How's your Summer been?
Okay, I guess. The first week I was sick. That Guy Who Runs This Joint had a case of Captain Trips, and brought it to work with him, even though we all begged him to stay home until he was better. But no, he came in anyway, dragging it behind him like a pestilent tail, and the next morning I woke up with a bright and shiny throat lining. Felt like crap the entire week, so all I did was work and sleep.
How about July 4th weekend?
Bought a bottle of good vodka and some fixings, drank Bloody Marys and Dirty Martinis all weekend. Went downtown the night of the 4th, where as it turned out most of the Wilmington cops were taking the night off to watch fireworks I guess, and hardly anyone was out directing traffic. The friend who dropped me off told me later it took him over an hour to get out of the downtown area due to the congestion. Met some friends at Front Street Brewery and decided to work my way down their list of beer specials. That was a fun mistake. It was a decent time, but there was a band playing, and they started getting loud, and I am old now, so by the end of it I could barely hear anything above their renditions of country songs I would never actually buy but still know all the words to, like "Friends In Low Places," and "You Never Even Call Me By My Name." It is to my everlasting regret that I know these songs by heart, just through hearing them repeatedly banged out in bars by weekend honky-tonkers.
And the wedding?
It was nice. I'll make a separate post about it later this week.
You wore a "good" baseball hat, "clean" T-shirt, and jeans, and embarrassed everyone around you, didn't you?
Ha, no. I wore a snappy shirt, nice tie, dress pants and shoes. It was too hot to wear my suit jacket. I don't often say this about myself, but I looked pretty sharp for an old guy. Compared to some folks there I was a bit overdressed. It was a casual wedding.
Like I said, I'll post all about it later.
Did you see Batman?
I did. Despite the absolutely fucktarded last ten minutes or so, and some stupid moments throughout which made me wince, much to my surprise I enjoyed the hell out of it. I wasn't a huge fan of the first movie. Tell you one thing - there will be approximately 800 Jokers walking the streets of downtown Wilmington this Halloween.
I'll make a longer post about it in a week or so, after most everyone's seen it and I won't have to worry much about spoilers.
Let's stop fucking about, here. Did you finish this mysterious project you keep going on and on about while simultaneously saying you're not going to talk about it?
That's an awkward sentence. No, I didn't finish, but I knew I wasn't going to finish everything. I just wanted to finish the most important parts, which I did. I am close enough to be able to talk about it - 90% done, I'd say. I just needed a break to concentrate on those important parts. I used to say that I never had the time for what I wanted to do, and whenever I did have the time I always had an excuse. Now time and excuse were both in short supply.
See, I had to make a plan, because I was dying.
That's dramatic. You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes. All over the place.
Well, I don't mean dying from a disease or anything, unless you consider standing still and never going anywhere with your life a disease. Which I sort of do. And that's as good as dying.
It'd be nice if you could get to the point sometime, like before Halloween with all the downtown Jokers.
All right. I have this manuscript box full of short stories I've written over the years, which have yellowing and ratted edges from handling whenever I want to make false promises to myself about doing something with them. A couple of months ago I started thinking about it more than I usually do, during the day when I have all the time in the world to think. Now, though, I was also thinking about not really having all the time in the world for anything anymore. I was also thinking about new stories I wouldn't mind telling. I was also thinking about another line of work, and money. And it started to click that maybe I could combine all these thoughts into a plan, and maybe I could draw a roadmap on the back of that plan, and maybe I could trace a route on that roadmap, and maybe it would be a clear route towards the rest of my life.
And while you're at it maybe you could also draw me a map to a little place called THE POINT.
At first, I really didn't have one. All of this different stuff was floating around formless in my mind at the same time, swirling thoughts without a point of connection. I picked one of the short stories and rewrote it, for practice. It turned out pretty well. I let it sit there on top of the printer for a few days, wondering what to do with it. There's no market for short fiction anymore. No magazines really publish such work, with the exception of The New Yorker and a (very) few others, and there is no way in hell they would even break the seal on the envelope. I might as well just throw it in the trash myself and save the postage. I started absent-mindedly googling around for ideas about how to do it myself.
Self-publishing? Vanity press? Man, that's pretty fucking weak.
Yeah, I know. It has a certain stigma. That stigma being "You suck so bad you had to pay to get your own shit in print."
But I don't suck. Even though I think I do, I also know I'm sort of talented - if you can get your head around that contradiction.
As I was saying, though, there's no market for short fiction, and that's usually what I like to write. Sure, there are some small, small, small press zines I could submit to, but they pay with free copies. And if all I wanted was free copies, well, I already have an inkjet printer. No, I want money. Just a little, to put towards a couple of different goals.
I ran across this site called Createspace, which is owned by Amazon. You send them your formatted work, they list it on Amazon (you also get your own personal website to hawk your junk through), print it to order at a set "off the top" price per book, deposit the royalties minus their cut into your bank account every month, and it costs you nothing out of pocket. Well, you can step up to their "Pro Plan" for less than $50 per title, which gives you a larger discount on any copies you buy yourself, and also gives you a much larger royalty cut. You set the retail price.
Point being, you're not paying to have it published, so there's less of a stigma, and the work can stand or fall on its own merit.
Sounded like a decent compromise to me. I made that plan, started drawing out that roadmap, and got to work on the route.
I have questions.
Don't we all.
What's this project you're willing to self-publish without paying for it even though self-publishing without paying for it means you only suck halfway?
I'm calling it Undercarriage. A few months ago I was over at my folks' house digging through some of the crap I have stored in the little shed/house standing in their front yard, and saw my old typewriter on a shelf. It's a manual. I don't know how old it is. My Mom bought it for me eons ago, and I remember wetting the ribbon to stretch the ink out further because ribbon was getting hard to find locally, and there was no Internet. I took the rotting cover off, and tipped it up. Underneath the typewriter, where you could see all the inner workings, in the undercarriage, was the dried shell of a dead spider, curled up and stuck fast. That may or may not mean anything. It sure brought back a wash of memories, though, like the long-ago time when I had a really jacked-up case of bronchitis and my Mom took me to the doctor, and I embarrassed the shit out of her by asking him (in between wheezes) if it were possible for someone to travel so fast that their skin would catch on fire from the air friction. I had an idea for a story, see, and how can you learn anything if you don't ask questions? He didn't know.
Undercarriage will be an ongoing series of genre short story collections, three or four in each volume depending on the length of the stories. There will be a new volume every two or three months. I have finished the stories for the first volume. As I was finishing up the third story, I noticed a bit of a theme going on, so I guess I will try to arrange further volumes according to theme. The first theme is impulse. How we act upon it, or choose not to act, or what happens to us as a result of someone else's impulsive behavior.
Genre fiction? You mean horror stories?
Not always. Sometimes they'll be suspense stories, sometimes they'll skirt around the edges of science fiction or fantasy, sometimes they'll just be weird. One of the stories in the first volume is more black comedy than anything else.
How long?
Depending on the number of pictures (I haven't decided yet), and various other tweaks, the first volume will be between 80 and 85 pages. Future volumes will be around the same length, maybe a little longer (I don't want to cage myself in a rigid structure), but no longer than 108 pages.
Why so short?
To keep the price down. After 108 pages, the Createspace rates change, and I would have to charge more. I want to keep it priced as low as possible while still allowing a reasonable royalty for myself, so that hopefully more people will give it a chance. I looked around on Amazon at other Createspace books, and saw that some people try to get $20 or more for their 125 page books about funny things their pets do, and I guess if you think only ten people will buy your book you want to make as much in one shot as you can, but I want as many readers as I can get.
I have decided on a set price of $7.95. That's low enough for an impulse purchase (I swear I am not making an awful pun), and if it turns out they don't like it they haven't lost much. Also, I can get more books out there that way, and if the descriptive blurb about one volume's theme doesn't grab you maybe another will.
If you buy them directly from me, the books will be $8.95. That covers the cost of shipping, and you will also get something special in the package that I'm not ready to talk about just yet - but it will be cool, and this will be the only way to get it. I will also sign the book, assuming you don't mind some nobody scribbling all over your book.
In the future I might collect several volumes into a longer version just to have another purchase option out there, but the stories probably won't have all the pictures since Createspace allows a maximum 100mb upload, and print resolution pictures are of a large file size.
You keep mentioning pictures.
Yeah. Each story will have a lead-in photo which incorporates the title of the story, a middle "setting" photo (maybe), and a "bumper" photo at the end. I will clumsily photoshop any necessary effects or filters myself.
When I was a kid I loved the "Ghosts of the Carolinas" books by Nancy Roberts (don't pay any attention to those publication dates, by the way - Amazon is sometimes retarded, I remember those books being way older than that). She'd take these old southern legends and ghost stories and retell them with a bit of fiction, and there'd be one or two photos for each story, obviously staged stuff like a transparent ghost standing on the beach, or an eerily lit graveyard with weird demonic-looking shadows falling across it. Those pictures did a lot to set the mood, almost like you were there, and spooked the hell out of me. That's what I want to convey in my stuff, that sense of "being there."
The pictures are the part I haven't finished. I have finished the stories, with the exception of some grammatical tightening and text massaging (I may add some passages to a couple of the stories). I have formatted the book, leaving spaces for the picture pages. I know what pics I want to take, I just need to stage them and do the necessary post-processing, and with the cover and author photos that'll take another week or so to get done (I'll get into the tech details in a future post; some people might find it interesting). Then I will send it to a trusted friend, because it is always good to get the opinion of someone removed from the source. I'll take that friend's comments under advice, and maybe do one last bit of tightening up. Then, I will create a .pdf file and upload it to Amazon. From there it will take about two weeks for it to start showing up on Amazon's sales list. So, we're looking at about a month altogether, although I may have my personal copies ready to sell before then.
Question: How do you expect to get people to pay for this, when you can't even get people to read your blog, which is free?
I have some ideas. Look, I know I'm not going to sell thousands of copies of these things (although I can dream, that is also free on the Createspace plan). If I can sell a hundred copies of each volume, though, those royalty monies will go a long way towards the twin goals. And if I can't manage to sell a hundred copies of each book on a site millions of people visit every single day, then maybe I will refurbish my paint sprayer and keep my complaints to myself and forget about having adventures before I get too old and just die quietly over the next two or three decades.
What are these "twin goals?"
Half of the money I earn will go towards the ongoing saga of getting my ass out of the money troubles, and the other half will go towards paying for going back to school, which I intend to do later this year. I'll talk more about that in a future post.
This plan sounds pretty sketchy to me.
I'm sure it does. I want out. I want to have adventures. I want to do something else, anything else, and this way I get to write and I get to move forward, and if it comes to nothing, if it comes to nothing at all, then at least I will have made the attempt, and maybe the thought of that failed attempt will actually be worse over the years than never making the attempt in the first place but I have to know.
A real job. Over the years I have convinced myself that I didn't have one, and over the years I have listened to sideways subtle comments from others that I didn't have one, and I nodded along in agreement, but over this past month or so when I got up in the mornings and I felt my fucked-up back screech and grind, when I looked at these calloused and scarred hands, sometimes I'd get so fucking furious I'd have to catch my breath. Some people wouldn't last a week in the kind of filth I have had to suck it up and wade through, and that's being generous. I always had a real job. Now I want a real job with real money. Because, honestly, that's the only thing of importance. When people say money really doesn't mean anything, and I have heard that saying a lot, even passing through my own lips, they are lying to you and they are lying to themselves, for whatever unfathomable reason. You can't do anything without it. I looked around at those beautiful mountains this weekend, and it took money to get there. You can pull on your hiking shoes, and you can tell yourself hiking through nature is free, but what you are lacing up on your feet is money. You may not need a lot, but unless you are some sort of goddamned caveperson you will always need some, no matter where you are headed in life or what you choose to do when you get there.
I have a certain amount of talent. I look at those three stories, and I know that I am the best I have ever been, because now I have over a decade of busted road behind me to draw from, and there will be more to come. And I'm going to use that certain amount of talent to get whatever I can get out of it and I will never look back. Not ever.
So catch your breath and let's hear about the stories, Mr. Furious.
The three stories in Undercarriage v.1: Impulse will be:
- In The Shadow of Your Smile - everything has a shadow, and sometimes we are unaware of where ours are cast. This might be a monster story.
- All That Meat And No Potatoes - When I told a friend a little about this story, he replied that it sounded like a story he had seen on some horror anthology television show. That bummed me out a bit, until I realized that it's not the story, it's never the story, because every story has already seen the light of day somewhere. It's how you tell it. I was ready to toss it out and start something else until everything clicked and I knew what to do. You'll think you know what's coming, and you do, but you don't. I was a little uncomfortable writing this, because you sometimes have to dredge up certain thoughts when you are writing, and sometimes those thoughts are rotting.
- Suck It - This is a vampire story. No, wait, don't close the page window! Understand that I hate vampire stories. I think vampires are the most overused horror convention ever, with maybe the exception of werewolves, but I like werewolves. I wanted to tell a vampire story just so I could poke fun at them. In every volume I hope there is at least one story that readers will think justifies the price of the book, and I believe this will be that story. I think you'll like Charlie Landis, who hates vampires as much as I do (for a particular reason), so much so that he is willing to go through some extraordinarily stupid circumstances to get at them. I think you'll like Lucy, too. This isn't so much a horror story as it is a dark comedy. It's a little goofy, a little shocking, and even a little bit..sweet?
And, a tiny sampling of what you will see in future volumes:
- Granted - A simple man is given a wish, and he makes the worst wish someone could ever possibly make. No, you won't ever guess what it is.
- Runs Cold - This is another vampire story, or maybe it isn't. We have these little conversations with ourselves, and they mean the world.
- Layaway - Based on something I mentioned at the end of this post. The more I thought about it, the less it became about werewolves, and the more it turned into a story about losing your friends.
- One With Mustard - The kindness of strangers makes for some awkward revelations in a small-town diner. My attempt at an EC comics story.
- Watch This - It's all about the mysteries of the island for Roger, and he's willing to go to any lengths to solve them.
- Dryfall - This is a horror story about painting. If you don't think I can make painting scary, well, after ten years of it I can tell you it's already scary.
I have many more. I actually thought of another one and jotted down some notes as I was typing this.
There are also two other things coming in addition to Undercarriage, but I won't be ready to talk about those until the second or third volume hits.
Is it hard? Writing?
Yes. It's hard, and it's lonely. Lonelier than watching the Food Network on a Friday night instead of going out and talking to people, lonelier than sitting in a restaurant by yourself because you wanted to get out of the house, lonelier than listening to the sound of your own frustrated breathing at 2 in the morning in the dark when you can't sleep. There's a lot of staring involved, staring at that screen and thinking. And when you finish it's great, but only for a second, then you start to worry a little that there might not be another one.
I bought a $50 digital voice recorder, and I plugged in my headset, and I use it to take notes and ideas while I work. Once I got over the fact that my own voice was always going to sound awful to my own ears, I got along well with it. I wrote most of Suck It that way.
Well, this is long enough. I'll be back this weekend to talk more about how I want you to give me money, and I will tell you all about the wedding.
Can't wait. *yawns*
Well, I don't think you'll be here. I don't really need you anymore.
What?
Truthfully, you were always sort of a lame gimmick. Sorry.
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