Category: Editorial

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Readers and Non-Readers

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Here’s something weird that I learned over the last year-and-a-half, while finishing and publishing my book: that “reader” – just the generalized term meaning someone who reads books – is a category label of people, much like “gamer” or “comic book fan” or “fantasy sports nut”.

Reading has been an absolutely integral part of my life for literally as long as I can remember. Before I could actually read words, my parents would sit down with me and a picture book, and have me “read” it to them – I’d basically just make shit up. As I grew, they’d start reading those books “with” me, teaching me the actual words on the page.

I could read at a very early age, and my reading comprehension was always well ahead of my grade-level. Reading for enjoyment has never not been a part of my life. I read The Hobbit when I was, I think, 8. I read the Belgariad around my 10th birthday, and I’ve been a fantasy nut ever since. I mean, sure, I go through phases where I’m not in the mood, but I’ve never just shunned books.

Which is why it came as a complete surprise to me that there are people who actively choose not to be “readers”. Nah, fuck books. Pfft. And I’m not talking about people who can’t read (learning disabilities, poor education, what have you), but people who can and choose not to. I have spent my whole life so hopelessly immersed in reading for pleasure that the thought never occurred to me that someone would just eschew it entirely. It just… it feels like someone saying “Nah, I don’t walk. I mean, I can, you know, I just… don’t.”

Whenever I have kids, I hope I have the same success getting them to be lifelong, fervent readers as my parents did with me. I hope, like me, they’re in their 30’s before they even realize that deliberate, intentional non-reading is even a thing.

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On Conventions and Complainers

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Sigh. Yet another comic book industry professional has decided to project his lagging convention sales onto a segment of the community that has nothing to do with his lagging convention sales. In the tradition of ass-candy like Tony Harris and Denise Dorman, Pat Broderick has jumped onto the cosplay-hater bandwagon to whinge on Facebook about cosplayers ruining conventions and mucking with his bottom line.

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I’ll have to admit, when I saw this, my very first reaction was “Who?” (Which, in all truth, is probably a bigger indicator of poor con-table performance than some outside force.) Worse even than the original post are some of the comments in the thread. Like, for example, a comic shop owner who, when confronted with a cosplayer looking to find more information on Doctor Strange, kicked said cosplayer out of their booth rather than take the opportunity to sell them some Doctor Strange books. Utterly. Baffling.

In any case, I’m not here to post a take-down or to wax on about cosplayer’s place in the comic community. There are plenty of bloggers and sites like The Mary Sue to take care of that. I’m just here to offer a simple, common-sense suggestion for artists like Mr. Broderick: If conventions aren’t profitable for you, stop going to them.

It really is that simple. We talked about this on the Trade Secrets Podcast shortly after the Denise Dorman incident, but I’ll reiterate here: From an artist or writer’s standpoint, convention attendance shouldn’t be looked at as a primary income stream. If you can’t afford to attend a convention – with everything that entails, from buying table space to travel to hotels and food – based on the primary income you make from your actual job, then don’t fucking go.

The benefits of con attendance are much more ephemeral than whether you can pay for your booth with sketch sales. Interacting with fans, taking pictures with the cosplayers who show up dressed as characters you draw and/or created, and signing books for people… that’s why you’re there. Conventions are for fans. They’re not for industry professionals. They’re not built for you to make money, they’re built for fans to meet and interact with the people who create the foundation of their favorite hobby. And, frankly, cosplayers are probably the most hardcore element of that fandom.

If I show up at your table at a convention, it is entirely likely that I already own a good chunk of your work. I’m probably not going to buy much merch from your table, because that’s not what I’m looking for. Sure, I’ll pick up the occasional special convention edition of a book or, when I’m extremely flush with cash, a piece of original art. But my con-going time is spent on interactions and signings, because I’ve already spent hundreds of dollars on a badge, hotel, travel, parking, and food just to be on the convention floor to meet you.

That time, that interaction, can make or break whether I ever buy your work in the future. I’ve had legendary negative experiences with the likes of J. Scott Campbell and Rob Leifeld, which led to me never spending a cent on their work again. On the opposite side, ECCC has given me amazing interactions with people like Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurtt, Kurtis Weibe, Ed Brisson, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky, Terry & Rachel Dodson, Brian JL Glass, Jordie Bellaire, and innumerable others that have solidified my desire to purchase every piece of writing or art they generate.

Those interactions are why you, the comics industry professional (take special note of that particular word the next time you feel the desire to rant about the fans of your work), are at these conventions. You may not directly pay for your convention attendance through sales at that very convention, but your appearance there and treatment of the fans both at the convention and online will have a huge effect on whether you sell more books to those people in the long run.

But it’s really not that hard to figure this out: If the math ain’t right, don’t fucking show up. If those intangible benefits aren’t worth the tangible hit to your wallet, then you shouldn’t go. Pretty damned plain and simple. Good fans – real fans – are never going to fault you for saying “Sorry, guys. I just can’t afford this one.” If your mindset surrounding convention attendance is “I better sell enough to pay for this trip.”, you’re doing it wrong.

Spend the time you’re not at the convention working on making yourself more relevant to the current state of the industry so that you can make more money creating art. If no one is coming to your table, it’s not the con attendees that are the problem.

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My Playstation Life

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To adequately express the beginnings of my gaming hobby, I’d like to tell you about the first television I ever gamed on. It was the early 80’s, and my family had a Curtis Mathis console television. A floor-standing unit in a dark wood enclosure, with a flat top upon which sat other components. The whole thing was roughly three feet tall and slightly wider than that. It had actual click-dials on the front and a whopping 25-inch screen.

When I first started gaming, that top sported a potted plant and a pair of Rabbit Ears. Over the years a number of different components would occupy that space; everything from a turntable to a VHS deck to DVD players. Every console I owned as a kid was eventually hooked up to that TV, but it started with a Commodore Vic-20 in 1982, upon which the most commonly played games were Gorf and Radar Rat Race. It was fucking fantastic.

Throughout the 80’s, I was exposed to a wide variety of gaming systems, but my gaming was dominated by Commodore. My mother used our varying Commodore computers for work applications, but our Vic-20, Commodore 64, and Commodore 128 turned out to be absolutely fantastic gaming machines. At one point, I had over 500 games for our 64, all on 5 ¼ floppy disks. It was a pretty glorious time.

I got my first actual console gaming system – a Nintendo Entertainment System – in 1987. Having been a Commodore devotee (and only in single-digit ages), I was blithely oblivious to the rise of Atari and the industry crash. But the rise of the IBM PC was killing Commodore, so I was extremely happy to see dedicated gaming machines becoming a thing. Through the 80’s and 90’s I owned all manner of machines from an SNES, a GameBoy, a Game Gear, a ColecoVision, and even an Action Max, all of which my parents had bought (ostensibly) for me (even though my mom would steal my GameBoy to play Tetris).

I graduated high-school in the summer of ’95, and hadn’t yet decided where I was going to college. So, I was living at home and working at the local TV station (KTVZ21 in Bend, Oregon), and had – for probably the only time in my life – a ton of disposable income. I watched the chatter over the next couple of months about Sony entering the console gaming market with a system that used (gasp!) CD ROM’s instead of cartridges, and had this kinda funky-shaped control pad. When I saw some of the screenshots for games, I was in.

On launch day, I rushed out of work and into the local Fred Meyer about five minutes before they closed, and managed to grab the first gaming console I ever bought with my own money: A Playstation. I was SO FUCKING EXCITED. I rushed home, tore it open, and got it all hooked up to that very same Curtis Mathis TV. I grabbed the weird controller (no analog sticks on this one, yet), and it felt *perfect* in my hands. I emptied the box looking for the pack-in game…only to realize, too late, that there wasn’t one.

My first night with the first console I could call my own, and I was stuck with only Playstation Picks demo disc to play on it. I spent a good chunk of that first night replaying the demos for ESPN Extreme Games, Jumping Flash, and WipEout (I ignored Battle Arena Toshinden after one play). I watched all the videos on the disk of games like Destruction Derby, Ridge Racer, Warhawk, and Kileak, and went to bed having buried all of my original excitement in a heap of disappointment.

And yet, even with that kind of first impression, Sony had me hooked for life.

That Playstation survived my move from Bend to Seattle for college, the rise and fall of my first long-term relationship, and even an apartment fire. Over those years, games like WipEout, Rayman, Tenchu, Chrono Cross, the Oddworld games, the Street Fighter Alpha series, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, the Twisted Metal games, and Tony Hawk solidified gaming as an inextricable part of my life. Oh, and Soul Blade… I mustn’t forget how, for about a six month period, every Saturday afternoon became a SoulBlade party at my apartment, with between 4 and 12 people in attendance. Those were some good times, amongst which the relationship with my now wife of 16 years began.

It was a surprise to no one that the PS2 was the first consumer product I pre-ordered, and the first for which I waited in line. I entered the line at our local GameStop at 11am for a midnight launch, and I was about 100 people back. And all of these were people with pre-orders, with a separate line for those without. By the time the doors opened, the line was 4-5 people abreast and snaked across an entire floor of Bellevue Square Mall, out the door, and into the parking garage. There was a Babbage’s in the same mall with a similar line.

The PS2 amped up everything that had made me love my PS1. Even with a relatively weak launch lineup (I played a LOT of Frequency and Smuggler’s Run in those early days), it went on to have one of the greatest game libraries in the history of console gaming. It’s a library that’s still playable to this day, with games that stand the test of time better than I ever thought they would.

I had friends, at this time, who were huge fans of the Xbox. No matter how many times I played game on it, I just couldn’t bring myself to love it the way I loved my PS2. I had some great times at Halo LAN parties, but the system could just never compare to the experiences I had with some of my now-favorite game franchises like Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank. If the PS1 was really what solidified me as a gamer, it was the PS2 that made me a true Playstation fan. I never owned nor cared about the Dreamcast, and Nintendo had become an afterthought.

Which is why it came as exactly zero surprise to anyone when my wife and I decided to get in line for the launch of the Playstation 3. Being such a huge Playstation fan was a tiny bit awkward at this point, since I was working for Nintendo at the time. Taking vacation days for the launch of a competitor’s console may not have been the smartest move, but I didn’t really care. This is where my fandom tipped from hardcore to a tiny bit insane. I got off work on a Tuesday night, picked up my wife, and headed to the local Best Buy, where a line had already formed for the 12:01 Friday morning launch. We brought a pavilion to keep the rains off and had an air mattress in the bed of my pickup to sleep in. Yeah, that’s right: we camped in line for two and a half days in the rain and wind for our launch PS3’s.

Through all of that, I honestly tried to get into other consoles. I’ve owned an N64, and Xbox, a GameCube, a Wii and an Xbox 360. None of them ever stuck. The worst was the 360, which we bought for relatively cheap about three years after launch, and it just… sat. I played a bit of Halo on it, and then never touched it again.

Even through nine years working at Nintendo, through the entire lifespan of the Wii, I was still a hardcore Playstation fan. Everything from their console and controller design to their video capabilities to their first-party game properties just drew me in and held on tight. Now, I’ve got a household with three backward-compatible PS3’s, a PS4, a PSP Go (yeah, I’m the guy that bought one), and two PSVitas.

Today, as Japan celebrates 20 years of Playstation, I look back at the 19 years I’ve had them in my life and realized just how huge an impact they’ve had on me as a gamer. Some of my fondest nostalgia still resides in the Nintendo of the 80’s and early 90’s, but as much as I loves me some Mega Man and Super Mario World, there is no gaming company that has influenced me nearly as much as Sony. Well over half my life has been spent gaming on Playstation hardware, and I can’t imagine gaming with anyone else, anymore.

Happy birthday, Playstation. Here’s to another 20 years of awesome.

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I Am Luke’s Nagging Self-Doubt

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Well, following the release of my debut novel – which isn’t getting much coverage, as expected, but is getting overwhelmingly positive reviews and feedback – I’ve now entered the debilitating self-doubt phase of my writing career. Work on the second book has stalled, primarily because I’m struggling desperately to force myself to put aside distraction and get back on the ball with writing.

And yet, the part of my brain screaming that I’m a fraud, that I got lucky, that eventually the 1 Star reviews will start boiling over, that my ideas for the furtherance of the series are trash, that I’m just going to trample over any goodwill built by the first book (if it’s even real) by writing down my shit ideas, that I can’t possibly follow up what I’ve started… yeah, that part of my brain is what’s dominating at the moment.

I’ve dribbled bits and parts into the new book. I’ve finished the first draft of the first two chapters, and I’m starting to feel like Atreyu’s horse in The NeverEnding Story. I’m hoping that putting this out there will spur me back into a rhythm of some sort; get me moving forward, even if it’s just a few hundred words a day.

What I don’t understand about this particular bit of brain-chemistry chucklefuckery is why I never felt this way when writing Construct. Having never published before, the writing process for Construct – while significantly more elongated than I intend with book 2 – was more… exciting. I was more driven, and never seemed to get mired in the sort of misgivings and apprehension upon which my head now bangs.

Now, having published a book that’s real and out and in people’s hands, and seeing that the people who are reading it legitimately love it (even though this same part of me tries to tell me that it’s all thinly veiled bullshit), you’d think all that would be a confidence boost. In actuality, I’m struggling more to get motivated now than I ever did with Construct. Was it ignorance, back then? Naivete? Has the pendulum of my confidence really swung so far opposite?

One foot in front of the other. I just need to try to get some words down. Something. Anything. Even if it’s crap, just remember that it can always be edited. Persevere. Overcome.

FUCKING WRITE, GODDAMNIT.

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50 Books In 2014

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I’m a somewhat slow reader, depending on how interested in a book I am. If I love a book I can burn through it at lightning speed, but if I’m struggling, I can take forever. It took me over a year to finish the fifth book of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, Soul of the Fire, because I just couldn’t get into it (read: it was fucking terrible). And it’s a series I haven’t gone back to, even though my wife tells me that Faith of the Fallen is one of the best. Anyhoo…

I decided, kind of on a whim, that I would try to read 50 books over the course of 2014. I see a lot of people make huge claims about the volume of books they read in a year, some boasting numbers over 100. I even, recently, saw someone claim to read 350 books every year, upon which I thither summon “bullshit”. My own totals usually hover around 20, so my goal with the challenge was first to see what it would take to churn through a larger quantity in a single year, and simultaneously use the goal to read a number of books which I feel I should’ve read a long time ago.

I started out fine, setting myself a goal of one book per week, and sticking pretty well to it. I got tripped up on a couple of books that turned out to be either worse or just more dense than I was expecting, so now I’m WAY behind on the goal, having only just started my 31st book of the year. I’ve got 19½ books left, and only 10 weeks to finish them.

Here’s what I’ve read so far this year:

1. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson
2. Summer Knight by Jim Butcher
3. Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
5. Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
6. Kushiel’s Dart by Jaqueline Carey – This was the first book to set me back. I actually really loved it, but it’s way longer than I was expecting, clocking in at 934 very dense pages.
7. Vessel: The Advent by Tominda Adkins
8. The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
9. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
10. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
11. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
12. Death Masks by Jim Butcher
13. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
14. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
15. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
16. Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas – This was my second stumbling block, this time because of quality. I know I’m in the minority amongst fantasy readers, but I just can. not. stand. the main character in this book. This one was a struggle.
17. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
18. The Black Company by Glen Cook
19. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Eriksson – Setback number 3. For the first time in a long time, this is a book that I not only disliked, but cannot for the life of me find what others like about it. It’s such a widely loved series that I thought there had to be something, but if it’s there, it eludes me.
20. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
21. Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig
22. ‘salem’s Lot by Stephen King
23. Divergent by Veronica Roth
24. Alpha by Greg Rucka
25. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
26. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
27. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
28. Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
29. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
30. Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch – A minor slowdown, here. This book was fine, but I didn’t like it nearly as much as The Lies of Locke Lamora, which made it a bit of a struggle for me.
31. (currently reading) True Grit by Charles Portis

So far, of the books listed above, my favorites have been The Lies of Locke Lamora, Annihilation, The Handmaid’s Tale, Robin Hobb’s Assassin books, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

And, yes, this was the first time I’d read all the way through Hitchhiker’s Guide. When I was in high-school, I somehow read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe first and, only upon finishing it was I informed that it was the second book. I tried to start HHGTTG several times and never finished it, until now.

As big a fantasy nut as I am, I’d never read any of the Pern or Earthsea books, an error I will now rectify. I hope to finish both trilogies as part of this challenge. In addition to those series’, my TBR pile contains the rest of the Dresden Files books, the remainder of the first Black Company trilogy, Insurgent and Allegiant, Assassin’s Quest, Authority and Acceptance, the Mistborn trilogy, the rest of the Hitchhiker’s books, more Harry Potter, some Vorkosigan Saga, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, The Cormorant, Warlock by Oakley Hall, the first Expanse book Leviathan Wakes, and the ridiculous award magnet Ancillary Justice.

Not sure how many of those I’ll get to, but I only need to read 19 of ‘em to meet my goal.

Only.

::cries::

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My Interview on Caravan Girl

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Last week, I did an interview with author and book blogger Rachael Rippon for her site Caravan Girl. Visit her site for some great reviews of self-published books and interviews with their authors: rachaelrippon.blogspot.com. Here’s my interview, in all it’s glory.

What is your history? Have you always been a writer?

Not specifically, no. I went to college for computer animation, with the intention of working in special effects. My timing was way off. By the time I’d graduated, CGI had gone through a boom and the bubble had burst, overloading the industry with over-qualified, out-of-work animators. As a fresh graduate, I couldn’t even get an interview, much less a decent job, so I followed up an internship at Wizards of the Coast with a job there.

I’m a pretty big geek, and loved working for WotC, so I kind of set aside my creative pursuits for a while. I was there for four years before they laid me off, at which point I landed at Nintendo, where I worked up until 2013. At the beginning of last year, I had a very serious discussion with my wife about the future, which led to me leaving Nintendo to be a full-time writer/house-husband.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

As a little kid? A marine biologist. I wanted to work with sea lions and otters, mostly. I’m not sure what really happened to that desire, but I know it shifted to more artistic pursuits once I was in high-school.

What is your favourite genre to write in?

Fantasy, without question. I like melding genres, somewhat, but no matter what I write it tends to have some sort of fantasy element. In addition to The Chronicler Saga, I have an idea for a western series… with a fantasy twist.

Do you listen to music when you write? If so, what?

I do. I absolutely cannot listen to anything with lyrics, though. I find it fascinating that any writer can actually concentrate when music with lyrics is playing in the background. It is so damned distracting.

I use Pandora a lot. I know that in the age of Spotify, saying I use Pandora is akin to me declaring my love for MySpace, but I still love it. I have three different stations for writing: If I just need mellow background music, I have a classical station originally based on Beethoven. If I need tension or atmosphere, I have one based on Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. If I’m writing action, I have one based on Hans Zimmer.

All of them have morphed and expanded some, but the basis gives you an inkling of their content.

Why did you decide to self-publish?

Control, primarily. I’d been going the query letter route for a while, but even while I was querying agents I wasn’t sure it was the right path. I received my fair share of rejections and non-responses, which gave me time to really think about it. I decided that I wanted to have control over the IP if it ever came down to it. Were my stories to take off, the idea of the right’s being dumped off piecemeal by a publisher with little to no input from me seemed appalling.

It’s a trade-off, though. Self-publishing is a lot more work for me, and more of an initial expenditure. I paid for editors and my own cover art, and I did all of the eBook design myself. The actual process of setting up the book for publishing is a hell of a lot of work. Luckily, I really enjoyed all the different aspects.

Do you think the negative stigma surrounding self-publishing is still there?

Absolutely. I even encounter it with my friends. People I know who’ve read the book will say things like “It’s actually really good!” It’s that “actually” that defines the stigma. The automatic expectation is for it to be bad, riddled with errors, or both. And that’s not an un-earned reputation, unfortunately. With the barrier to entry so low, a lot of self-published authors are fine with half-assing their work in favor of quantity or making a quick buck. Others inadvertently half-ass because they don’t know any better.

The other issue, of course, is the difficulty of discoverability and the lack of curation. It’s not easy for a reader to find the authors that rise above the dreck. My only advice, there, is research. If a self-published book catches your fancy, take the time to look into the author further. Is their website professional? Is the excerpt or preview of their book free of errors? Do they have an editor listed? Just as there is more work for a self-published author to get their book into readers’ hands, there’s more work for readers to sift through and find the gems. It can really be worth it, though.

What advice do you have for aspiring self-published authors?

Two bits: First, get an editor. However you can. The author who can reliably self-edit is a unicorn. Every artistic person in the world, be them writers, sculptors, painters, or crafters of hand-knit turtle cozies on Etsy, gets caught in art-blindness. You’ll stare at words for so long and read them so many times that you’ll just lose all sense of the errors in the text. That can only be solved by setting aside ego and collaborating with a second pair of eyes, preferably professional. If not an editor, at least a trusted group of beta-readers. Someone else has to look at your text, and you have to be open to changes.

Second, don’t skimp on the design work. Get a good cover. Do some interior design. The automatic conversion software from most of the digital self-publishing services is only just adequate. A lot of tinkering can be done to make the interior pages of an ebook – even with reflowable text – look a lot better than what their software can produce, especially if you take the time to learn some basic HTML/CSS. If you’re unable or unwilling to learn, then hire someone to do the design work for you. It’s absolutely worth it.

Is your goal to be traditionally published? If so, why?

Not specifically, no. If, down the road, I can sell one of my books to a publisher, I may go that route. I’m a pretty hardcore control freak when it comes to the IP rights for things I create, though, so I’m not sure I’d be able to negotiate a satisfactory contract with a traditional publisher. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that choice, I just don’t think it’s for me.

What are you writing at the moment?

Most of my time is spent working on the second book in The Chronicler Saga series, at the moment. I have a couple of other projects I’m dabbling with – a script for an 8-issue comic book series, and the aforementioned western idea – but the continuation of theConstruct story is my primary focus.

What can readers expect in the next installment of The Chronicler Saga?

I’m not sure how much I can give away this soon after the first book’s release, but the second book will be an expanded look at some of your favorite characters from Construct. New characters will be introduced and the plot will be significantly expanded. There’ll be some pretty fantastic surprises for fans of the first book that I’m really looking forward to seeing the reactions to. It’ll be fun.

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Curating Your Own Social Media Feed

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I had an interesting experience on Facebook recently, that highlighted a topic I’d like to discuss: the curation of social media feeds.

A discussion began on Facebook regarding Ello, a new social network that’s gone viral pretty quickly, focusing on Ello’s (current) lack of a “Block/Report” function. A Facebook friend talked about how she has to deal with assholes in her Facebook and Twitter feeds all the time.

Side note: This particular discussion never entered the realms of gender bias, misogyny, or harassment that have been highly visible of late. This was just dealing with general asshattery

I entered the conversation to discuss how it’s an issue I rarely have to deal with. She, and another in the thread, discussed how they would friend people on Facebook, or follow them back on Twitter, who seemed initially normal, but then some national event would occur that would cause them to fly their douchwaffle flag high, and how every few months she’d have to go on a Blocking spree.

At this point, I said that I spend a lot of time and energy curating and pruning my social media feeds, specifically to avoid these sorts of encounters. She snarked that I’m “lucky to NEVER have to deal” with assholes. I replied by saying I don’t consider it “luck”, to which she took personal offense, blew up at me a little bit (lots of expletives were used), then unfriended me.

I hadn’t been Facebook friends with her long, but in that short time we’d had a ton of reasonable and fun conversations. She’s a fellow author and geek, and we have a lot of common interests. After months of positive interactions, this one seemingly trivial disagreement was enough for her to sever that connection.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m never going to fault a person for unfriending me. Especially after I’d just espoused the idea that pruning social media feeds is prudent and can lead to a better experience. I’m also not that broken up about the “loss”, because – as I see it – if you unfriend/unfollow me from your end, then you’ve saved me a click.

It does, however, serve to illustrate how my social media philosophy differs with many (most?) people. I see many complaining about the things they see in their social media feeds on a daily basis. It might be politics or entertainment or just frivolous crap, but a prevailing attitude seems to be “I can’t believe this bullshit shows up in my feed.” But, here’s the thing: YOU are the master of your social media feeds. You control what you see and do not see, and if there are people spouting shit that you don’t want to read, it is neither their fault, nor the fault of the social media platform. It’s all on you.

I will make one clarification: I understand that one does not necessarily control everything they see on Twitter. Without making your Twitter profile private, anyone can see what you post and anyone can @-reply you, so it’s pretty easy for asshats to harass people by posting ignorant bullshit in @-replies. This is difficult to control, and gets worse and worse the more popular you are on Twitter. So, when I’m talking about “curating your feed”, I specifically mean the people you Friend on Facebook – which is an entirely different, two-way relationship – and the people you actually Follow on Twitter.

A lot of people will complain that the people they follow on Twitter aren’t that bad, but the shit they retweet is crazytown bananapants. I hate to break this to everyone, but retweets are just as indicative if someone’s opinion as their normal posts, unless they’re retweeting ironically (which happens a lot, but usually you can tell). If you can’t stand the shit that someone’s retweeting – and you can’t tell if they’re doing it in a joking fashion – then, actually, you can’t stand that person’s Twitter feed.

It is, in my opinion, even worse to complain about an influx of ignorant bullshit or abuse on Facebook. When someone sends you a friend request, it requires your approval. You are responsible for any and everything that shows up in your Facebook feed, with the exception of the occasional post that shows up when one of your friends comments on it (and, in that case, it shouldn’t piss you off because you’re not directly involved in any way). But, in both cases, what you see in your actual feed is all on you.

None of this is to say that I don’t ever seen stupid shit on social media. The difference, I think, is that I research the people I friend and follow (unless I know them in real life). So, if that kind of garbage exists in their feed already, I actively work to prevent it from getting into my feed. On both Twitter and Facebook, this manifests in reading a person’s individual feed before following them or accepting a friend request and/or preemptively blocking asswipes before they ever become a problem for me.

The worst attitude I see regarding social media – and yet the one that’s probably the most common – is that a friend/follow relationship on a site is somehow obligatory. As though one needs to fight to maintain said relationships like they were a real friendship. Or that if someone follows you on a lurk site like Twitter, that you’re somehow obligated to follow them back without looking into them beforehand until the nature of their idiocy is revealed in full glory.

As much as I want to be sympathetic when someone talks about their feed filling up with detritus, I just can’t. You put yourself there. Just a bit more effort, a bit more due diligence at the outset, will prevent a world of annoyance and frustration later on. That effort has measurable results, which is why I don’t consider my social media feeds’ lack of choad-yodelers “luck”. It’s also why I didn’t take offense or, really, care much when I was unfriended for my opinion on the matter.

For me, social media management decisions are easy. I don’t agonize over them or worry about what someone thinks. I’m quick on the draw with the “block” button, and have zero compunctions unfriending and unfollowing people. It’s made my online presence a much happier place, and it’s a philosophy that I think more people should adopt.

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The 10 Books That Stuck With Me

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I haven’t been tagged or challenged by anyone to post this list to Facebook, but I found the premise interesting enough to write a post about my list. I like the concept of books that “stayed with me” more than most other memes. And, yes, I’ve listed some series here rather than individual novels, but sometimes an individual entry is inseparable from the series it’s a part of. So, here we go:

1. Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls – A huge formative book for me as a kid. An adventure story of the finest order about a boy and his two favorite dogs. Growing up around dogs made this book super poignant for me.

2. Rising Sun by Michael Crichton – I read every single Crichton book in high school. This was the first one that wasn’t really a high-concept sci-fi story, instead it was a tense murder mystery set amongst the clash of American and Japanese cultures. It was basically my introduction to thrillers that didn’t involve dinosaurs or magic.

3. On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony – One of two Piers Anthony entries on this list, neither of which involves Xanth. On A Pale Horse was the first sci-fi/fantasy blend I’d ever read, and it’s still one of the best. If you’re wondering why I don’t list the entirety of the Incarnations of Immortality series, it’s because I think On A Pale Horse stands well above the rest.

4. Neuromancer by William Gibson – I came to this book way late in life, only having read it a couple of years ago. And holy shit. It’s a book that dumps you in the deep end from the get go and explains exactly nothing to you. “Here’s an extremely complex world,” Gibson tells his readers. “Go figure it out.”

5. The Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness – Here’s a series that stuck with me, but not in a good way. The world-building in the The Knife of Never Letting Go was some of the best and most unique I’d ever seen… then all the goodwill built by the first book is just shat away by the sequels. The third book in this trilogy has actually made me wary of all trilogies (well, that and Mockingjay).

6. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss – I was in the middle of writing my own book when I read this. It simultaneously inspired me to break out of a tough slog in the middle of my novel, and scared the shit out of me. Rothfuss’s prose is the kind of writing I aspire to, and I’m nowhere near there yet.

7. The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham – One of the most unique fantasy worlds I’ve ever read. The concept of magician poets manifesting physical incarnations of ideas as powerful beings, then trying to reign those beings in for the sake of commerce, is just wildly fascinating to me.

8. Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony – Holy shit, this series. Hard sci-fi with a hyper-realistic bent, following the main character from child refugee to ruler of the known galaxy. One of the most brutal, intense opening books I’ve ever read. Who’d’a thunk the guy that writes punny fantasy would’ve been capable of this?

9. The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway – An intensely imaginative world and a fantastic, funny story set within it. I’m not sure I have the words to describe it, so just go read it.

10. The Belgariad by David Eddings – This was the fantasy series that birthed my love of fantasy. I’d read Tolkien prior, and it was fine, but it didn’t hook me. The Belgariad launched me into a love of fantasy that has, ultimately, led me to writing my own. You can try to debate the quality of Eddings’ prose and story all you want, but The Belgariad had a singular formative impact on my life, and is thus pretty much unassailable to me.

What are the 10 books that stuck with you?

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On Requesting Cover Blurbs

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This article was cross-posted to ChroniclerSaga.com

Probably one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve done during this whole publishing process is send out requests for cover blurbs to several writers and artists I admire. I’ve been ten-fold more anxious about these requests than I ever was about querying agents, because the result is more direct and tangible, and is tied more directly to an appraisal of the quality of my work – by people whose work inspires me.

I’ve read a lot of horror stories about self-published authors contacting others for blurbs and being complete fuck-sticks about it. Making demands rather than requests, getting pissy at rejections or lack of response, and just being general asshats about it. Amongst the many things that baffle me about how some authors choose to handle their publicity, this attitude makes absolutely no sense to me.

Having a chip on your shoulder about cover blurb requests serves no purpose. Another author is under exactly zero obligation to endorse your work. What I originally wanted to say here was “You need them more than they need you”, but that’s such a monumental understatement that it just doesn’t fly. More accurately: “You need them… and who the fuck are you again?”

As a self-published author, requesting a cover blurb is not a two-way street. Another author gains nothing by having their name appear on your book cover or sale page. A blurb is like a literary remora, swimming along on the belly of the Bestselling Author Shark, catching all the half-chewed publicity bits that fall out of that author’s popularity maw. While not entirely parasitic, it ain’t exactly symbiotic, either.

It’s hard (at least, it was for me) to find the right balance for requests; to be respectful without coming across fawning, urgent without being demanding. I’m not the type of person who can fanboy all over my favorite author’s shoes; I try to be complimentary without being slavish. It’s actually a quality that has prevented me from capitalizing on opportunities to get to know some of these people, because I wasn’t just constantly in their faces at cons or on social media. That’s just not how I’m wired.

So it’s a weird gray area one needs to tread in order to do this right. Approaching another author as though you should be the center of their world, even for a minute amount of time, is just asinine. As a fledgling author myself, I am keenly aware of the amount of work and time I have to put into my own writing and promotion, so it’s easy to assume that I can just multiply that by five for an established author.

On top of it all, it’s most important to keep your expectations in check (I, personally, have none). The requester doesn’t have any right to expectations. Remember that whole one-way-street thing? I’m sure I’d be disappointed if I never received any responses, but one must reign that reaction into only mild disappointment. Getting angry over rejections is the path to the dark side. Wallowing through a pit of disappointment and misery only to build a shell of self-aggrandizing indignation is just a horseshit way to go about anything in life, much less trying to get your favorite authors to read your work.

And so, I wait. Receiving a blurb from any of the people from whom I’ve requested would be like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one, but not receiving one would be… well… a Tuesday. I feel like that’s the best possible outlook: don’t let the lows get too low, but let the highs launch like a sixteen-pounder on New Year’s. And, above all, don’t be a dick.

CONSTRUCT releases on September 18th on Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.

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Formatting, and All That Jazz

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I cross-posted this article at ChroniclerSaga.com.

I am completely OCD about quality. Sometimes, that can be a bad thing. I have trouble releasing things I’m working on, especially artistic works. I’m fairly positive that this trait is what pulled me away from being an illustrator; I was never, ever satisfied with things I’d draw, and couldn’t accept the flaws in my work. When writing CONSTRUCT, this manifested itself in seven full drafts comprised of a ton of interim revisions. Had to be done.

Typos, bad formatting, terrible covers… ugh. Seeing that an author or a publisher has put absolutely minimal effort into their book’s aesthetic is off-putting, to say the least. A bit more can be forgiven in the case of self-published authors; it’s hard enough just jumping through the hoops to get the book released. But to see a minimally-formatted, slap-dash eBook from a major publisher is in-fucking-furiating.

kindle_screenshot_01The various distributors of eBooks have built systems that make it extremely easy to release your prose to the world. In developing a system centered on ease, however, they’ve sacrificed aesthetics. For the vast majority of self-published authors – and, for that matter, most big publishers translating physical copy to digital – that doesn’t matter. Ease is all that counts, and as long as the text is readable, who gives a damn how it looks?

I DO.

First and foremost, I wanted a traditional cover for my novel. The rise of Photoshopped stock images on book covers makes me die inside a little, especially for fantasy novels. I grew up on covers by Vallejo and the Hildebrandts, so I knew I’d never be satisfied with a $30 stock cover design or a Photoshop disaster. As you can see in the cover reveal I posted a couple of weeks ago, my cover artist Carmen absolutely nailed the artwork for this book, and I couldn’t be happier.

Like I said, I’m a quality nut. Once I’d made the decision to self-pub, I did a ton of research on eBook formatting, and how your formatting is affected by the various processing software provided by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others. The almost-universal opinion of the output of these services hovers somewhere around “Meh. It works, I guess.” But even with that feedback, many self-published authors see the output of those processors and just throw up their hands, giving in to whatever minor victories they can eke out of a shitty system.

kindle_screenshot_02I didn’t want to be hamstrung by what those companies could provide, so I delved into the process of doing the formatting myself. Details, details, details. I learned how to convert a manuscript on my own, using an open source eBook management program called Calibre. Even the output from Calibre was mediocre, mostly because it requires a ton of in-depth knowledge of Calibre’s settings and features, and how they interact with the input file. I was able to get a passable result, but nothing special. I began looking for a way to do my own tweaks. I have a reasonable knowledge of HTML and CSS, and eBooks are pretty much just self-contained HTML files. I found an eBook WYSIWYG editor called Sigil, and I was off to the races.

Sigil allowed me to alter the book at the code level, and I was in heaven. I was able to futz with every single little detail, burying myself in the minutia. Everything from the placement of chapter headings to indents to line spacing to the horizontal rule at the beginning of every chapter. I refined and tinkered the living shit out of the code for this book, and I think it shows in the finished product. On top of satisfying my OCD, it was just plain fun.

How a book looks when you’re reading is important. Typos and bad formatting detract from the reading experience. Everything about a book should melt into the background except for the words on the page, and every time you run across a misspelled word or an awkward paragraph break, it pulls you out of the immersion. Even if readers don’t actively notice the work I put into the formatting, I’ll be happy if they just don’t notice the formatting at all.

If it’s invisible, I’ve done my job.

CONSTRUCT, Book I of The Chronicler Saga, releases on September 18th for Kindle, Nook, and Kobo.