FULL BLEED: WHEN YOU SEE THE RED LIGHT WINKING

I'm back. Evidently I needed a little bit of time off blogging. I may need more past that, really. I was hitting things pretty hard during the promotion for the Fake Believe fundraising campaign, even a couple, three times a week. That's a lot of shouting into the void. I mean, in addition to all the shouting I end up doing on Bluesky. Too much, but I suppose it's more constructive than shouting into a pillow until you spit blood.

Not that I've ever done that. Kidding.

Going back to working on The Missing Pieces after stepping away. Maybe eighty-five pages in three weeks was asking a little much. Hell, I don't even know if they're good pages. I don't even know what make up good pages anymore. Does there have to be just a single line that makes it worthwhile? Yeah, like I said, I don't know. It's not like quality writing is something anyone can agree on at this point. Or if it's even something that's actively pursued by writers or publishers. Yes, I'm sure that every writer likes what they write and every publisher is confident in what they're putting out.

Unless they're Boundless and whoops. Not to make light of it. Those folks have fucked over a whole lot of writers, and knowingly so. After making them go through a crowdfunding process and then, well, we're just not going to pay you royalties. It's costing us a ton of money to come up with this AI system that'll be a free money machine for us eventually and whoops we're bankrupt and we're a new company now so you can't pursue lost royalties too bad. It's pretty clear that they knew what was going on for a long time and simply chose to be assholes about it instead of trying to make things right with the people who actually wrote books for them. Books that the company agreed to and signed contracts outlining minimum acceptable behavior for.

I sure hope they're reduced to a smoking crater and that the writers get paid out of the proceeds. I'm not optimistic about the whole process. But then my optimism has taken a pretty major beating over the last ever so long. The whole world being actively hostile to any position other than "Give me free content right now" has done a number on me, yeah. I know. It's not actually my problem. I walked away from the process, as much as I could. But the process is still ongoing. I know. I should simply not pay attention to things I can't control or even influence, yet it's impossible to not see it. Books are there for influencers to reduce to meme/trope lists and publishers are actively courting this stuff. They want it. Which means they're probably looking for books that are easily convertible into influencer chow. Circle of life, little buddy.

Whatever. I'm still able to write what I want to, how I want to. Just that means I won't be injected into the publishing system anytime soon. You know, just like how insurance lets you into a system of insurance pricing and accessibility to services, publishing has become that now. Maybe it always was and we just didn't want to acknowledge it or pretend that there was a whole ecosystem outside those larger publishers in whatever field or genre. Then, if you were into it enough, the internet would led you discover whole other worlds, writers who weren't in the system and never were going to be (even if they were in a system like Amazon, for instance.)

Anyways, publishing lets you get publicized, get reviewed, lets you know that you're someone, one of the elect. People will actually read your work, right? Well, sure, until you look at remainder bins and realize that both the mighty and the lowly end up there. But I supposed at least you get seen if you're big enough.

Feral writer. Just put that bowl of kibble outside a couple times a week. I might even come over and butt my head on your boot while you sit on the stoop and drink your coffee in the morning. Just don't try to drag me into the house. Yeah.

So as feral writers are wont to do, I swung by a local writer/book fair. I dressed for an indoor show and with a modicum of professionalism, or at least being somewhat memorable, what with my Levi's and Docs in need of a cleaning and Hawaiian print shirt with some skulls hidden amongst the oversize plumeria blossoms. Keep in mind that in the neighborhood where the show was, the mercury tipped 95 the day before. And it was hotter today.

Turns out that the show was half outdoors and half indoors. The half outdoors was almost better for the fact that that the building AC was pretty quickly overwhelmed by the packed-in bodies and outside air coming in with every person who walked through any of the multiple doors. In short, not optimal for a heatwave. Sure, it might've been ten degrees over regular temps for the time of year, but not that much hotter. This is a problem with having to hold events in the real world: there's only so many venues that can be booked for this sort of thing. Multiple things to balance, crowds, venue size, facilities, etc. It's not easy.

But as it was, I was running pretty hot fifteen minutes into the show. Not their fault. That was a failure on my part and I should have just gone in shorts and sandals. But like I said, I wanted to at least run semi-professional. My mistake. Hell, even the crows in the neighborhood were hopping around from place to place, beaks wide open so they could try to regulate their temperature some. I know that feeling, brother.

As for the offerings there, most of it was not for me. Lots of folks out there trying to emulate plot-driven thrillers or crime or SF or whatever. And I get it. That's what sells in the big leagues. Characters moving these tight plots around from their own agency and figuring out exactly how to Solve The Big Problem and Fix Themselves in the process. And unless you're doing that with a just dynamite narrative voice, the trouble is that you can get that sort of thing anywhere. Literally everywhere you can buy books. Plots drive the action and characters seem to drive the plot. Yes, I know ain't none of it is real, that it's all on rails and that the ending of the book is fixed from before I read the first page. Trick is getting me to enjoy it enough that I'm not thinking about any of that.

Last couple attempts at reading plot-heavy stuff have just turned me off completely. I know. It's a me thing. I'm the problem. It's me. That said, it makes things hard on me when I read the back cover or flyleaf copy and it's promising a plot-packed adventure where the characters All Learn The Right Lessons. I'm not going to tell anyone what to write. I highly resent it when folks do that to me, so I won't. That said, I'm free to be interested or disinterested in whatever comes along. Don't tell me what to read, either I guess is what I'm getting to.

So yeah, only one purchase at the book fair. It's an anthology so I figure if I don't like what one author is doing, I can move right along. No crime in it. It's a lot worse when you put the card down and pay for a whole book that just doesn't have the juice. But hey, you don't have to finish anything you don't like. I'm sure not.

Cleaning out some promo books that I'd gotten awhile back and one of 'em was interesting. First-time writer, heart's in the right place. But I'm wondering what I'd have said if I was asked to write a review of the book or if I was cornered by the author. My experience with giving feedback to folks who I don't know personally is... not great. I'm sometimes reluctant even with folks I do know. I'm a tough guy to please in that I love narrative voice. And voice is one of those things that's really been pushed aside of late, at least in commercial fiction, for a sort of airy and weightless narrative voice that doesn't get in the way. It's also a hard thing to teach, evidently, though given work it can develop and grow in interesting ways.

Anyways, this book which I'm not gonna name because my experience has led me to the realization that most writers don't actually want feedback or criticism. I'm often on the fence about it. My knowing of a book is on a sort of intuitive and subconscious level in the drafting and then editing is this laborious process that I end up fighting. All that said, nobody wants to hear "the prose on the page isn't dancing -- it's just there" (oops, I used a double-dash, so I'm clearly writing this via AI psych). And that to me is the most important thing and the thing I'm least able to address constructively. I can point out where there's lines that are really great and capture things, even beyond simile or metaphor but simply by nailing the vibe and sounding like they came from a unique source, a unique place. Even if those instances are strung out over huge distances like stars in the galaxy. I suppose the solution is to have them not so far apart.

Or to understand that it's not actually my job to tell anyone how they should write the thing that they love. That was the book they wanted to write. And that pleasure, from writing the book, that's the whole deal now. We're all clear on that. What good does it do anyone to be told that someone else would have done it differently? And to what end? Is that feedback going to make the book more attractive to publishers? Given my track record, I'd say hell no.

All that said, yeah, the good stuff in the book is good. I could go on, but, nah.

We should probably be more interested in letting writers do what they want to do because that's what they're going to get out of the process. If they want to pursue commercial success and go tight and plotty, that's great. It does nothing to impinge upon you doing what you want to do. But complaining about it gets you clicks and clicks get you influence and maybe that's where this whole goddamn thing started going wrong.

I'll try to gin up something more positive for the next outing, promise.

Couple programming notes.

First is I'll be giving a panel on noir and genre at Bay-Con in Santa Clarita over the 4th of July weekend, just a month or so away. Scheduling is TBA.

Second is I'll be doing a signing and talk to the author sort of thing at the Word Horde Emporium in Petaluma on the afternoon of the 5th of july. 1 or 2 pm start time. I'll have copies of Fake Believe for sale, as well as my other books. Hell, I may drag some copies of Strangeways out of storage for the occasion. Only way you're gonna get 'em.

Oh, three notes. The third is that Fake Believe will be available starting 6/15 (or 15/6 if you're in Europe/the UK). Not a dream! Not an imaginary story! More on these developments as news comes in.