Literature Is Not Dead

Part two of our trip was Brussles! Home of beer. Also a small peeing statue, the picture of which I did not include because who cares? Much better a picture from a television show we watched. This is one of the judges on a reality home cooking show of some sort. We decided his glasses are the best ever. At being ugly.

Ever go to bed early, only to be awakened by a deafening symphonic medley of overused classical tunes and movie theme songs? If you did this in Brussels, like I did, you might have stormed outside, intent on joining the party, and found this. A large light show on the side of Brussel’s famous city hall building. This happens every night.

Me, during a self-guided brewery tour at the family-run brewery Cantillon in Brussels.

And lastly, Doug Mack himself. Just look at that roguish smirk, that “Oh, just another day in a foreign country having adventures most people only dream of.”-shrug. This man leads a life of constant toil. Please, when it’s published, buy his book. Save him from his terrible, paltry existence.

My partner in writing and traveling crime, Doug Mack, has finally sent me the images he collected during our trip to Europe to work on his book. I’ll post a few at a time over the next few weeks. Here’s a couple from Amsterdam:

Why Europe has women figured out better than America. They make high heels out of chocolate. If only they could sing Nancy Sinatra while you ate them…

The Heineken brewery. I love this show… No, actually, there is a video being projected onto the inside of this shiny and no-longer in service mash tun, which is what I’m watching. Or maybe I am just dreaming of beer.

They still have Foodomats (or whatever they call them) in Amsterdam. Just one of the many reasons it’s a land of wonder. This picture also reminded me that I haven’t worn the pair of boots pictured in it in a long time. I wonder if I lost them.

Lastly, an image of me that proves that Doug is by far the best photographer I have ever known, because there is no way I am this attractive in real life. Just look at that jawline! I’m seriously about to make-out with my own computer screen! Photoshop is amazing!

Photos of bicycle parking garages, more beer stuff, and possibly some buildings coming soon. Also, if I can figure out how to do it, a video of me taking a shot of liquor made from the coca plant, which is the plant famous for providing us with a different, more potent stimulant.

Since the demise of my buggy reading sidebar some months ago, you all have been woefully in the dark about my reading habits. Veteran stalkers would be shocked by a sharp veering away from fiction in my reading lately as I do research on my current novel. Some of the books I’ve read recently include:

• Shocktrauma
• Gifted Hands: the Ben Carson Story
• How Doctors Think

What I’m reading now:

• Acupuncture: A viable medical alternative
• Chronic City

Still to read:

• The Surgeons
• Chi Walking
• Blackhawk Down
• The House of God
• Better (and/or The Checklist Manifesto)

Now, can anyone guess what I’m writing about?

For the last 60 years, someone has placed three red roses and a half a bottle of cognac on Edgar Allen Poe’s grave each year on the anniversary of the writer’s birthday. This year, the Poe Toaster didn’t show up.

The Sun has an article here.

Nobody knows who the toaster was. Nobody knows why the toaster did not arrive this year. Nobody knows why the tradition has finally ended. 

It strikes me as very sad and somewhat mysterious, and that makes me think that the strange end to this tradition might please Poe himself, were he around to see it. 

For those of you who read The Contortionist’s Handbook, an article on a real life contortionist:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who_conned_the_ivy_league/1

Another post coming as soon as I figure out why my computer won’t let me log in at times.

It’s true: http://xkcd.com/451/

It’s been far too long since I posted a word of the day. How you must be suffering! Well here’s something that should help:

Anodyne is an adjective that means serving to assuage pain, and though it’s a word I’d read before, I had no idea what it meant. It comes from the Greek, with the prefix “a” adding a negative to the word “odyne” which meant pain. So away from, or without, pain. It can also be used as a noun.

On his third shot of whiskey he began to feel the anodyne effects of the alcohol.

Ah, now isn’t that better?

I’ve read a lot of great books in the past ten years, but many of those were classics written a long time ago. Here are my ten favorite of the ones actually published in the last decade.

1. The Contortionist’s Handbook, by Craig Clevenger - though these are listed in no particular order, The Handbook is probably my favorite of them all. They say Clevenger writes better than Palahniuk, and they may be right.
2. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruis Zafon - While Bolano got all the write-ups as the big import author this decade, I spent my time reading Zafon, and I’m glad I did.
3. Corrections to my Memoirs, by Michael Kun - I don’t know why people don’t know Kun. This became, all of a sudden, my favorite short story collection of all time. OF ALL TIME.
4. Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau Wilce - Better than Harry Potter. Yes, I said it.
5. No one Belongs Here More than You, by Miranda July - Miranda July is the Queen Midas of modern creativity.
6. Going Postal by Terry Pratchett - Nobody gives Pratchett his due because the books he writes are funny, and funny books cannot also be important. Pratchett is easily the finest satirist I’ve read in the last two decades, and a better storyteller than 90% of writers today.
7. Murdaland - It appears that this journal has since disappeared, but if you can lay your hands on either of their first (and only) two issues, you will possess the finest, grittiest crime fiction written in the decade.
8. The Game, by Neil Strauss - Chauvanist? Yes. Brilliant? Also yes.
9. Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett - I tend to read mostly action/adventure, noir and sci-fi. Truth and Beauty is at the opposite end of the spectrum from that sort of thing, but amazing. All I’m gonna say is that Patchett delivers on her title.
10. This spot is reserved for the book I’ve forgotten about. No doubt one of the best has slipped my mind and no doubt someone will remind me.

Story is free.

A guy like James Cameron, and he’s only one of many, will spend millions of dollars on effects, and studios regularly spend millions on getting good acting talent, but modern movies are so slight on story that you know they don’t spend any time refining it. It is true that good storytellers and screenwriters are not cheap (although compared to Brad Pitt they are, in fact, cheap), and smart studios surely spend lots of money getting the best. But these smartly written stories are one in a twenty at best.

If you’re a director/writer and the project is yours anyway, and you consider yourself a storyteller, just take a little longer to get it better! Think of it this way:

If you owned a bar you’d spare no expense on the decor, right? And you’d surely spend to attract the best bar managers and staff possible. And your bar would be advertised wherever necessary? Well not investing in story is like plugging your iPod into your expensive bar sound system and putting it on shuffle. You’ll have DMX rapping to your dinner guests and Norah Jones serenading your late night party crowd. Cyprus Hill will follow opera and be succeeded by the Jonas brothers. Though you might have an amazing opening night at your bar, people will eventually stop coming.

IPod playlists are free to create. Just like story.

Lesbian speed dating
Black gay dating
Adult singles dating clarkson nebraska

In the traditional publishing scheme, hardbacks are released first and paperback versions of the book are released later, if at all. Nobody knows when e-books (aka: the future, the apocalypse, our salvation, the devil) should be released.

Some think that e-books should be released with hardcover. Others think they should be released between hardcover and paperbacks, and some believe they should be released last, in order not to cannibalize dead-tree book sales. The problem with releasing them with hardcovers is that you’re trying to sell a $25 version and the e-book version, which is likely going to be much cheaper, and you’re trying to tell people they’re equal in every way. Releasing ebooks after paperbacks is too much of a delay (because tech-savy people are not good at waiting, apparently). So releasing e-books between hardback and paperback versions seems the only way to make people happy. Except it’s not really making people happy, it’s just making them not-unhappy.

So my suggestion: release the e-book first.

Hear me out!

1) E-book havers are, at the moment, classic first-adopters. These are the kind of people who tell their friends about the new band, who upgrade to the new operating system first, who had twitter back when everyone else was still signing up for Facebook. These are the kind of people who start trends. They are exacty the kind of people publishers want to give their book to.

2) E-book production is cheap(er). If early readers universally decry the book as terrible, as fit only for electronic bedding for the cage of their electronic pet, publishers can always shout “stop the presses,” cancel the hardcover, and save some cash.

3) One of the big complaints about e-books is they are hard to give or lend. Despite what people say about how you can have more than one Kindle on an account, you can’t give an ebook like you can a paper one. Now, note that the giving of a book almost always happens after the book has already been read by the giver. So let givers read books in e-book format, and then provide them with a handsome, shelf-worthy hardcover they can buy and hand to their friends on Christmas.

4) This strategy creates a collector and fan market. We can see Seinfeld on TV any time we want, but we still buy the DVDs. Even though they may own the e-book, fans and collectors will buy the paper version so they can say they own it. We are all magpies in that way, and we like owning things.

The major downside of this strategy is that paper book sales will likely decrease because not everyone will buy another copy (or buy their first copy in paper once they’re told about it by an e-book reader). The sad truth is that paper book sales are probably going to decrease anyway. We are all magpies and we like shiny new things and we are all going to get e-readers even if they’re not as awesome as books in so many important ways.

I’m calling it right now: the publishers that do well in the coming publishing world will be those that use e-books to build buzz and establish base sales for books that will later be released on the hides of those other wonderful things we’re slowly getting rid of: trees.