FULL BLEED: PREAMBLE AND PREMONITION

Spent last weekend in a flux state, passing through more than couple interzones at a time. Saturday anniversary. Yes, I chose the wedding date. And I didn't. It was the first night we happened to get together, back in [redacted]. So yes, I decided to make that our wedding date as well even though it happens to fall upon Day of the Dead and All Souls Day and Samhain and I bet I'm missing a couple others in there. We've been married a good long time, together longer even than that. I wouldn't change anything that was in my power to, and everything else is stuff I can't control so I have to let it go. Even if that's the stuff that's there every day. Yeah, cryptic.

Also spent that day at an event at a local bookstore, where there were a couple panels that I saw and one I spoke on. The first one was with a group of fantasy writers, and by fantasy it's explicitly other world or fictionalized past of this one (or maybe just based on one of our historical cultures, unclear.) I don't have too much to say on it all other than I agree with their takes on trope lists being, ah, not a great development. I'd have been a lot stronger had I been on the panel. Maybe I'd have made an influencer mad and really had a shot at making my career, I dunno. But one day I'll get asked about this stuff in front of a hot mic and everyone will get some free entertainment at my expense.

I did want to talk about a quick thing that these folks covered. Nearly all of them, or perhaps all, talked about JRR Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings books as being the thing that led them down this path. And that's great. More people should read Tolkien if only to see what the books are like versus the movies and versus what the pop culture preconceived notions of the books as presented. All of them talked about Tolkien's worldbuilding as a thing that drew them in and I was nonplussed. Tolkien came up with a history and lineages of his characters and the peoples of Middle Earth and infused them, particularly the Shire and the hobbits of the Shire, with a sense of place. Which to me is just baseline good writing. Granted, Tolkien had skills with language that helped the readers imagine more than was laid out on the page. Again, that's just good writing, strong voice, inviting the reader in to complete the work.

But none of that is the conventional kind of worldbuilding which seems endemic to fantasy, even High/Epic Fantasy, as it's practiced today. There's a world out past the stuff that's on the page, yes. It's not developed and brought to the forefront to the point of distraction. There's no digressions on the magic systems of Gandalf the Grey or Sauraman the White or even of the Many Colors. No exploration of the strength of the fel creatures or even how the Balrog represents primordial trauma (oh wait, that's horror, whoops). All the stuff that I'm poking at is window dressing. The meat of Lord of the Rings is how the least significant creatures manage to overthrow Sauron even if it involves the unknowing sacrifice of their own innocence.

Tolkien's shadow over fantasy literature is mighty, yes. But by the same token, it's not one he was aiming for or intended or could even conceive of. It's unfair to put today's fantasy literature on his shoulders, yet it does seem to happen over and over. And to be fair, I'm no better when it comes to say, HPL, who is in the same unenviable position of being not even a primary branch of contemporary horror, but one of the biggest trees in the forest, to torture a metaphor. All the same, I get bent out of shape when some of the symptoms get put on the shoulders of writers of the past.

Tolkien's readers did a lot of the worldbuilding themselves, stringing the pieces that JRR carefully arrayed before them together into a much bigger work. But that doesn't mean that all you need to do to accomplish Epic Fantasy is write that background. It's exactly that, background. The past might reach its fingers into the present and the story can even be about that, but merely describing the fingers and the background isn't enough.

Which is not to say that any of the writers talking about JRRT that day are doing this. At all. I'm just questioning the shorthand of describing contemporary phenomena/symptomology as the work of one writer in the past. Or maybe I'm just saying there needs to be more.

Anyways, the horror writing/er panel went well. Though I'm sure I confused nearly everyone there with a comp for Hazeland that went like "Barney Miller meets Night Gallery" which is probably way more accurate than I intended it to be. Not sure I attracted any new readers. But hey, that's the gig, right? All you can do is go out and cast the net, keep doing the work.

Speaking of the work, twenty-eight pages last week, which was the entirety of my output in October. But at least I got some pages down. Past 250 now. Should be past the halfway point, I'm hoping. Though I worry about the structure of the book as it stands. It's... unconventional. But the reason I'm doing self-publishing (aside from not ever having had any real traction in indie or even traditional publishing) is so I can do books the way I think they should be done, or as they reveal themselves to me because I'm tired of cookie cutter structures and being told what forms are even worth the time of the editors or agents or anyone else who opens doors in that world. I think the technical term is rejection dysmorphia. Or simply being tired of being told that the work isn't good enough by folks who, time after time, can't really pick what will click in an ever-shrinking marketplace.

Nobody knows what's gonna work, so I'll do what makes sense to me, so long as there's the time and energy to do it. Hell, I can't even get the genre thing right.

That said, if you want to know where the interesting work is largely going to be coming from in the shrinking world of big literary offerings, it'll be from out in the wilderness. Yes, we live in a world where Thomas Pynchon is still releasing novels, but, and no offense to Mr. Pynchon, should he be reading this and I'd have to ask him why, he's among the last of the Modernist (arguably Post-Modernist, depending on who you talk to) out there in the world who's actually of the Modern period. He's for real the fingers of the past persisting into the now, which is great, but once that time is done, it's done.

I do wonder what's gonna happen after that, really. More on this later.

Spent yesterday dropping off a car at my folks' house so my daughter could get home (not from my folks' house but nearby Lake Tahoe; long story.) So I was spared the displacement that's sure to come with the time change every year. For what it's worth, it seems like Standard time year round is the only thing that makes sense. But I'm not a politician who gets easy "looking like I'm working" points by suggesting this thing be changed, which happens every year. But I'm feeling that displacement tonight. Doesn't help that my schedule got demolished today so I couldn't start work on anything until... 4pm. And it's basically dark now. Big hill in across the greenspace in the backyard and yeah, that sun drops early now. I'm supposed to like it. Summers here are long and very hot. Folks don't expect it. So the winters are nice. Just a lot to get used to right off the bat.

Anyways, talking with my folks yesterday and yes, they're significantly older than me, but to hear flat out them talking about books diminishing and heading off to the Gray Havens. They still read, and one of them still writes, mind you.

And let's clear the air. I'm a nepo baby. You heard it here first. My folks were writers and got paid incredibly well to do so. My mom started in SF in the 1970s into the mid 80s where she moved to romance. They both wrote mysteries and some historicals together. They did really well for themselves. And I'm nobody in the business. Their agent's read of my manuscript was embarrassing at best. But yeah, just 'cause your parents did well in a business means you're set up for life. That ain't true and is probably a good chunk of the reason why I'm out here without a publishing deal. But then I've had perspective on the business that other folks havent. Anyways, yeah, nobody to blame but myself. Right. Back to the subject at hand.

They've been watching the market contract and consolidate as long as I have, longer really. They watched bookstores go away and books stop being carried in places where normal humans would buy stuff and maybe buy a book. They've watched the distribution and printing networks collapse down to something like a shadow of themselves. And most importantly, they've watched people stop reading, as a cohort. Yes, people still read. Not like those numbers used to be (which is why publishers are so het up about BookTok, because it's one of the few places they think they can go and get some result for their media buys. More on that later.)

Here's the part where people rush in and say "No! Books are still important! I buy a lot of books! They're thriving!" And it's true that you can find fifty books that came out this year that you, no matter how weird your tastes, will find amazing and worth your time. And you'll have to hunt them down and rely on a trusted network of informers to hear about them because marketing is impossible unless you have a large pile of money to burn. But since we're talking about books here, there's no piles of money to burn.

It's a small market, no matter how much money the big publishers tout that they're bringing in (adjust that stuff for inflation and it feels... different.) So yeah, you may as well strike out and do what you think needs doing because nobody else will and we're all enjoying the same levels of success. Or maybe you really succeed and the demands of your writing career become more than you and your job or you and your life can pull off. Yeah, that sucks. But those folks who gotta write will continue to do so, if they're able. And sometimes you're just not able to, maybe even for a long time. They're not doing it for the prestige and they're sure as hell not doing it for the pay (though both help, one being useful in actually buying groceries.)

I still don't know where it's going. Maybe I'm wrong and we'll have Ace Doubles back in gas station spinner racks next year because there won't be any free entertainment anymore from social media or YouTube or whatever. Sure. It could happen. People could just decide to jump back into reading for pleasure instead of scrolling BookTok. You all know that BookTok's primary product isn't really reading, right? It's the BookTok ecosystem. It's likes and shares and follows and gifts and making deals with publishers to include their books in your twenty-four title high stack of books getting showed off with perfect lighting and maybe a cat to make the scene. Everyone loves cats. Anyways, BookTok is about BookTok. So's Goodreads. It's unfortunate. But hey, those platforms gotta make money or else they don't exist anymore.

But hey, books are dying. Nobody ever got anywhere by letting that stop them.

So why am I still doing this? Because I have to. In spite of everything, and there's an awful lot of everything these days. There's a lot trying to get in the way. There's walls between me and audience. There's demands on my time and energy and focus that'd make you curl up in a ball under the covers, or maybe that's just me.

In spite of that, this stuff is all I'm really good at. It's the only way I can get a coherent work out there into the world. And it's a thing that's dying. Maybe it's hit angle of repose, but I don't think so. I really don't. I'm willing to have the world prove me wrong, but I'm not holding my breath. Besides, there's a lot of things I'd like to be wrong about. It'd make things easier. You wouldn't believe how much easier.

The only thing to do in the face of that is to keep typing, maybe reach over and skritch one of the two orange kittens that's often less than arm's length away in my workspace, sometimes purring, sometimes sleeping, sometimes trying to climb on my shoulder where there's no room for either of them. That's all there is.