Zebra 3, Come In Please...

A while ago, I published a conversation that I had with my now friend/acquaintance Christopher Ransom. The general gist of it was that I considered blogging an essential part of not just writing, but my everyday life. I like weaving random thoughts together but then, that's kind of how I started all of this with The Language of Thieves & Vagabonds, so it's partly a second nature. Mr Ransom on the other hand considered that any time that he may spend blogging was actually better spent actually writing. As I sit here struggling to make the ends of time meet everyday when it comes to finishing "that book", I agree  that he has a point but then, he also has a publisher breathing down his neck for another book. The pros and cons of having a deal on the table huh? I don't know how Mr Ransom has addressed the situation since we last spoke at any length but I hope I am getting better. I now have a plan. Yep - a plan.

I have always resisted plans in the past. It all seems to be a little bit well, 'planned' and therefore, clinical. I write when I write - period. But for somebody who professes to be smart, I can be pretty dumb sometimes too. Not having any schedule at all means that I've not got as much done as I wanted to. The plan is pretty simple - a long list of projects, when things have to be done by, in what format etc and accompanying this is a list that's just as long of other things that need doing. I have my cohort Mr Downes to thank for this. He's a good planner. He can't get anything done himself mind, but regardless, he is excellent at seeing things from the outside and pointing out the obvious.

Everybody should have a friend they trust that points out the obvious. Most invaluable.

Anyway, all this planning has resulted in me having to instigate something else to. Nothing at all. Everybody should also have day when they do nothing at all. I know myself well enough to know that I do my best work when I'm not doing anything. This preferably involves being outside. Sea is good. Woods are good. The downside of this is other ideas. If that list gets any longer, it will become very worrying to look at, but hey, that's the thing I've chosen to do. No doubt the next thing around the corner will be learning how to say no to myself, but I'll deal with that later.

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

(Best TV theme ever, best detective partners ever. best TV show of all time. Game over.)

Today has now turned into 'cut the blog short Friday'. I am going to write stuff. I don't know what, but let's see what's asking to be finished around here...

Mr Ransom & Mr Smith on the blogging author.

A couple of weeks ago, I got in touch with Christopher Ransom (see review of his new novel The Fading here) about something so small, I can't even remember what it was but it propelled us into an email exchange on the pros and cons of blogging - on which subject he gave me the thumbs up to repost the contents of here. So in the interest of er... research on how important a blog is for a writer these days, here's the not so contrasting views between a published author (him) and  a 'not-published in the strictest sense of the word' author (me), here's that very conversation - unedited: Hey Sion,

First off, my apologies for being delayed in getting back to you.  I had a good friend in town for 5 days, during which we attended an author event for Tom Piccirilli, hit a Wilco concert at Red Rocks, hosted a bbq for my family, capping it off with one of my own author events in Boulder to promote the US release of my second novel, The Haunting of James Hastings, aka Killing Ghost (US).  Needless to say, after 5 days of work and play, all of which involved copious amounts of beer, I was flat exhausted and needed a day or two to get back on top of my correspondence ... well, enough of the excuse making.

 

I had originally intended to get back to you personally as I was intrigued by your blog response to my almost-blog about blogging.  I thought you displayed quite a bit of good humor and made the discussion interesting, especially considering I came off as a bit of jerk with respect to blogging.  The truth is, when I posted that "news" item on my site, I was lamenting my own crumbling will-power in the face of today's publishing needs and, I suppose, sending myself a bit of a reminder not to slack off on the book writing.  One of the main reasons I have held off on blogging is my fear of losing (wasting) valuable writing time.  I am, by nature, a procrastinator and time-waster when it comes to staring at my computer monitor.  And, in all honesty, I've seen too many would-be writers spend the lot of their time blogging or writing smaller pieces daily when they could have been writing 3, 5 or 10 pages of prose each day.  In other words, in addition to longing for the days when an author could afford to sit back and limit himself to writing novels and sending them off to his editor, with no further promotional responsibilities, I was talking to myself.  My post was something of a last gasp.

 

However, the reality is, that just-write-a-good-book publishing climate is gone.  If one is fortunate enough to have a publisher that promotes one's books (as opposed to simple binding and printing the thing and dropping it off at a few stores), one is EXPECTED to do one's part in flogging the book online, be that in one's blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, through email campaigns, etc.  As any writer or would-be writer knows by now, we are living in frightening times.  The book market is changing, book stores are vanishing, e-books are flourishing, revenue models are changing, self-published authors are riding a wave, mid-list authors are seeing their print deals go up in smoke, publishers are panicking about how to keep abreast of everything, and readers... well, readers are more discriminating than ever.  All this change is inevitable with the current advent of technology, but it does send author and publisher alike scrambling for a foothold.

 

Another reality I hadn't thought of, but which your post called to mind for me, is that we can't really know how the authors of yore, or those favorite authors of mine that I alluded to in my post, would have responded to the current technology and communication channels back in the day - because they simply didn't exist.  Would Stephen King, Dan Simmons, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, Dean Koontz, and so many other horror, mainstream, or even literary authors have taken to blogging, tweeting, and Facebooking with their fans and the online community (whatever that is) in their day, had they possessed the tools?  I guess we can't know.  Except to observe that many of them are doing it now that they DO have the tools. All of them have formidable online presences, some of them staffed and well-funded.  So much for my notion of the old school, yes?

 

Which brings us back to the point I almost but didn't really make at all: I am in the process of ramping up my own online marketing efforts.  This will include a stronger and more professional Facebook presence, a Twitter feed run by my invisible friend Noel Shaker to help promote The Fading, and more updates on my author site.  I'm doing this for a few reasons.  One, I have realized that I spend too much time dallying online, contributing to other sites, when I could be building something of my own.  Another is, I am grateful for my readership and want to nourish that lest it go up in smoke.  And lastly but not in the least, my publisher has, ahem, 'encouraged me' to boost my efforts at online marketing and offered to boost their own in my service.  So, it's really a matter of playing the game the way the game is played nowadays.  It's making the most of the tools at hand, building a readership the way one builds a business, and meeting our publisher's commitment with deeper commitments of our own.  

 

Time will tell if my readers and new readers really are interested in hearing more from me than what I have been able to publish in novel form, once annually, but I admit I am curious to see where it leads.  I am in constant conversation about books, writing, publishing, movies, random events, ugly trends, and terrifying world developments -- all with my friends, in person and on other authors' forums.  The only real shift for me, then, will be to direct all that time and energy at my own channels.

 

Still, even as I type this, a little red light is blinking in the back of my skull.  Don't forget to write some new pages for the new novel today, that warning light is telling me.  Whore yourself out in all the best possible ways, it says, but don't forget the books.  The books are everything.  To siphon energy and commitment away from them, from their daily creation, is, after all, the first sin of any would-be professional author.

 

See how easy that was?  I think I just wrote my first new blog entry.  Thank you for continuing the conversation, and inspiring me to do so.

 

Feel free to post this on your site.  I plan to put this -- along with your very generous review of The Fading -- on my site, my Facebook page, and then plug it through Noel's Twitter feed @TheFadedMan.  

 

It's what we do now, isn't it?

 

Interesting huh? To which I responded:

These are certainly weird times we live in. Some of my most liked authors are successfully avoiding any sort of online presence at all (Chuck Klosterman, Bret Easton Ellis off the top of my head) and appear to be quite happy letting their publishers run the game for them. But to come full circle with it and to put it in some kind of perspective, I am unpublished with fiction (day job is another thing entirely) and I figured the odds were stacked against me anyway, so I began my journey planning to do absolutely everything myself. I'm kind of OK with this but I needed a great model to base it on - and I did just one thing. I copied Neil Gaiman. I really like his presence and how he deals with his audience, I like the insights into his life (even if it does seem more interesting than mine). So I decided that if Gaiman had a blog, I would too, Gaiman had a twitter account, so would I. It's advanced from this somewhat over the last 12 months but the foundation was there and  - despite still not having finished the book - feel like it's a good place to start if people do happen along to my online space. The one key thing that I think is critical in this is to NOT have a facebook page. I know so many people who are locked into the time-sucking satanism of it, it's frightening. Interestingly, none of them are particularly successful apart from on their own facebook page - which is bad self hype to believe in.

 

And it's weird too because I, like you, am a loyal reader. I will always check out Clive Barker etc... it's just how I am. James Herbert has almost nothing online, King is more info-driven, Koontz makes an effort now and again, but up against Gaiman, nobody is really knocking it out of the park. I don't think anything less of those guys because of it but like you say, that's not the game anymore... what about the readers who are in their twenties? You're going to be their Stephen King/Dean Koontz - what do they expect? I can't quite figure it out but luckily, I really like blogging. Without a publisher breathing down my neck I can blog about Queesryche if it want to or a sandwich and pretend to be on the level of Gaiman (er - that's my big plan - fake it til you make it) - do you think your publisher would expect rather more exact pimping of your own product? It's a tough call.

 

Writing is never what those who aren't writers think it is huh. For what it's worth, here's my overall thought on it. If 'you' (not you personally, obviously) want to interact with me and like what I do, I have a site and you can contact me there. I will answer (so long as you're not being an idiot). If I have something to say, that's where I'll say it. Nobody serious about what they are doing has time to go and knock on each individual 'fans' door to work like that. I am not Santa. If I've said something particularly great, other people can do the networking thing for me.

 

And that sits really well with me. Here are you and I - interacting, with purpose about something important, from an email. I'd check in or add you to my news feed and see what you had to say because I like what you do. That's enough. As a grown up, I don't expect you to drop everything to tell me what you had on your toast this morning... 

 

Man, we all griped when there were rules and gatekeepers. Now they have taken all those things away, we don't know what to do with ourselves.

 

I guess you just need to put one sentence after another and keep going... 

More came after this, but after that, it peters out into 'we have work to do' much shorter paragraphs and a promise to keep in touch and bandy around some more ideas. I guess the point of me republishing it here is this: just because you got somebody to 'print and distribute' your work (known in the trade as 'publishing'), doesn't mean you won't find yourself thinking about these things. Nobody is going to come and take it off your hands. There is no holy grail at the end of the line anymore - I'm not sure there ever was. We may live in frightening times but they can be exciting frightening times too if you care to keep hold of the umbrella when the hurricane comes knocking...

You can find Mr Ransom online here.

The Fading: A Book Review

A prelude: I've thought of reviewing books here many times but shied away from it lest I feel the need to say something bad. Having said that, there's no harm to be reaped in playing nicely with other authors whose space I wish to share in the future. Perhaps a good way to approach this is by simply saying nothing at all about books that suck. This also appeals to my sense of time - why waste the precious stuff slating something I didn't like in the first place.

Which segues nicely into this. Christopher Ransom's shapely new novel.

It's been a while since I've read a book in a single sitting - or as much as a single sitting gets these days. Long gone are those times when you were 13 and could stash yourself away for hours on end and nobody would miss you. Ransom's previous novels (The Birthing House, The Haunting of James Hastings and The People Next Door) have all been great but read over a period of days and weeks - and that doesn't suit his style. What Ransom needs is for his stories to be chewed up and spat out as fast as you can to get the full benefit of what he's capable of. Interestingly, the inside cover of this UK version (I don't believe it's out anywhere else yet) has a teaser poster kind of thing going on that runs something along the lines of: "First there was King, then came Koontz. Now horror has a new voice..."

Something like that anyway. It's certainly the first time I've not laughed at such a statement. If you were into both of those guys the way they used to be before they got er... how shall we put this? Before they got complacent? Comfortable? Take your pick. Either way, Ransom will be right up your street. While he unintentionally mixes elements of both, Ransom is no copycat killer. He has a unique vision of all his own that I think he's only just starting to see for himself. Maybe four novels is how long it takes to settle into yourself and figure out what you think you're capable of...

The Fading is an easy read, there's nothing taxing here. It's simply a good old fashioned supernatural horror executed brilliantly. A lesser author would have taken me down a different path but Ransom, sure knows what he's doing. The book is lean as a fighting pig - there's no fat to speak of, no filler chapters that go on forever (oh yeah. we've all seen them and skipped over them, wondering why they were there in the first place) and no beating about the bush when it comes to plot. It even has a series of false endings - whether intentional or otherwise, it works great and made me kick back in the sofa and consider Mr Ransom pretty clever. A device certainly worthy of considering as I go forwards...

While I wouldn't consider it 'horror' in the traditional sense, I can see why it's being pushed down that road. It's as close as you'll ever get. Fact of the matter is, it stands alone. Think James Herbert when he pulled Moon out of the hat - or King when he mailed It out into the world. The similarities within the genre are easy to find but the key is that it really doesn't matter. The Fading has a fantastic idea behind it and an even better lead character who is able to pull it off. All supporting cast members are necessary. Honestly, there's no wastage here at all.

So, I guess whether you're hitting the beach soon, need something for a boring train ride or are just another victim of the hard drugs they're embedding into the paper they make books out of these days, The Fading really is worth the hours you'll give up out of your life for...

The Fading

I just can't help myself. I've got books piled high in some strange places right now - why I bought another, I'm not sure but I was picking up some vegetables last night (oh yeah - look at me knocking up real food from scratch) and I spotted Christopher Ransom's new release - The Fading. His previous: The Birthing House, The People Next Door and The Haunting of James Hastings (which has had it's name changed in the US to rather inferior Killing Ghost), have all been great reads. If you're in the mood for a skin crawler that's pretty much guaranteed to make the grade, The Fading is out on general release now. Ransom has a semi-blog here where he says that he should probably have a blog but nobody can surely be really interested, thus the 'blog' is disguised as 'news'. Looks like a blog to me though! In fact, what he actually said was this:

I really should have a blog or something more frquent to contribute to. You know, so that you will come back here again and again and I will become a fire brand in your brain and you will never, ever forget to buy my books. But then, if my books are earning that loyalty on their own, I'm pretty much sunk, aren't I? And I don't think I have all that much interesting to say that doesn't get fed one way or another into my books. Do any of you really want to read about what cute thing my dog just did today? So you care what my politics are? Where I had lunch today?

Probably not.

Or maybe some of you do, but still. I can't help feeling like such "blog" entries are a waste of my time and yours. There are enough opinions out there for people to gorge themselves on for a couple centuries, most of it about as nutritious as pre-digested celery. You need more opinions shoved down your throat like I need another spam voice mail to my cell phone. Right?

To put it another way, when I was growing up we didn't have blogs, and my favorite authors didn't blog, and I didn't miss hearing more about their personal lives, at least not unless it had to do with how such personal things helped them become a writer or how it influenced their work. My heroes didn't opine on the latest trends, celebrity divorce, or failed legislation. They just quietly went about writing novels, year after year.

When people whose work I like say things like this, I wonder exactly why I blog. What are we now? Four years into it perhaps. Maybe more. There's not much of real-value on here that, if something big happened, anybody could possibly be interested in. Sometimes I feel like I could flick the switch on it tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference to anything - and it wouldn't.The key phrase in Ransom's statement for me is "I can't help feeling like such "blog" entries are a waste of my time and yours." Ouch. That smarts a bit because it's got more than a few grains of truth in it.

It takes a lot of time and effort to blog consistently - and I will be the first to admit that the subject matter has veered around here more than I would have liked. They - the 'experts', that is - say that a successful blog is 'about something'. Sorry. Can't do that. There's too much life in the world to talk about just one thing. Too many great things to find and discover to confine yourself to one single focus. Experts tend to define 'success' as 'money' anyway and that's not always the purpose of something is it.

That's a really tough decision - shut down blog and spend more time writing proper things - or continue as normal?

After I posted the Lulu comments yesterday, I carried it around with me all day thinking that I had been harsh quite unintentionally - well, anybody who happened to pay attention to it. After all - who the hell am I to be preaching to the world? But I still think it's true. If you're going to do everything yourself with your story, why would you want it to look as though you had only spent five minutes on it? The extension of that for me though was, does it really matter, if thousands and thousands find themselves reading your book? Surely that's the important thing?

Hmm. Somehow it seems like going to work in your pyjamas to me...

THE READING LIST

It's time to start making a dent in the reading list... and man it's getting to be a big pile. Kinda.

I've pretty much moved over to reading digital books now but still can't resist going into the bookstore to see what's happening. And the answer is - pretty much as it was a year ago - nothing is happening. I go in there and take the odd picture of a book that looks good and then leave. I'm not the only one. I've seen many people do this (though they are more than likely scanning barcodes with that nifty amazon app).

So, if the bookstores can't provide me with what I need, the internet will - and sure enough it came up with Abiding Evil by Alison Buck. Not the greatest name for a book but it's really very, very good! I also picked up The Haunting of James Hastings by Christopher Ransom (which looks great and has a cargo-load of less than stellar reviews on amazon), The Well by Peter Labrow (which looks awful but has a ton of great reviews on amazon) and a book called Seed by Ania Ahlborn just because it was in the "also bought this" section.

What's interesting about this pattern is that I was looking for a modern supernatural kind of book and these are the ones I found that looked pretty shapely. The interesting part is that I never once looked to see who they were published by. This is probably the first time in my life that I have bought books based on reader reviews and a few sample pages rather than heading for a big publisher who is guaranteed to have spent time and money on the product.

Go into any branch of Waterstones and check out their horror section. It's dead, dead, dead - and yet there are these three books which all look like pretty good reads to me (Haunting of James Hastings is "proper" published and thus exempt from this sentence) and even if you think I'm an arse, I do know what I'm talking about when it comes to books. Honest I do.

So, to those of you asking the big question "where did all the supernatural/horror books go", the answer appears to be that nobody wants to publish them at the moment. Go figure, and while you're busy figuring, get online and hunt them down. Read them and then tell everybody else about them - many will be shit. In fact, most of them will be shit but this is the future. Not necessarily because of the publishers but mostly because of the way bookstores are behaving. Pretty soon, they'll start closing branches faster than you can get to them. It will be a shame, but take a look at our habits...