Breaking Borders

I know everyone even vaguely connected to the publishing industry has been commenting on losing Borders, but I feel like I have to say something as well. My initial reaction is, like many of you, that this is undeniably shitty news. I've always loved going into Borders, smelling the coffee, having a warm drink in the winter and perusing the shelves. I've had plenty of great (and not so great) signings at my local stores and they've always been very accommodating. I love seeing the books on the shelves, the whole sensory experience. Having some of these places taken away before was tough. Having ALL of them disappear now is brutal!

There have been rumblings about this happening for a while now. I'm no economist and have no clue how this crap works. I seldom have enough money to get through my own meager existence, so why would I make it my business to know how millions or billions of dollars flow back and forth? As a consumer, though, there's been this lazy sort of "we'll always be here" attitude with big book stores and publishers alike. Both just seem to do the minimum amount of work and know the people will come back because where the hell else would they go? It was the same attitude with video stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. I know not all of these places stank and I know good people work(ed) there. I was one of them! I'm talking big picture here and those video rental places had bad prices, shitty customer care, policies that screwed customers and any number of little things that companies put into action when they know they've got ya. Then along comes Netflix. They nailed it and stuck it to the video stores. If the stores can't compete, they need to step up or step aside. That's the cruelty of Capitalism. Now, we've recently seen how Netflix decided to tighten the screws to their customers because they got us. Their time will come unless they treat the customers right.

Borders never treated me badly. Like I said, I love the places. As an industry, though, it's easy to see how they're getting it handed to them by ebooks and smaller presses. More and more, I'm seeing quality books on my Kindle that are written with love and would NEVER have made it past a bored NY editor's desk simply because it's not like something else that's selling like hotcakes. As a reader, I crave uniqueness and that's been tough to find lately. As a writer, I want to write unique things and believe me, it's an uphill climb. I'm definitely not the only one in this camp and when I see ebooks about giant crab monsters, superheroes, or something other than the four or five flavors of the month on shelves, I smile. So many of these books are written with love by authors who just want to have fun at work again. That benefits the readers too! Big stores are still looking for something that's LIKE something else. This lazy attitude was shown nicely a year or two ago when I went to a store (yes, it was Borders) and there was a shelf with the newest Sookie Stackhouse book on it. It said, "If you like Charlaine Harris...TRY THESE". Know what was on it? MORE Charlaine Harris!!! I've got nothing against Miss Harris or her books. This just shows the limited scope of an industry that should be about imagination and creativity.

I go to conventions and hear debates on which vampires aren't realistic enough or about conservation of mass in shapeshifters. This just makes me sad. It makes me wonder what future there is for writers when we can't even play with mythological beings. Then I see a fresh crop of ebooks put out there by authors who just want to write what they love or see turns in genre like steampunk and I smile again. There is freshness to be had, but it's been awfully hard to find in bigger stores.

Of course I also know that plenty of ebooks are crap. At least they're trying, though. There's money to be made and I'm sure the big publishers will step up to find a way to exploit it more than they are now. Plenty of others have said it and I agree: this isn't a bad thing. The publishing / professional editing process weeds out a lot of garbage. It's made me a better writer. Now if only they'd allow writers to flex their creative muscle a bit more. There's nothing wrong with writing pulp-style books, even if they're not big sellers. Good ideas don't happen because the ad execs in New York get a bug up their ass to drive zombies or whatever else into the ground for a while. If someone who loves their sub-genre wants to write about zombies or whatever else the big topic may be and they have a cool idea, LET THEM DO IT!!!! With the old system, they would have to wait for lightning to strike to get the book published and then MORE lightning to strike for a big store to actually put some work into selling them. Now, with ebooks, we're all on more equal ground.

I'm giving it a go as we speak. There are ideas that have been kicking around in the back of my head that I haven't been able to sell because of the market or an editor having a bad day or projected sales figures or whatever else. Now, I get to write the damn thing, put it out there and see if it'll fly. The ebook market is MILES ahead of where self published books used to be even a few years ago and authors in my same boat feel like we've got a real shot. Maybe my ideas never went anywhere because they suck. Maybe nobody wants to read them after all. There's one way to find out. At least they'll be out there giving it a go.
I'm a writer. I want to write.

Times are changing. If it was up to me, Borders would still be in business. It's not. I've taken my share of hits over the last couple of years as well and we all need to roll with the punches. I think ebooks are a roll in the right direction. Don't forget, this is America. If a business tries hard enough and adapts, it will be back.

Bloody Summer

This has been a very patriotic few days. That's par for the course considering the holiday and all, but my last July 4th was a lot less...well...just a lot less. Back then, I spent my holiday weekend working on a manuscript, listening for the occasional pops outside my apartment, poking my nose out to see some distant flashes and then going back to work. This year, I did the whole cookout / fireworks combo and it was a lot of fun! I also indulged in my usual Independence Day movie treat which was...you guessed it...Independence Day!! That film may be flawed in some pretty serious ways, but it's still a lot of fun. Definitely one of the ultimate mindless summer blockbusters. Love it.

I also recently watched Sucker Punch. This one had me intrigued the moment I saw previews with dragons fighting biplanes and demon Samurais weilding chain guns. At the very least, it was a prime piece of eye candy (and I mean beyond the young girls dressed in every fantasy piece of clothing from schoolgirl to warrior woman). VERY cool on Blu Ray. As far as more recent flicks, I'm anxiously awaiting Captian America and Cowboys & Aliens. After that, it's hibernation time again.

Been playing Portal 2 and even dug up a game from a few years ago called Dark Void. The latter has an Indiana Jones meets Rocketeer vibe. I'm liking it, despite the noticable lack of Jennifer Connelly in that amazing white dress. Hubba hubba!! I can still remember the day young Marcus was in a movie theater and "sat up to take notice" of that scene. Too much info? Oh well. Dark Void is cool so far and definitely enjoyable. Portal 2 is simply brilliant, however. Just about every other line of dialogue has me laughing and the game simply rocks. But...no Jennifer Connelly. What the hell is wrong with games these days??

I'm working on my installment of the Dead Man series of ebooks. After that, I'll be dipping my toe further into the ebook pond by writing an original to be released independantly. That should be a fun experiment! I get to just have an idea, write it up and put it out there to see if it flies. Lots of writers are jumping on this train and for good reason. It's very appealing to be able to get something out there without jumping through all the usual hoops. Could be an amazing venture. However it turns out, it should be exciting! I'm working with a few other writers to put together a central website hub for all of our works to be displayed. Something should be coming to fruition within the next few months, so I'll keep you posted. Hopefully, you guys will like what you read!

I'm off to donate blood now. Haven't done this for some time, mainly due to all the tattoos I've been getting. I should probably eat something and have something to drink first. Either that, or I can go in empty and enjoy that delightful swirly feeling of near-unconsciousness followed by total unconsciousness. Ok...maybe I'll have a sandwich.

Busy busy!

Putting the final tweaks on SKINNERS 6. That doesn't mean I've caught every last mistake. After all, with so much awesomeness distracting my attention, some things are bound to slip through. If you'd like to know where I got my swelled head, click here to take a look at this AMAZING article that just appeared on the Barnes & Noble Book Club page about Skinners! Many thanks to Paul for bringing a much-needed smile during a hectic time.

Book 5 seems to be doing pretty well. I've abandoned the practice of checking in on sales figures and such. If they're good, I'll hear about it eventually and if they're bad, I don't wanna know. I'll keep doing my thing, always trying to do my best no matter what. Is that healthy? I don't know. I'm the guy who eats Ramen noodles most of the time for lunch and blew my load at the very sight of Brownie Crunch Cocoa Puffs. Those are pretty good, but not as good as the normal Cocoa Puffs, in case you were wondering. Anyway, I know my "don't ask, don't check reviews" policy works well enough. When I was keeping on top of it, I nearly drove myself into a heart attack.

The next project I'm working on is an installment in the Dead Man series of ebooks. These things are great! Very reminiscent of the slam-bang, hit hard and hit fast sort of books that I read growing up. The Executioner, Remo Williams, all that great stuff. Ebooks make them a lot easier to find, buy and read. Still madly in love with my Kindle, just to be clear. Heh. Not sure when my Dead Man book will be out, but the newest one is Blood Mesa by James Reasoner. The Kindle version can be found here and the Nook version here. Check 'em out!

So there's my update. Talk to you in a bit...

After the snafu mentioned earlier, I've decided to hire a new editor. Hopefully she catches some of this stuff that I might have missed.

She takes excessive breaks to "check her messages", but I can tell she's playing with a squeaky toy. At least she's cute.

It ain't easy being gr...wait...green with envy? Eh, to hell with it.

Yes, I read comics although it's become an expensive habit and I've fallen way behind. (see previous blog posts). Yes, I know some stuff about Green Lantern. No, I don't know everything. For GL trivia or lore, I always go to Webmaster Steve and even then it's a tangled mess of characters, deaths, rebirths, villains, changing alliances, etc. That's pretty much the case with any long-running comic series. With all of that said, I do like GL but have always found him to be kinda hokey. Don't get me wrong, hokey isn't a bad thing. In this case, it's more of a hokeyness harkening back to what makes kids like comic books in the first place. A lot of that stuff is hokey. Superman can do anything and wears a blue and red suit. Spider-Man sticks to stuff and wears a blue and red suit. What's the deal with blue and red?? The Flash goes really fast. Red and yellow. Green Lantern creates things with his ring. No blue and red to be found. At least he's not a slave to fashion.

When GL wants to punch someone, he makes a giant boxing glove. Somebody's falling? He catches them with a big hand or makes a giant mattress or something to break their fall. Again, this is just based on the limited amount of GL I've read throughout the years. Webmaster Steve has pointed out all the coolness to the character such as the awesome science fiction elements and the many other ways the ring is creatively used. I was convinced! I wanted to get into the books, but have yet to find a good diving-in point that doesn't get me lost in all the characters / bad guys I know nothing about. Still, from offerings like Blackest Night or Green Lantern: Rebirth, the character is a lot cooler than I'd previously thought.

So I went to see the new Green Lantern movie. I've heard bad stuff and good stuff about it. Most of the bad stuff sounds like it either comes from people who knew nothing about GL and found it too hokey or those who know everything about him and were disappointed by the condensed movie version. Personally, I thought the movie was AWESOME! It had a good amount of hokeyness (GL making giant springs to lift something or hit someone with the good ol' enormous fist) to be fun and perfectly retained the shiny, sparkling, "gee whizz" feel where all the science fiction elements were concerned. It felt like a comic book and I loved it. Seeing it in 3D was amazing!! I've become a fan of GL since Steve's big push to get me on board during the Blackest Night crossovers a few summers ago. Black Lanterns creating zombies of dead DC characters? Cool! That was the same summer as Marvel's Dark Reign crossover, which made for a dark summer. Awesome, but dark. I like dark.

I also saw X-Men: First Class. Like a lot of other people, I wasn't going in with very high hopes. After X3 and the Wolverine movie, (which I didn't hate as much as most, simply because I thought it was just a fun spectacle) the X movies seemed to have been tossed aside by quality film makers for some reason. As for total accuracy to the comics, let's face it, there is no possible way for ANY movie to get X-Men stuff accurate any longer. The comic story lines are so twisted up and feeding back on themselves that it takes several crossover events to make any of them fall in like with each other. The most a movie can hope to do is show the characters being true to themselves and adventuring in their own way. Did the Wolverine movie do that? I think so, more or less. Was it a great movie? Eh, it's fun to watch.

I love seeing Magneto doing his thang in any of the movies. He's just a great character with a power that looks freaking great on screen. And going back to the whole hokey thing, there simply isn't a way to see Beast in his full blue & furry form without him looking funny at first. That's the way Beast looks, though, and I got used to it. I'm WAY behind on X-Men comics, having given them up after not buying them for a while. Jumping back in is like flipping on a soap opera after it's been rolling for decades and expecting to know exactly why each character is mad at another. Because of that, I may have missed out on why Angel wasn't only a woman in First Class but that she had insect wings instead of feathery ones. Is that a new Angel from the books or just something for the movie? Hang on...I'll Google it and see.......

OH!! She's not THE Angel. She's Angel Salvadore  aka Tempest. Told you I was behind on all my X-Men stuff. I've read plenty of the books, but was always more of a lone hero sort of fan. Spidey, Punisher, Moon Knight, Batman, that sort of thing. Where teams were concerned, it's pretty much Avengers for me. Anyway, I still thought the insect Angel was cool too. It was also great to see Banshee in something other than the cartoons.

So now that I've seen these two plus Thor (did I talk about Thor yet? Also loved it. Damn, I seem easy to please. Oh well. Better that than my normal grumpy self) that still leaves Captain America and Cowboys & Aliens to scratch my comic book movie itch. Haven't been to theaters this many times for quite a while! Looks like I'll have popcorn stuck in my teeth all summer long.

DOH!!!!!!!

Let me preface this by saying I DO pay attention when I'm editing my books. Skinners, especially, are a labor of love. Make no mistake, however, they ARE a labor. I created the series as a way to fashion a world full of cool monsters that I've always wanted to see. I wanted events to go from one book to another like a camera panning out farther and farther to show more and more of this world. By the time I got to #s 5 and 6, I realized how smart other series' authors are for keeping their urban fantasy squarely within the context of secret societies that only occasionally fracture the real world or having society being more or less ok with monsters among them. I didn't. I wanted Skinners to evolve into something bigger. Tough job and sometimes people pay the price.

Or...they pay the price, rise from the dead and pay it again.

A reader on the B & N discussion board (found here if you haven't already checked it out) found a glitch in The Breaking where someone was killed and was still feeling good enough to fire a shot on the following page. I must explain. In my epic, evolving world of Skinners, my characters are beyond such restraints as "going limp" or "losing command of their bodily functions" or "staying down" when they're killed. They're tougher than that. Cooler. Or...I screwed up in editing.

Someone else has emailed me about it and all I can say is... ooopsy. Editing those action scenes is rough and a lot of times, chunks get moved around. When that happens, it's like fixing a car. Pieces are taken out and when some are put into another spot, they must be welded so as to work seamlessly within the whole. Sometimes there's a rattle. Unfortunately, this car is off the production lines and on store shelves, never to be repaired again.

Too funny. I just gotta shrug. So does my main editor at EOS, my copyeditor and the other editor who went through the manuscript before it was sent to the presses. Where were you guys?? I thought you had my back!! Oh well. Happens to the best of us. In a fashion similar to how Lucas references his stormtrooper that clunks his head on that doorway in Episode IV, I can also reference my temporarily undead dude in future volumes. And speaking of Star Wars glitches....how come Jango Fett's head doesn't fall out of his helmet when Boba picks it up for that disturbing / touching moment in Episode II? Not trying to put my books in the Star Wars category. I was just wondering about that.

The wrong O word

Well, once again, South Park has knocked it out of the park. Ha. PARK. Didn't even mean to do that one. Their recent episode was about how everything starts sounding like / resembling shit after you hit a certain age. This is something that happened a while ago for me, but I've tried to ignore it. Sometimes I get cranky (ok..cranky-ER) but most of the times I go into newer stuff wanting to like it. Movies, TV shows, whatever. If I'm not trying to like something, I should just curl up into a ball and gripe. More often than I care to admit, this burns me.

It starts with music (as it did in South Park). Then comes everything else. My first encounter with this was MTV. I was a kid when it first hit cable and can clearly recall all the music videos as well as quality programming like Remote Control, The Young Ones, and the first few seasons of The Real World. I was going to college during the Beavis & Butthead years. In fact, I still suspect there was a camera hidden in the apartment I shared with my college roommate for Mike Judge to get inspiration for that show. FYI, my roommate and I switched off on who was Beavis and who was Butt-Head. Then came the decline (as illustrated by the rest of The Real World. That show is STILL on?? How much of the same angst can we watch??)

So, fine. MTV is for young audiences and I'm not young. I get it. I'm still kind of cool right? I did win a radio contest for a trip to attend the 1998 MTV VMAs. That's pretty cool! I was in the same building as Madonna and Marilyn Manson, for crap's sake! Personally, the Movie Awards were always my favorite. The last few years, they've devolved into the MTV Twilight Awards. So that's what the kids are watching. Great. Let 'em have it. I heard there was going to be a remake of Teen Wolf and my mind drifted back to the awesome movies. "GIVE ME...a keg...of BEER." Juvenile justice at the hands of gypsy curses. SWEET! I watched about five minutes of the new version and it was more angsty teens trying to be sexy and witty. And really, what the hell was I expecting?? The second half of this clip from The Soup pretty much sums it up. The first half is funny as well. I love this show (The Soup...not Teen Wolf)



Ugh.

So I'm old. This is yet another reminder. Whatever. Sometimes curling up in that ball is fun. Griping is fun too. I think I'll even start that as a new label for blog posts. Now, in order to pay my rent, I need to try and come up with a poignant, "edgy" yet sexy, socially conscious young character as well as a bunch of cute supernatural circumstances that amount to other characters looking even sexier and becoming even more sharp-witted. Let the zaniness ensue. Oh, and I can't forget the sweetie-pie nicknames for those supposedly horrific creatures. I'll jam those in with the 587,649th way to reference "that time of the month" when talking about a werewolf's transformation during the full moon. And you guys wonder why I take such pleasure in setting the Full Bloods loose in Book 5? Heh. Sweet catharsis.