as an eBook and if 1) enough eBook copies sell or 2) the original painting for the cover sells or 3) enough people are willing to pre-order then I’ll put out a print edition.  Because realistically, right now, I’m not even breaking even on the publishing costs.  I sell too-few copies.  I’m not saying this is permanent/final, especially since I sell a lot more paper copies by hand (and make more money per copy) than I sell eBooks, but I figure it’s worth a try.  It’s my publishing company, I can do what I want, right?  The only rules to follow are my own.

So, here’s the brief marketing summary I wrote for Smashwords:

A non-traditional story; no real conflict, no struggle, no antagonist, and -some would say- no plot. A love story of fantastic proportions, of two people who realize that the less-than-comfortable normalcy they’d felt responsible to is the only thing keeping them from achieving true bliss. With a faerie, titans, a two-headed monster, a flying city, amazing museums, unusual time mechanics, & more.

And here’s the page-or-so I wrote “About the Director’s Cut”:

Lost and Not Found was the first look at the storybook universe expanded upon in Forget What You Can’t Remember, More Lost Memories, and Cheating, Death. This “Director’s Cut” of Lost and Not Found comes closer to my original intent, and to the original first draft of my 2002 NaNoWriMo novel, originally released in limited edition under the title Forlorn. Forlorn was written in the final 8 days of November, after a similar ordeal to the fictional one presented in Lost and Not Found.

In response to the criticism and feedback from a very vocal and adamant subset of the people who read Forlorn, and based on advise about what “all” fiction “needs” I spent the following year trying to find ways to give the story I’d written in Forlorn things like conflict, character arcs, and a three-act structure. I ended up cutting Skythia out completely, and writing a significant amount about the writer’s life and the journey toward the heart of the story, which I’ve always believed starts with the word ‘Forlorn.’

I released the First Edition of that expanded, “fixed” book as Lost and Not Found in 2004, and I’ve been receiving two kinds of feedback from readers in the five years since then: One group of people liked the book right up until the word ‘Forlorn.’ This group thinks the rest of the book is a “wrong turn”, and they were disappointed by it. The other group of people typically don’t even remember what happened in the book before the word ‘Forlorn.’ They understood the heart of the story to be the same thing I did, and they loved it.

This “Director’s Cut” of Lost and Not Found is bound to divide readers in the same way, though I expect to a more significant extreme. The people who would have been disappointed by the end of Lost and Not Found will be disappointed by this entire book. The people who would have loved the end of Lost and Not Found will probably love this entire book. And I, increasingly emboldened to do what I want to do with my books and with my publishing company, love the idea of releasing a Director’s Cut of the book, one that I prefer and that I think my true audience will prefer.

Based on my calculations, on average, pretending that all the energy from sunlight could be captured and then that all the energy could somehow be converted to “matter”… the amount of solar energy that falls on a square mile of the Earth in 12 hours of daylight (yeah, yeah) converts to about 1.5 tons of matter.  Yes, this is Star Trek tech, the replicator, and we’re not actually near any practical application that could make use of it.  And, yes, we’re almost as distant from being able to make use of 100% of the solar energy that reaches the Earth.  And, of course, there would be inefficiencies in the system (ie: entropy exists), so it wouldn’t be all, all, all… ooh, but as long as we’re pretending:

If we had a solar-powered replicator that operated at 85% efficiency, one acre of solar collection (on Earth) could replicate about 3 meals a day.

Ooh: Just did another calculation. Disappointing, I suppose.  If Skythia (the utopian city featured in Forget What You Can’t Remember) had no other energy/fuel/material source than solar, even if it was 100% efficient, it couldn’t support more than about 20,000 residents – and certainly a lot fewer than that, considering the high-energy and high-consumption activities they did there on a regular basis.  Even if the “gravity lenses” that levitate the city were passive (ie: not consuming energy to keep the city afloat), the hundred thousand or more people I described as living there would be significantly too many!  Lucky thing it definitely also uses magic and trade to supplement its existence… I guess.  Maybe I’ll reduce its population in a future edition.  Or maybe they also use some sort of nuclear power in addition to solar.  Ooh: the definitely make use of satellites.  Perhaps they have some large solar arrays in high polar orbits that beam energy down to Skythia.  Because the solar energy that hits the Earth represents only about (4.5 x 10^-8) percent of the solar energy that the sun gives off.

On the other hand, when we have energy-to-matter tech, we’ll likely also have matter-to-energy tech as well, which means that the 4.4lbs/day of trash the EPA estimates the average American produces equates to around an acre’s worth of solar energy… and that the energy contained in the matter of about 10k Americans’ daily refuse is enough to power the Earth. Pretending it could be easily converted directly to energy. Hmm… Of course, by the time we reach that technology (25 years, Kurzweil?), a lot of other aspects of our lifestyle will have changed dramatically, too.

Oh, and as far as “America is fragile” – we’re just beginning to come out of a recession that wasn’t as bad as the one we had in the early 80’s, neither of which holds a candle to the global depression of the 30’s… none of which came close to breaking America.  Not world wars, not the end of slavery (a foundational change in our economic structure), not the further social changes brought about with the introduction of birth control…  America is not fragile.  America could certainly survive (and I believe would be better off with) universal health care.  The rest of the civilized world does.  But that isn’t even what’s on the table, right now.  No one in power is even coming close to actual Health Care Reform – all they’re doing is mucking about with Health Insurance Reform… These are not the changes that America is calling out for, and they’re nowhere near enough to “destroy America.”  You’re crying wolf.  I can only consider it a good thing, because hopefully all the people you’re riling up about this now will know better than to listen to you when real reform comes rolling down the pike in years to come.