Holy fuck. I bought a Gretsch.
This guitar has been haunting me for the best part of a year, but today, I stopped talking myself out of it, pressed some buttons and this beautiful Gretsch Falcon will be here sometime over the weekend:
I'm excited - and I don't do excited very often. What I wanted was a guitar that could handle what I have to throw at it on the songwriting front. Something that would behave like a partner in crime worthy of the title. Something that looked like it could handle a lot of work even when I wasn't in the room!
I am in love.
Soon it will be time to begin demoing up the first batch of songs for my DeadBirds project. We'll spend some time getting to know each other better and in those cracks of production known as putting The Family Of Noise out, together we will get in on.
Meanwhile, in the writing world, I found a great post over on LitReactor this morning about the life expectancy of a novel. You can read the whole thing here and if you're in the writing game, you should read it.
It's one of the things nobody ever tells you about when you talk about being a writer. You can write a novel, spend years on it even, but once it's out there, you have zero control over what happens. You can't vet the people that buy it to make sure they will understand all of the things you were trying to say about the world. Just like in the above linked scenario, you can't guarantee your book will stay alive out in the world, can't guarantee your publisher will stay in business or sometimes, that you will even get paid.
Conversely, if you have a massively successful book, the mental fatigue can be just as harsh. You write a book. It sells millions of copies. You write another. Nobody likes it because it's not 'the same' as the first one. Maybe you only had one book in you. Who knows.
The writing road is littered with obstacles you need to navigate.
It's tough being a writer - mostly because unless you are one of about 24 people, nobody has heard of you and yet, you still need to find a reason to get up in the morning and write again and again, for no reason other than it's what you do.
You want to know what's even tougher than being a writer in 2017? Being a horror writer...
Here's a shot of my local Waterstones where 'horror' has been consumed by 'science fiction and fantasy':
I went up close to check too. They're all in there - King, Barker, Koontz, Herbert - all consumed by this new multifaceted heading and I like it. Well, I kind of like it. Perhaps it would be more accurate if those big headings at the top of the rack said 'Other Worlds' or 'Alternate Realities'. I could see that as a huge step forwards for kids looking for kicks in 2017 and future years. It has to be about the kids now. When it comes to these genres, people of a certain age are already sold regardless, but for me, I think the whole genre-fiction 'thing' needs reinventing from the ground up.
And if we're going to kill one genre, let's kill them all because fans of these genres are not dumb. Eight racks with seven shelves to each rack means we're not playing a minority game these days.
Anyway, I take my hat of to The Management for bringing horror into a larger family where it wasn't quite so noticeable that there were only thirty books worthy of the title up for sale.
I did ask: when people (generally speaking) buy science fiction or fantasy, they are game for new works/authors more than ever - but when people (also generally speaking) buy horror, they fall back on the masters.
What happened out there? Is it easier to get scary thrills from a movie? Did it go down the same path once too often?
I'd love to know the answer.
But I bought a motherfucking Gretsch, so I don't have a care in the world right now. Sorry about that.