Finding New Meaning in Old Emotions

A scenario. Your character has:

Given up professional and post-graduate dreams to aid a friend
Moved to a new city to aid said friend
Then been let down by said friend
Which resulted in the loss of your character's entire circle of friends, who had really been said friend's friends
Only speaks to his ex-fiancee every few weeks, which only reminds him of what he lost
Earns less 1/3 less than the national poverty average

It is:

Your character's birthday
Your character is at dinner alone
No one has called to wish him a happy birthday

Your character's mood is _________


The quick and easy answer is depressed or sad or any other negative emotion. Emotions are tricky things because it's easy to use them like Venn diagrams. A person is ________ (happy!) or __________ (sad :() and regardless of where they fall in that little circle of a diagram, they are that emotion. People don't usually work that way. You can be sad at success and happy when you've failed. We're a mercurial people and our ability to want more and to attempt more and to achieve more is pretty astounding. So when you're putting your character through a dramatic ringer, slow down and ask yourself if maybe there's another reaction to be had. Maybe the opposite of your first reaction is both plausible and a fresh take on an established subject.

In the case of the scenario above, that was my life in 2001 and 2002. My birthday was my favorite time of the year. Not because it was my special "me" day. My mom hadn't made my birthday special since I was 8 or so. No, it was special because I made $7000/year in 2001 and it was the one day out of the year I splurged on a steak. I walked down the street to a place called Scooters. I ordered a steak (medium well), steak fries, and a two-fingered scotch neat. My birthday was steak day, and for those couple hours sitting in that restaurant, the hardships of the world stopped at the door. In what was one of the most difficult times of my life, that one day was the happiest day of the year.

(Of course, it doesn't hold a candle to any of the 365 days I live now, but I got my shit together. Now I have steak whenever I want.)

Echoes of Halloween

This is our first year in our new townhouse and as such, we did not know how many kids would stop by (10-12 was the final count). We WAY overbought on candy. Suggestions of taking the left overs into work have been shot down by the missus. The plan is to keep the bag until we have guests over in January. Now, the only question that remains is whether the bag will actually last until January (peanut M&Ms are no more, as of last night).

This inspired me to make a LIST! (Because it's what I do. I hope none of the candies will be offended by said list.) What are your favorite candies?

1. Twix (after refrigeration, this achieves candy bar nirvana) AND Reese's Pieces (not at the same time, but they're both wicked awesome)

2. Watchamacallit (some people still haven't heard about this one. How is that possible?)

3. Peanut M&Ms¹ (I eat all the red ones first)

4. Mars (briefly renamed Snickers with Almond, the Mars bar has recently made a comeback)

5. Krackle (akin to Nestle Crunch which is also awesome, there's something about the Krackle's chocolate that tastes better than Nestle's offering)

Runners Up: White chocolate kit-kat (holy hell, the amount of saturated fat will kill you!)

Thousand Grand (not even sure why, I think I liked the struggle I had as a kid to actually bite off a piece of this bar, so filled with caramel that I felt like an alligator)

1 I got in trouble a lot in 8th grade. Me and detention became good friends (sometimes even when we shouldn't have). In an effort to get me to behave, my Spanish teacher bet me and my best friend, Jeremy, 1 pound of peanut M&Ms each that we couldn't behave for two months.

Two months and one day later, we both sat in detention eating our peanut M&Ms.

I Voted X

Along with telling me early on that her attitude toward minorities was incorrect, one of the other (few) appropriate lessons my mother taught me was the importance of voting. It was 1980 or 1982 when she took me to our local polling station (which also happened to be my pre-school). I got to watch while she voted and the old people gave me a sticker that said "I Voted" with a big red X in a box.

Now, my mother was a hardcore conservative (she will always vote for the candidate with the most reactionary position on abortion even if he would bring about armageddon). All our neighbors were like-minded Catholics. And all of this was during the height of Reagan's popularity (the man won 49 states in an election after all). Thus, everyone voted the same way.

So for the longest time--the longest time (I will not admit to just how long because it's that embarrassing)--I thought they had other stickers that said "I Voted" with a big red O in a box. LIke tic-tac-toe¹. I thought the stickers read "I Voted X," as in, the X represented which party you voted for (heaven forbid there be a third-party option in America). Thus, when I began to shed my conservative upbringing and privately harbored liberal ideas, I wondered how liberal candidates could ever hope to win. Everyone in America voted for conservatives. I could tell because they all wore "I Voted X" stickers.

In my defense, I watched my mother vote and she did not mark an X. She filled in a bubble. So clearly a big red X in a box had nothing to do with voting other than to delineate your affiliation. Now they've changed the stickers to a check mark, but we don't make those either. Come on people! Pay attention! Don't you vote? If you don't vote, what are you doing making stickers for people that vote? That should be a requirement.

This year, my polling place did not offer stickers. They saved a little money by not having stickers. Instead they had a bake sale. I think this is awesome<sup>2


1</sup> I always wanted to get voters together with the "I Voted X" and "I Voted O" stickers and have a human tic-tac-toe game.

² And it doesn't matter. This is New Hampshire. We all vote. Then we go to a diner and talk about voting. It's what we do. We love us some politics. Be thankful we're the first state in the nation to vote in primaries. We know how to do it.

Ink Failure

Up until 2006, you could look at me while at work and never know that I had a tattoo. Of course, at that time, I had eight tattoos. The only one that was ever visible was the one on the back of my neck and only then if I wore a shirt without a collar. It was at that point that I got a tattoo on each of my forearms.

This quote comes from a discussion on a role playing forum (Karl in response to a post by Bavix that was in turn a response to a post by Al Beddow). This statement pretty much defines my first 30 years of life. Of course, there are nuances to the statement that no one ever considers. There are plenty of ways to drop a hammer, not all of them nice for the person doing the dropping.

This one is an adaptation from a painting. I don't remember the artist. I'm told it's actually a poet who also painted scenes inspired by his poetry. In this case it was a gorgeous painting of a lion that I could not afford to buy. The righteous must be bold like a lion was written at the bottom. A modified the simile and here it is on my left arm.

The writing looks kind of odd on its own, so I decided to frame each saying. I had the below done in 2007. I lost my job the following year and decided that I would have the right arm finished once I had a full time job again.

The problem I'm running into now is finding a decent artist! I think the above knotwork is only okay. Certainly the artist who did my earlier work (Spider from Dreamcatcher in Columbia, MO) is far superior. My next design includes fire and it's shocking just how few artists can actually draw fire that doesn't look cartoony. The need for skill is exacerbated by the general attitude of tattoo businesses. They aren't businesses, they're artists who aren't good at doing anything else. Store hours are dependent on whether they feel like working when they wake up that morning/afternoon. 3/4 of them will try and cheat you. And unless you're a hot chick, they will approach you about a possible business transaction only if they feel like it. If there's a conversation about the crackwhore one of them fucked last night, you might be in for a long wait.

I have 11 total tattoos now and I'm about to get my 12th. It's hard enough coping with the not so subtle derision for being an office worker who gets tattoos (I started this before it was popular, assholes).  If you don't have sleeves, neck work, and a piercing through some non-standard body element, you're just a poser. Fine, I'll cope with that. I just want my tattoo. But when you try to rack up the bill because you think you're rebelling against the establishment, it insults me. Poor girls ahead of me were going to be charged $300 for lettering. FOR LETTERING! Are you crazy? I can see starting at $100. They come back at $50. You guys end up somewhere in between. But $300? For "Friendship"? You're out of your damn mind.

I really want a new tattoo, but the only artist I still trust is 1400 miles west of here. :(

Reformed Conservative in a Liberal World

Conservative blowhard commentators often accuse this or that media of being liberal (depending on which media they want to accuse at that particular moment). While I feel the following is true about any medium, I am speaking today about print publishing so will keep this opinion only there. I don't think publishing is liberal. I think publishing is capitalistic. It will print whatever book will make it money. (Or how else could Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter continue to spew their crazy?) The people that work in publishing, however, are predominantly liberal.

This doesn't bother me because I count myself among their ranks. The real challenge is for me to count myself among their ranks. I am a Gen-Xer raised by a Greatest Generation mother. Staunch Catholic brought up before Vatican II watered down the demagoguery, perhaps the best lesson she ever taught me was that she was born in 1930s Detroit and if I saw her react negatively to black people, I should know that she is wrong. That's as far as her liberalism went. Women had gender roles. Gays were unnatural. The pope and his teaching were directed by the hand of heaven. We lived on a street with only one black family (who actually would not play with us because we were white, to flip a presumption on its head). No one had gay children (turns out one of them did, and the family accepted him, but no one talks about it). Everyone voted for Reagan and in turn voted for Bush 1.

I began having doubts in my faith as a teenager. I had separate doubts about organized religion, but a genuine acceptance of god was questioned by a completely separate list (people tend to assume I'm an atheist because of my mother, which is an insult to me and my beliefs and wholly untrue). It began with the separation of humanity from nature. Seeing the pollution and and ecological destruction we wrought on the environment, and understanding the scientific necessities of an environment, I had trouble accepting that God would have placed us to rule over the rest of the world rather than live cooperatively in it. This lead to years and years of questioning.

September 21st, 1996, I abandoned my belief in god and became an atheist (to which I continue to this day). This freed me from many of the obsolete structures of organized religion. I could accept people with differing beliefs because I had no obligation to spread my own. What it did not do was change my long educated perception of homosexuality. If an observation of nature had lead me to question the existence of god, that same observation made me question whether homosexuals were anything more than perverts. They had no means for reproduction, and as an evolutionary animal, they thus fell outside the purpose of our species.

This was not to say I felt them abominations. That's just overly dramatic. I lived in my fraternity house with a gay member (though not roommates; he lived in the room above mine). He always assumed I did not like him because I was an Army ROTC scholarship student. In fact, he just annoyed me because he'd complain how dirty the house was if there were three magazines on the coffee table¹.

It was a year or two later, having a peaceable discussion with someone about homosexuality (this was the 90s, so it was only just easing into acceptance by the national consciousness), that I mentioned my difficulty homosexuality. They then pointed me to a study on dog breeds and a few other species that, when faced with overpopulation, would change sexual preference to ebb off their growing numbers.

Boom. That easy. Homosexuals weren't outside of nature. They weren't an abomination. They were quite rightly a result of our own means of ignoring environmental equilibrium. It wasn't just a biological happenstance, it was an inevitability. All right then. I'm sold.

And that's it. I have numerous homosexual friends, some of whom are thankfully far less annoying than my fraternity brother was in college. I support LGBT equality. My state's legislature passed the best gay marriage law in the entire nation²³. That's the end of it, right?

Well, kind of. Now it's a matter of degree. I participate to the best of my ability in the pub-o-sphere to which there are people much more liberal than I am. People like the Rejectionist who faced a similar upbringing but rebelled much sooner. Even with all these decisions I made, it took about a decade of living life off the rails before my conscious beliefs and my unconscious beliefs truly aligned. Being part of the pub-o-sphere, though, there is an LGBT cause du jour, effectively. Blog posts, tweets and retweets. It's like a phone tree. You can watch the outrage spread across your friends list.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Change is happening--change for the better--and this is what it looks like. I just don't have the energy to get so impassioned about it. I support them in their efforts. Raise a fist, go go go! But I don't have the desire to write a blistering rebuttal to today's offense. I just ran a marathon of leaving behind my Catholic upbringing to one of acceptance. I work daily to remind myself to erase stereotypes, to accept and support my neighbors in their choices.

It makes me feel like an outsider. Often. If I don't retweet this or change my user picture here, they're going to assume that I'm against them. (The with us or against us fervor can get pretty heated sometimes.) But really, I feel I'm the goal. Not the end goal, by any means. Perhaps the Rejectionist is what we'll all become some day. But a successful social revolution will move right-set minds to where I am now. I'm not the outsider. I'm the desired result.

I know this isn't writing focused⁴, and it may be too hot a topic to even post on, but there only ever seems to be two discussions, white hat or black hat. Just thought I'd raise my hand and say, "Hey, we're on our way, but the road is long."


¹ Later of course, he got really drunk, insulted an entire sorority, and told them it was me. To this day, he's never apologized even when I've asked him to point blank. Clearly being gay doesn't prevent you from being a dick.

² It's relevant to point out that this was a legislative success. Depending on the appeals to recent judicial rulings, those states whose gay marriage is a result of judicial decision will see immediate challenges. Legislative roads are subject only to elections and public referenda.

³ New Hampshire allows gay marriage, but individuals may not sue private institutions like chruches to force them to perform the ceremony. I never even knew people had considered doing this, and am glad the law includes the provision. Equality for all, after all.

⁴ I do have a few gay characters in my stories. I never hesitate to make them good guys or bad guys because I have no agenda to press. Much like my fraternity brother can be a douche despite his sexuality, homosexuals can be villains or heroes despite theirs. The key is to make sure they are not so because of their sexuality. I do not want to read about a Big Gay Hero any more than I want the Big Bad to wave his evil rainbow flag.

A Matter of Perspective

My wife and I were passing through Greeley Park a number of years back during a summer art fair. Painters, photographers, and home jewelers displayed their wares. This was back at a time when my then-employer continued to promise me an office. When I passed a small photograph that I absolutely loved and it was only $20, I decided to pick it up. It would be fantastic to put on my desk!

I set it on top of my desk at home with a few posters of New Hampshire (like the flume) where it sat for the next three years. It sat there when I got laid off. It sat there when I took a demotion to work for another company. It sat there when I moved laterally to secure a full time position that would in no way warrant me having an office.

We bought a townhouse and were setting up our home office much like we had before. But this time, a lot of the things we had put on top of the desk were being placed elsewhere. (We gave away a lot of stuff and had some extra space on bookshelves, etc.) Where oh where would I put this picture I love so much? My wife says, why don't we hang it?

*blink. blink.*

The photo is of a dead tree sticking out of the Nashua River. It looks black and white, but it's just a gray day without any color on the trees in the background. It's dark and misty. The water is this opaque force that came up around this tree on all sides and it was trapped there, helpless. (The picture is not online and I can't find the photographer's website because of a Brit with the same name sucking up the SEO [search engine optimization--a term you need to know as an aspiring author]). You've probably seen a tree like this before though, yeah? One that's growing in the middle of the river, and you can't figure out how it got there because it would have had to grow up out of the water and that only works for Aphrodite.)

I ask my wife if she's certain. She tells me yes, she likes that picture too. Really, says I? I would have thought it too dark for your tastes. Dark? says she. I find it to be a very hopeful photo.

*blink. blink.*

How is that hopeful? says I. It's a dead tree!

No, it's a tree that may bloom again. It stands for the hope of rebirth and what may come in the future.

No, it's a tree that had its time and is dead. It stands for the absolute inevitability of the future. We all die eventually.


So the picture hangs on the wall in my home office, meaning two entirely different things to two different people. That's pretty cool.

Does Boston Make Me a Bad Writer?

Once upon a time, I had thought to craft a blog post entitled "The New Yorker's Guide to the Rest of the Country." Many of the agents whose blogs/tweets I follow not only work in New York but grew up there as well. They will then jet off to various parts of the country for conferences and conventions and blog/tweet about their experiences there. It is amusing to me that any of these agents should comment on my conduct given their own documentation of their own poor conduct outside of New York, moreover in that they did not understand their conduct was poor. Telling people they are "quaint" is condescending. Ogling a restaurant because you're the only person there is condescending.* Describing to locals how they do not live in New York is condescending. They know they don't live in New York. They aren't confused about their locale.

I grew up in the middle of Missouri, a small city of 75,000 people (plus another 25 grand for the students at the University of Missouri). I went to high school in a town of 35,000 people. I went to college in a town of 12,000 people. From there I have stuck to urban centers: Denver (Lakewood), St. Louis (St. Louis city**), and then the exurbs of Boston (Nashua, NH). To liken to regional stereotypes, I grew up in the Midwest thus I grew up with manners. It doesn't necessarily hold true, as I've met plenty of people from the Midwest who don't and plenty of people on the East Coast that do. But like so many stereotypes, you can find a kernel of truth if you look for it.

In the Midwest, I was often considered abrasive. On the East Coast, I am downright genteel. The fact that I have mastered the use of the words please, thank you, sir, and ma'am, puts me in the upper 1% (the proper Bostonian parlance being the more familiar "Hey guy!"). I opted not to write my thinly veiled chastisement (though I seem to have accomplished that above regardless) and let the New Yorkers act like New Yorkers. I have begun to question my own dissolution of manners vis a vis my experiences on the MBTA subway (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, because you know you were trying to figure it out on your own).

The T, as the subway is known, embodies your classic East Coast experience. The general sense a passenger holds in respect his fellow passengers is "Fuck you." Or more appropriately, "Fuck you, guy." It is not uncommon (and by not uncommon I mean it happens every day) for a person to step onto the subway trolley and stop immediately inside the door, blocking access for the twelve people behind him/her. Nine times out of ten, when people are left on the platform, it is not a result of the trolley being full, but that people did not want to back up to the mid-section where there is no available exit. Or even worse, there are open seats but people are standing in front of them, preventing others from sitting down.

I gave up riding the Orange line during rush hour all together following an incident where a rather large woman (and by large I mean she took up the entire door made for two people to enter/exit at a time), stepped onto the trolley and stopped, blocking the twelve people behind her (I counted). Rather than shouldering past her (as is the norm), there was no place for these people to squeeze past and all twelve of them were left on the platform despite there being room for at least twenty people to board. This was her spot and those people be damned. I was struck with the overwhelming urge to kick her in the stomach, leave her sitting on her ass on the platform while those other twelve people boarded and we celebrated righteous vengeance. This is when I knew I needed to stop riding the Orange line.

Just yesterday a very attractive (to me) woman boarded the Green line and blocked half the entrance. When people pushed past her, she gave them the most disdainful, "how dare you" look. I went from being annoyed to truly loathing her just with that one look. That's when I began to worry. Is riding the T diminishing my ability to write humanistic characters? Will they all be selfish assholes with a pervading sense of entitlement and regional superiority? Can I identify good people? Or is my concept of what makes a person good being so harshly skewed that I'll write books full of nothing but dicks?

I used to spar with a coworker when I lived in St. Louis. From Tennessee, her mother had raised her with outmoded Southern sensibilities. She thought I was a sexist because I did not agree that a man was obligated to pay for a date or that he was obligated to open a door for a woman. I told her she was sexist because she was assigning gender roles and that I, being the gentleman that I am (was?), opened the door for anyone regardless of gender.*** Now I don't let anyone go first. Fuck that guy, it's dog eat dog. Saying please seems to net me all the karma I need out here, so why should I give up my seat to that old lady or let that young man who clearly has never ridden the subway before go in front of me?

Ick. I love New England, and I love with bold letters, New Hampshire. But there are some things about living here I do not enjoy. I certainly hope it does not diminish my own character or my own skills the longer I am here.


*Simple rule: The rest of the country is not a zoo. Do not treat it as such.

**Locals know to differentiate between St. Louis city and St. Louis County. The city is not part of the county--or any county for that matter. And the demographics of the city are much more representative of a poor urban center than of any of the incorporated towns that surround it. A bit of trivia, St. Louis city is one of 11 metro cities in the US that are not part of a county.

***Amusing side-note, a group of us went to lunch. On our way back to the office, I held the door for this woman and the rest of the group (an assortment of men and women). We went up the stairs and another male coworker held the second door that lead to our part of the office. She turned to me and said, "See? He held the door for a woman like a gentleman." In 24 steps, she had forgotten who held the first door for her because she was so sure I was a sexist pig.

I Love My Company

The formula I always say for meeting colleagues in the publishing industry is to take the decade of a person's age (I'm 33, so 3), subtract 1, and that's the number of publishers that person has worked for. It's amazing how accurate that formula is. Publishing is incredibly incestuous in its hiring practices, we list who we've worked for like a pedigree, and few people are satisfied with the first company they work for.

In my case, the first publisher I worked for was particularly nefarious. I am reminded of that fact today because I just sat through the annual health benefits meeting. Every large corporation has them, and the difference between my former employer and my current is like night and day, or really like Douchebag McAsshole vs Captain Awesome von Awesomesauce.

My last health care meeting with DMcA was representative of my last year with the company. They lied their face off, I called them out on their lies in a combative and non-constructive manner. The gist of the meeting was that they were changing our plans. They would cost more, offer less, have astronomically higher deductibles, and cap on services to everything. They followed this up with rhetoric about how much better the plan was for us because now we could have an HSA. I replied that it was better for us only if we did not get sick. This was a highly accurate assessment of the plan.

I skipped last year's health care meeting with CAvA, but because of the health care legislation, I wanted to see what changes might happen. This is where the screws were going to be put to us.

What I saw was not what I expected. This happened to me over the summer too. I missed the town hall meeting last year where the CEO came and spoke because I got lost (hey, I hadn't been working in Boston this year). When I worked for DMcA, CEO visits were a nightmare. They showed us an hour-long PPT showing how much money they made and that they were freezing our salaries, stopping new hires, and not funding forward-moving strategy so they could make more money. I expected much the same and for the first 8 minutes, I saw how much money the company made (in short, a shit load). The remaining 52 minutes were spent explaining our moral obligation to educate the world, the strategies we were implementing to do so, the funding those strategies would receive, and taking vice presidents to task for not being more aggressive in implementing fare business strategies.

I'm not making that up. Read that paragraph again. So what would I see at the health care meeting? This guy wasn't the wicked intelligent, charismatic CEO with the grand vision. This is the guy that manages the nuts and bolts. This is where you squeeze the workers for cost savings.

Oh, when will I learn. First, the guy is funny in his own right. Second, a discussion of cost didn't come until 40 minutes in and it was only one slide long. He started with "Our biggest expense is high-value illnesses like cancer, so we're changing policies to make it easier for employees to receive preventative care." Yes, my company actually uses common sense. Rather than limiting health care access to reduce costs, it increased front-end expenditures to reduce larger expenditures for untreated illnesses. 100% preventative coverage, free cancer screenings, and distributing free copies of a popular nutritional author who happens to be published by our trade division. Total costs are rising marginally, but the services my company offers me is improving across the board.

This is how corporate America should act. This is the ethical and responsible relationship a company should have with its employees. This is Captain Awesome von Awesomesauce. I love my company. It is the greatest place in the world to work.

And at the very end of the presentation he dropped the bomb. Because of new health care legislation, my company's health plan is considered a Cadillac plan. Come 2018, the company will have to pay the government $80 million a year to continue offering this level of coverage to its employees. What? No! This is how a responsible American business should treat its employees. They should all be doing this. The company will not consider an additional $80mm charge to its annual health costs. So it will instead be forced to reduce benefits to fall outside this range.

Dammit Congress. I'm annoyed, but am not worried. The current health care legislation will not be what is implemented in 2018. Still, what the hell. You could quadruple my salary and I still wouldn't make the "rich people are bad" $250k. What are you doing taxing my health care?

Clarification, Explanation

I changed my twitter profile recently from "I write." to "I write in the morning. I make ebooks all day. I write in the evening. I do other stuff." There was some confusion to this statement. It was presumed that I self-publish in ebook format, and that is not the case. I work for a publishing company as a media project manager. One of the things I am responsible for creating is the ebook (in its many formats, pdf, xml, flash, etc). I changed it because in the pub-o-sphere, the paradigm of agents giving advice to aspiring writers, they can forget that we have day jobs too. I have eight years in publishing, six of those in media production. I have participated in the creation of estrategy and worked the guidelines for xml creation from typeset PDFs of finished books. So, you can imagine, when an agent tells me I'm wrong about ebooks, it grinds my gears. The closest an agent will get on the production side is perhaps giving feedback on a cover. When it comes to this part of the business, the paradigm is reversed. There is a caveat to all this.

On my website, I list the jobs I've held. At the bottom of the list is my current job in educational publishing. My web presence elsewhere is part of the trade publishing community, blogs, twitter, just like how all of you found me at one point or another. In that environment where there is a limit to characters or an amount of time you can make your point before readers go on to the next post, I leave off the "educational" because most people don't understand the difference. I also say I work for a big 6 publisher because I do not want to say which publisher it is and there isn't a term any of you would understand otherwise. I do work for the parent company of one of the big six. I am in their higher education division rather than their trade pub division.

Here's why this matters: 1) The acquisition of trade titles is different than the acquisition of education titles. For all my bad experiences with a perpetually late editorial staff that has no understanding of production or media (of which there are many), I have no basis to claim the same for trade.

2) I do not want it to appear as if I am intentionally deceiving people or suggesting that I have a role in trade when I do not. I have never worked in trade and never intend to do so as anything but an author.

Here's why it doesn't: 1) In corporate strategy sessions, technological strategy often has to take into account both sides of the business. Efficiency is always the key word and a method I use for making my ebook is highly likely to be used on the trade side as well. Disparate systems cost money!

2) Print and media in general are established workflows that are not affected by what they are publishing. Printing a book is printing a book. You need to know your trim size, your paper weight, your final page count, the weight of the paper for the cover, and various milestones for your schedule. The subject matter of the book doesn't matter. The printing process is the same. The same is true for media. An enhanced ebook is an enhanced ebook. File format matters MUCH more than subject matter. Is this thing for Kindle? Nook? Our own proprietary ebook viewing system? The skill set I have in media transfers 100% to trade.

So there you go. Full disclosure. I work for the largest publisher in the world. So often people say largest and they're just talking about trade, when in fact they should consider trade and education. It actually obscures a lot of "predictions" on where publishing is going because people only focus on trade. Educational publishing puts trade publishing to shame. So when you think, oh no, ebooks are going to kill publishing. I laugh. I laugh heartily. Trade publishing is having difficulty adjusting to ebooks, but Education has been pushing as hard as it can for years to get to this point. The ebook revolution is a gold mine for educational publishing. Where does educational publishing lose the most money? Not piracy. Used book stores. How do you sell an ebook to a used book store? Exactly. A collapse of the trade division of my company would see total yearly revenue drop by only 25%.

The end of publishing? Oh no, my friends. This is only the beginning.

(Technical note: The information in this post is stated as personal observation and without review by my HR department. The information is non-proprietary and represents experiences gained working at two separate publishing companies over the course of 8 years. Chill.)

But this is what I do!

I went to lunch across the street, diligently working on the revision of TTS (Otwald is about to meet Crown Princess Klara, which will require some serious scrubbing). The owner's wife brings out my food and sees me tapping away on my laptop.

"No more work," she says. "It's time to enjoy ourselves!"

I smiled and nodded, but really just wanted to reply, "This is how I enjoy myself."

This is what I do, lady.

The Selby Invitational

If you've browsed my website (and specifically the Inkwell), you will have noticed that I've done some work with D&D. I love me some role playing games. RPG play is highly regionalized. There is a reason D&D was born in Wisconsin. The epicenter of fanatical role-playing is the Midwest. Sure there are groups out here on the East Coast, but nothing like back there. It's just all over the place.

So, my favorite and most prevalent hobby took a bit of a hit when I moved from Missouri to New Hampshire. Role playing out here? I've had a little bit here and there, but nothing like when I lived in St. Louis (and if I had gone to Kansas City, good lord, that would have been endless RPGing).

When I first moved out here, my girlfriend-now-wife was still back in St. Louis. She didn't come out for another month and a half. She was looking for various things she could do to introduce and acclimate herself to her new home. Among the list was meetup.com. She found a board game night hosted at a local Borders just a block and a half from our apartment. She suggested I go and scope it out for us. I like board games. My friend Luke had introduced me to such exciting games as Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride (I had only previously been exposed to lame games like Monopoly). This could be awesome! But I expected it to be three or four losers who got together and played a game once a week.

Boy was I wrong. RPGs:Midwest::Board Games:Northeast. Wow! Twenty people showed up that night! There was ticket to ride, settlers, carcasonne, and a bunch of others I had never heard of. I knew Germany made board games, but do they do anything else? Most of my friends out here I met at board game night. It has been a great experience. Mondays have moved to the Holiday Inn as Borders slowly dies. 35 people show up every Monday where we play Thurn and Taxis, Imperial, Brass, Quirkle, Small World, Ra, Dog, Tichu, and so many others.

Now, once a quarter, Jen and I like to host our closest friends at our home for a seasonal meal, get together, board game party. Today is our quarterly Selby Invitational! There will be do-it-yourself nachos, chicken chili, rice krispy treats, hot apple cider, root/beer, seasonal coffees, and games games games. Telestrations, Cyclades, Conan, Quirkle Cubed, Trigon, and on and on and on. And it will be the first time in our new home! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Jen loves to host people. I love to play games. We both love food! This is going to be a good day.

You Gotta Fight for Your Right...to Read?

I've offered tacit support of SPEAK during the flair-up against the comments made in Springfield last week. I didn't hop on the bandwagon and speak out against it for a couple reasons. First, I'm fat, and doubt I could hop on a bandwagon if I wanted to. Second, I don't think my message would reach anyone that could be swayed by anything I have to say.

Having lived various places in Missouri, the guy that said what he said will never be convinced of anything. Nor will his comments convince anyone that needed convincing. His fanatics already believe the swill he's spreading. My telling you how ridiculous his promotion of rape as sexuality wouldn't surprise you. You're a smart individual and already knew that.

I am going to make a comment tangential to the subject, though, where I think a reasonable discourse may change minds. When book "banning" (and those quotes are deliberate) comes up, it is inevitable that someone says that it's unconstitutional. First I'm going to tell you why it isn't. Second I'm going to tell you why you hurt the cause you're supporting by making that claim.

The book isn't being banned. It's being removed from the school and its curricula. A banned book would not be allowed to be printed or sold or owned. Congress (or even scarier the Executive or even scarier yet the Judiciary) would say, no more BREAK. We're old and dumb and scared of sex and any value BREAK brings to society is not worth our discomfort. It is forbidden! That is an infringement on speech. That's not what's happening here.

The school board is empowered by whatever body elects/appoints it (either the people or the municipality) to administer its schools. It can decide what books are and are not included in its curricula. This does not deprive the author of speech. The book is still printed and sold. Students are still able to purchase the book from bookstores. It just won't be part of their homework assignment.

Does this suck? Absolutely, for BREAK, SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, FAHRENHEIT 451, and so many others. Is it wrong? I believe so. I think those books are relevant and worthwhile. But it's not unconstitutional. You want to make a big impact? Skip the incredibly passive "Speak Out" skin on your twitter icon and instead do the very active vote in your next school board election. Question the candidates about the issue and elect people who understand the value of these books and want to see them in our schools.

...okay, add the skin too, but only after you've made a difference in your local community.

Now, why is saying its unconstitutional a bad thing? It creates a reverse straw man argument. Douchebag McAsshole says rape is sexual and bad for kids (I say rape is bad for kids, but that's beside the point). He says we're going to ban the book. You say, you can't do that, it's unconstitutional! You are incorrect. What you've done is given him the opportunity to disprove your argument rather than defending his own. He doesn't need to explain why he thinks rape is sexual (eww), he just has to show how what he proposes is legal.

Which it is. Not only does he not have to defend himself, he will defeat you in the argument you're making. This is not how to defeat Douchebag McAsshole. And we want to defeat Douchebag McAsshole. We want to defeat him very much.

Have Fun Storming the Castle

Current, non-syndicated television runs in 30 or 60 minute time slots. Of those slots, the actual program will run 20-22 minutes or 42-44 minutes respectively. Its this constraint that allows a writer--if he or she so wishes to apply herself--to know the plot, the outcome, and the bad guy (if you're watching one of the myriad procedural dramas currently on television) long before the show reaches the reveal. Often, you can know all of it within the first few minutes.

Why does the timing make a difference? Because of the other rules. You cannot have a reveal with something that hasn't already been introduced in the episode. The doorman can't have killed the young starlet if he hasn't already had some speaking lines. The audience is given the chance to figure it out. And since we write for a living, that means we balance all the other demands of story in our heads, pacing, motivation, the twist, etc.

One would think that being able to figure out a television show so early in the program would defeat the fun. And if a show is done poorly, it absolutely does. But, I am not a book snob. I like television and movies and theatre. I like visual storytelling as much as (more than?) written storytelling. I don't just have a creative writing degree. I have a playwriting degree as well.

The reason this comes to mind at the moment is because I just finished watching the season 3 opener for "Castle." Like so many of its audience, I came to the show for Nathan Fillion being nothing short of a "Firefly" fanatic. The chemistry between all the leads is what brings me back, the witty yet warm voice the show has crafted for itself. The first fifteen seconds of the season opener made me shout GOO! when it cut to black. Of course, I already knew the twist and knowing the twist made me know the whodunnit when introduced. But who cares? When a show can make you shout GOO! it's worth watching, even if you already know what's going to happen.

I keep a list of recommendations on my website that includes TV shows I watch (or did watch when they were on, *sniff* I miss you Firefly *sniff*...okay, I didn't see that until it was on DVD, which is good because I got to watch it in order). I've been debating updating that list to make it more current.

Last season's offering of NCIS was dismal, the worst of the series run, and I don't know if I can bring myself to go back. I'll give it a shot with the season opener, but I'm not holding my breath (forgive me, Gibbs).

Chuck is luring me back with season 4 even though I skipped season 3.

With Numb3rs gone (it never recovered from constantly losing the female lead other than Navi Rawat [helllooooo nurse!]) and most of the other network fare looking lame or contrived (despite the various geek-themed shows which I suspect will come off condescending, though I admit to not having watched any of them).

I have increased my cable viewing now that they're streaming or releasing on DVD. Stargate: Universe has hooked me hard where I was never interested in the previous two series.

Psych continues to please, though I wonder if it peaked in season 3.

Eureka is a pleasant new discovery, but I've burned through the first three seasons and now have to wait. *pout*

I had been watching Leverage, but they used the "jealous triangle" early in season 3 and I hate that plot line.

So, this is a healthy list, more TV than I've watched since I first returned to the small screen (I had given it up for four years but the ad for Numb3rs and the discovery of NCIS season 2 pulled me back in). My wife and I usually watch an episode to destress at the end of the day. Neither of us want television to consume our evenings from activities we find more rewarding.

But for all that, and for knowing the stories usually as soon as they start, these shows have established a voice or present their characters in such a way that I want to keep coming back regardless.

How about you? When you're not reading or writing, what kind of stories do you fill your time with?

(Anyone that mentions reality TV gets slapped. We're talking storycraft here, people!)

(As a note, I've decided to separate reality TV like any show with the name Jersey in it from the post-modern gameshow. I really enjoy the skill that goes into competitions like "So You Think You Can Dance." If the hosts and the judges weren't so obnoxious, I might watch.)