Selling Out

A lot of people aren't familiar with the Modest Mouse song “Gravity Rides Everything” until they see a certain Nissan minivan commercial. Most folks have heard their song “Float On” – it was everywhere for awhile; commercials, movies even one of those stupid “Kids Rock” CDs.

The licensing deals brought Isaac Brock, the guy who wrote those songs, quite a bit of money and a reputation in the indie rock circles as a sell out. That may be, Brock said in an interview with the A.V. Club in 2004, but he doesn't have to worry about money while he goes about writing and performing what he wants to write and perform.

"People who don't play music for a living can criticize my morals while they live off their parents' money or wash dishes for some asshole,” Brock said in the A.V. Club interview.

“Figuring out ways to pay the rent isn't really a tough decision. Around the time we did the beer commercial and the shoe commercial, I thought, 'Am I compromising my music by doing this?' And I think not. I like keeping the lights on in my house. … Principles are something that people are a lot better at checking in other people than keeping their own.”

I bring this up because, in the literary world, this same sort of artistic purity argument makes its way around the Internet, causing arguments among friends and turning normally benign writer forums into seething pits of hate and animosity. I've have people accuse me of selling out, although I'm still not quite sure why. It might be my attitude that if some large publishing company wants to pay me a lot of money to write books and work with one of their editors, I would be happy to do so.

As it is, I'm going the indie route, not so much as a choice, but out of the necessity of building a following, no matter how small. I'm doing it myself right now because no one has stepped forward to offer to do it for me. Honestly, it would be great for some publisher to worry about marketing and such – although I understand that isn't always the case anymore.

I do see where those casting aspersions about selling out are coming from. There are some things some writers will do, such as writing vampire romance novels, in order to tap into a book market that is hot. Currently, the rage in publishing is young adult books. I suppose that anything I have written – with some editing – could be changed into a YA novel. Would I do that to make a sale to a publisher? Probably not, unless a large amount of money was thrown at me to do it. My reasons aren't necessarily greedy, but basic laziness. “Time in the World” took three years to write and edit. After that amount of time, I'm kind of tired of the characters and the book. I really don't want to revisit it and change it. Unless someone paid me to make it worth my while. Not every person may have a price, but I certainly do.

I guess that probably makes me a sell out who hasn't sold anything. Actually, in a lot of eyes it makes me someone willing to compromise my art. So be it. While there are certain aspects of “art” to my writing, I like to think it is more vocational in nature because it is hard work. I write stories I find entertaining and hopefully other people will as well. I'd like to be paid for the work I do.

A lot of writer self-help books impart the advice to potential writers to look at the market and to write what the market wants. I don't do this with my projects, but I certainly will not judge anyone who does. Mostly because people who write to the market are in for a lot of work for a piece that – even if it sells – will not make you a successful writer. For instance, I know I could not write a convincing vampire romance novel for the simple fact that I don't read vampire romance novels. The same goes for young adult adventure novels. I've read a few because those with a science fiction tilt to them tend to be derivative of other stories and aimed at a younger audience. The good ones are really good, the bad ones are really bad; but on the whole, I don't much care for kids or their problems. (Yes, yes … I love my own children and am involved with their lives. But there's little of their “world” I find interesting.)

When it's done well, some of these books can be really entertaining, but let's not kid ourselves and call this high literature; although many of the themes are borrowed from Literature, with a capital “L.” There's nothing wrong with that despite what your English literature professor tells you. I suppose the literati have always looked down their noses at something that is popular, mainstream. But there is a reason some books are trashy and still popular.

It's those who write and read “Literature” who are the most derisive about selling out. I suppose I could accuse these people of being jealous, but I doubt that's the case. After all, us writers who are slogging along working at creating works of fiction are the ones who are jealous. We want to be accepted by the hoi poloi of the Ivy League literary set. Yet we still like a fun science fiction or romance novel. And frankly, I have fun writing them – when else can you sit for hours and think about time travel?

As writers, there is a large amount of people out there willing to tell you how to do things. Advice is fine, I suppose, and some of these books and articles have good advice. But the decisions you make in creating a writing career are yours alone to make. If you want to maintain your artistic integrity and sell nothing, go to it. If you want to write a teen ghost story because the market is looking for that type of book, you have my blessing.

Personally, I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing; which is avoiding work on my science fiction thriller and doing blog posts.

Veterans Day

This is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago to mark Veterans Day. Enjoy.

When I think of veterans, I think of guys like John Hoover.

Mr. Hoover was one of my first bosses; an elderly man who oversaw the summer youth work program in the town where I lived. He couldn’t hear too well because of mortar rounds he shot at the Japanese on Guadalcanal.

Or I think of my father-inlaw, Dave Hesse, who left his family while the Air Force sent him to Vietnam.

But who I really think of, though, is Mike McKinney. I interviewed Mr. McKinney several years ago when the movie “Saving Private Ryan” came out. He knew a thing or two about D-Day; he was there. As a matter of fact he was the second man on Omaha beach that day.

These men, and many others I’ve encountered throughout my life are veterans. Which makes it kind of embarrassing to me when someone thanks me for my own military service. I’ve never felt that my name should be mentioned in the same breath with those who have gone off to fight in wars and conflicts. My time in service came during Ronald Reagan’s largest peacetime military buildup. I was a Cold Warrior and no one so much as called me bad names, let alone shot at me.

The Air Force gave me three square meals a day for 4½ years, taught me a trade and threw a little money at me for an education. The military exposed me to people I would have never met and sent me to a country — Germany — that I would have never visited. After I got out, my military service made me eligible for a home mortgage. I have a hard time thinking that anyone, especially a regular taxpayer, owes me anything.

Me? A veteran? It doesn’t make sense.

But sometimes it takes a child to make us realize our follies.

For the past several years, Route 66 Elementary School has staged a Veterans Day celebration. I’ve managed to avoid the event in past years — like I said, it wasn’t something I felt I deserved. My kids wouldn’t let it go this year. They especially wanted to make sure that I stood up with all the other Air Force veterans.

I know the feeling of feeling pride for the accomplishments of a child of mine. I’ve had the pleasure of feeling the pride from a parent. But never had I encountered the pride a child feels for a parent. It was an odd and humbling feeling. Perhaps it was something that I had never taken the time to contemplate.

But there they were, my sons, showing me how proud they were to have had a father who once served in the U.S. Air Force. They both know — I’ve told them myself — that I sacrificed very little. The people we need to honor on Veterans Day are men like John Hoover, Dave Hesse and Mike McKinney, I tell them. And they know.

I’ve heard older generations talk about the youth and how they don’t understand the sacrifices veterans have made. Nothing could be further from the truth. These kids, especially the ones at Route 66, understand perfectly the freedoms they enjoy and who made it possible. You can credit their teachers and their parents.

If you don’t believe me, just show up next year for the school’s Veterans Day assembly and listen to hundreds of small voices sing and recite poems. If it doesn’t move you, then you don’t appreciate the sacrifice veterans have made for this country.

Myself included.

The Netflix Effect

“Great Expectations” was serialized in the the periodical “All the Year Round” from December 1860 to August 1861. As far as we know, Charles Dickens wasn't harassed by fans for not giving up the whole thing at once. Not that he could have, he wrote it as he went along, only being ahead on the weekly installations by about a month.

A fashionable Charles Dickens

George R.R. Martin has been working on the sprawling “A Song of Fire and Ice” saga since 1996. “A Feast for Crows,” the fourth book in the series, was published in 2005. The next installment, “A Dance With Dragons,” was published six years later in 2011 and Martin has given no indication when the final two books in the series will be done.

Fans are upset with him. They want the whole epic story, and they want it now. Martin, for his part, has responded by not producing any new novels in the series and stating that they be out when he's good and ready.

Writers must have beards.

Dickens was fortunate – he didn't have the Netflix effect to deal with.

Netflix streams programing to our computers or television sets. Much of the programming available on Netflix are complete episodes of old television programs, and even original programs. So, if you want to watch all episodes of “Breaking Bad” in one sitting, you can. Netflix upped the ante with new episodes of “Arrested Development” and original series like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black.”

So not only are we in a new era of epic storytelling with the creation of hundreds of hours of television, but it is all delivered to us instantly. That gives the illusion that the creative process is almost as instantaneous. Nothing about creating a work is instant, but the public wants its appetite fed.

It's convenient to blame Netflix for this, but the process started years ago with the release on DVD of seasons of televisions series. Except if you bought the set, you were probably a fan to begin with and probably already watched the show. With Netflix, you can sample something, then watch the whole thing from beginning to end. My wife does this, I don't have the patience. I generally like my television episodes to be self-contained stories. Large story arcs force me to become vested in characters I may or may not want to dedicate time to. I'm not against the idea, though, mostly when it comes to what I read. I must admit to having enjoyed the Matt Helm series by DonaldHamilton. (And the fact that the last one was written 30 years ago, so I don't have to wait for the next one to come out.) I was the kind of kid who would go to the public library to check out the book the teacher was reading in class. I hated to wait. I read all the Encyclopedia Brown series at once, and read the first three “Dune” books one after the other.

As I was writing my first book, “Blind Man's Bluff,” all I could wonder is why anyone would want to write a series featuring the same characters. I was so sick of my creation by the time I finished that I didn't want to speak to them anymore.

But then I started my second novel, “Time in the World.” The intention was to write just one and be done. A funny thing happened, though. It turned out there was more to the story than I had thought. I found that I liked the characters and the “world” I had created. As soon as I finished, I wrote out a detailed outline for two more books and made a couple of changes to foreshadow what I had planned.

With this book, I didn't give much thought to trying to sell it to a publisher – I didn't think any would take a chance on a time travel series from a new writer. So I published it by myself without high expectations. I thought it was pretty decent for what it was. But then I became pleasantly surprised that people have liked it. So much that I've been confronted by the Netflix effect.

“Loved the book,” was the essence of numerous comments. “Is the next one done yet?”

The answer, of course, is no. It's not done. I haven't even really started it and as a new fiction writer, I kind of feel like I'm letting momentum slip away. It'll be at least a year – and that's being optimistic – before I can have “Time Stand Still” done and out. The reason is because I'm working on a different project; one that's been on my radar for two years and one that I'll be shopping around for a publisher and agent and all that jazz. (It's that good.)

The trouble is that it's been slow going on getting it done. Lots of different responsibilities have been pulling at me and I've missed a couple of my self-imposed deadlines. Meanwhile, I get phone calls imploring me to finish my sequel.

“I've got to know what happens before I die,” one woman told me.

I'm flattered, and humbled. There's a part of me saying I should accommodate the few fans I've been able to acquire and put my current project on hold. The obstinate part of me, though, wants to complete what I've started before moving on to the next thing.

What would you do?