Filed under: Book Conservation, Feedback, Marketing, Podcast, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech, U of Iowa Ctr for the Book, Writing stuff
A good friend – the one who actually got me started in book conservation (and has written a brilliant book on her time in the UICB program) – was by to visit for the first time in a long while. No discredit to her, we were just unable to have guests for the last year or two of caring for Martha Sr.
Anyway, last night, over a glass of wine and chatting, she handed over a wrapped package. “Your Christmas gift.”
(We’ve always been close enough friends that such things can be done whenever the timing works out, rather than obsessing over calendar pages.)
I unwrapped it. A small CD/DVD travel case. I unzipped it – and saw the first disc labeled “Communion of Dreams by James T. Downey.”
I was stunned. Gobsmacked, the Brits say.
My friend’s husband (also my friend – I’ve known them since they were first married) does custom audio books. He’d read Communion of Dreams last year, and really liked it. And together they conspired to produce the book as an unabridged audio production. 12 CDs worth.
I’m not sure yet just how long that is – I’m guessing about 20 hours. I just listened to the first chapter last night – and it was brilliant! A wonderful adaptation of the text, with some fun interpretations of the characters. Over the next few days I’ll get nothing much else done, I’m guessing, as I listen to the thing. Wow.
And here’s the best part: I have permission to use the MP3 versions that also came along with the gift as podcasts!
My good lady wife is starting to do the work of adapting my CoD site to host the MP3 files, and once we have all the details worked out, those will be available as a free download as well.
This is really cool – and really exciting! Just this past weekend downloads of the text of the book surpassed 7,750. I was just starting to think of contacting agents/publishers again – now having the podcasts of the book available will really help to promote the thing and make it easier to arrange conventional publishing.
Very, very cool!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Carl Sagan, Fermi's Paradox, Marketing, Phil Plait, Predictions, Promotion, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Society, Space, Survival, tech
What is it with big corporations turning to space-related gimmicks in order to promote their products?
Last week Phil Plait on his Bad Astronomy site did a post about a beer maker’s ‘plan’ to advertise using a laser to shine their logo onto the Moon. (The second comment in that thread remembered me, and I also posted a comment about my Paint the Moon project from years back when I was writing Communion of Dreams.) It’s really just an advertising trick – they’re not seriously going to try it from what I can tell. So, like my communal fantasy art project, no real harm nor foul.
More worrying is this bit via redOrbit:
Doritos to Broadcast First Ad into Space
The campaign to broadcast the first ever advert into space is launched today (Friday March 7) with University of Leicester space scientists playing a key part in the process.
The British public is being asked to shoot a 30-second ad about what they perceive life on earth to be as part of Doritos ‘You Make It, We Play It’ user-generated-content campaign. The winning advert in the competition will be beamed past the earth’s atmosphere, beyond our solar system and into the Universe, to anyone ‘out there’ that may be watching. The winning ad will also be broadcast on terrestrial TV.
Catch that bit about scientists from the University of Leicester being involved? Well, some of the facts reported in the long article strike me as being a bit dodgy, but there is little doubt that indeed the scientists have signed on, for their own reasons. From the article again:
Dr Darren Wright of the University of Leicester Department of Physics and Astronomy said: “The Radio and Space Plasma Physics Group and Department of Physics and Astronomy as a whole at the University of Leicester has a very high international profile in the area of Space Physics.
“An important part of this project is that it provides an additional component to the Physics and Astronomy Department’s ever increasing outreach program. The ad to be transmitted will be created by the public following a national competition thus increasing public awareness of space activities.
“The launch of this project as we embark on National Science and Engineering Week- with a range of activities taking place at the University of Leicester- is timely, and adds impetus to our efforts to interest people in science.
“The University is particularly committed to outreach programs along with the National Space Centre – the brainchild of the University of Leicester – and engaged in a number of programs with the wider public.”
(I could find nothing on the UL site about this, but it seems to not have been updated that recently.)
So, in order to better promote their university and outreach program, they are willing to join in on this gimmick with Doritos. The Doritos UK site (warning – it’s one of those Flash-heavy sites that assumes you have at least a gig of RAM running) even has this confirmation:
We’ll even beam the winning advert into space just for the hell of it. But if passing aliens pick up the message and invade Earth looking for tasty snacks, don’t blame us.
Hahaha! See, it’s all just another joke, like the Moon/Beer Sign! Hilarious!
The problem is, there are real issues to be considered in taking an active role in broadcasting messages out in space, as I noted in this post from last June:
And I guess that’s where I come down on the question of whether or not we should be broadcasting “contact” signals out into the cosmos, in the hope of connecting with some other intelligent life.
Just about every major science fiction author has dealt with the question of alien contact at some point or another. Sometimes it is handled with an assumption of happy-happy E.T. helping us out, being part of the big brotherhood of intelligent species. Sometimes it is having us be lunch. Sometimes we’re the bad guys, enslaving other races or having them for lunch.
I tend to agree with Carl Sagan’s position that we’re unlikely to be at anything resembling technological parity with another race (and this is the premise of Communion of Dreams). And I tend to agree with those who advocate a certain caution in making our presence known in the universe. Via MeFi, there’s a very good article on this very topic in The Independent by Dr. David Whitehouse, formerly the BBC Science Editor and a respected astronomer, that I heartily recommend. An excerpt:
The fact is, and this should have been obvious to all, that we do not know what any extraterrestrials might be like – and hoping that they might be friendly, evolved enough to be wise and beyond violence, is an assumption upon which we could be betting our entire existence. When I was a young scientist 20 years ago at Jodrell Bank, the observatory in Cheshire, I asked Sir Bernard Lovell, founder of Jodrell Bank and pioneering radio astronomer, about it. He had thought about it often, he said, and replied: “It’s an assumption that they will be friendly – a dangerous assumption.”
And Lovell’s opinion is still echoed today by the leading scientists in the field. Physicist Freeman Dyson, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, has been for decades one of the deepest thinkers on such issues. He insists that we should not assume anything about aliens. “It is unscientific to impute to remote intelligences wisdom and serenity, just as it is to impute to them irrational and murderous impulses,” he says. ” We must be prepared for either possibility.”
The Nobel Prize-winning American biologist George Wald takes the same view: he could think of no nightmare so terrifying as establishing communication with a superior technology in outer space. The late Carl Sagan, the American astronomer who died a decade ago, also worried about so-called “First Contact”. He recommended that we, the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos, should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes. He said there is no chance that two galactic civilisations will interact at the same level. In any confrontation, one will always dominate the other.
Sure, our broadcasts have been leaking out into space for a hundred years. But using a sophisticated system such as proposed for this absurd commercial is another story – there may be almost zero chance that such a signal could ever be picked up (even if there is intelligent extra-terrestrial life). But it is still a foolish risk. It’d be terribly embarrassing to have some other civilization get our snack food commercial, let alone to have them show up and decide that we tasted even better than the chips.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Feedback, General Musings, Health, Hospice, Marketing, Predictions, Press, Promotion, Science Fiction, Sleep, Society, Writing stuff
I find it odd, but somehow telling, that the obit for my MIL has gotten the most hits of anything I’ve posted here previously, and as a result I’ve hit a new “best day” for the blog today. Ah, well.
The newspaper coverage of her passing can be found here and here.
* * * * * * *
And that’s not the only news about us. In a strange twist, the same issue of the Tribune which contains Martha Sr.’s obituary also has this piece about this year’s Notable Historic Properties. Which includes our home (second from bottom on that page.)
* * * * * * *
While I was being preoccupied with caring for Martha Sr. in her final days, there seems to have been a burst of activity with the novel. I don’t know if someone posted it to some websites or what, but in the last week almost 500 people have downloaded the thing. If anyone knows what is behind this, drop me a note or leave a comment if you would be so kind. Oh, that pushes the total downloads over 7,000 – thanks, everyone!
* * * * * * *
Got this very nice note from someone who had just downloaded the book and started reading it. ‘Rich’ said:
Thanks for making your SF novel available. I am now in the middle, and you’ve REALLY got my interest. This is a good thing.
I have only noticed 2 very minor technical things that I think most people would not notice, but being an engineer and trained in physical sciences, I saw them.
In the first description of the airlock on Titan, using water to wash off tholin dust would be difficult as you have described it. If the Titan atmosphere were pumped out to a vacuum, liquid water would boil off instantly, unless there were another replacement atmosphere first.
When Jon first breathes the air inside Darnell’s dome, “the usual sharp whiff of methane” – Methane is odorless, needing to have mercaptans added so we can smell it.
Like I said, these are small details, and do not detract from my enjoyment of the story.
D’oh! My response:
Well, thanks! The first can be easily changed with a tweak to the description (which is what I actually envisioned – the new ‘Earth normal’ atmo being pumped in first, then things flushed with a water rinse), but I didn’t know that methane was odorless. Huh. Silly me – it’s the same as ‘natural gas’, isn’t it?
No worries, I can tweak that by giving the tholin precipitate some kind of smell, and rejigger the text to reflect that. But I would not have caught it without your help.
See, kids – you write me, you’ll get a real, personal response! Well, sooner or later. Just because the novel has now been downloaded 7,000 times and I’m well on my way to becoming a famous and fabulously wealthy author, doesn’t mean I won’t answer my email . . .
* * * * * * *
And, lastly, thanks again to all who have commented or sent messages about Martha Sr.’s passing. It has been much appreciated by us.
Best,
Jim Downey
A brief note from yesterday’s news:
NEW YORK — It is high season for literary contests.
Two leading booksellers announced competitions Monday, continuing the industry’s unending search for new talent and the increasing willingness to let others do the searching.
Amazon.com, Penguin Group (USA) and Hewlett-Packard Co. have launched the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, which offers a contract with Penguin and a small advance, $25,000. Meanwhile, Borders Group Inc., Court TV and Gather.com announced The Next Great Crime Novel competition, with the winner receiving $5,000 and a publishing deal through Borders, the superstore chain.
I’d argue that when an industry is so disfunctional as to need to pull these kinds of stunts to select content, the system is broken. Completely. How is it possible that the publishing industry is in an “unending search for new talent” but is so swamped by submissions that they can’t deal with it all? They’re not looking for talent – they’re looking for name recognition, whether by existing celebrities or by ones created by this kind of gimmick. It is an aspect of our celebrity/sensationalist culture. And a $25,000 advance is considered “small”?
Oh, and we’ve now passed 5,700 downloads of Communion of Dreams. That’s some 1,200 in September alone. Thanks to all who have helped pass along word of the novel to friends and message boards!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Marketing, movies, Paleo-Future, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Press, Promotion, Publishing, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Titan, Writing stuff
In a post-apocalyptic world a cult of religious cyber-zombies prepare to release a hideous new engineered plague on mankind. On Saturn’s moon Titan, an aging space prospector discovers an ancient alien artifact. It will take the psycho-sexual skills of one lone young woman to unlock the secrets of the device and save mankind – but can she do it, before the aliens return?
Find out with the new Science Fiction special effects extravaganza Titan’s Mistress! Rated PG-13 for violence and language, some nudity.
(Based on the acclaimed novel Communion of Dreams)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OK, so here’s the deal. Someone read Communion this spring and *really* liked it. Said person thought that it was a very visual book, and would be perfectly suited to a film adaptation.
That’s all well and good. I’ve heard that from several people.
But this person has some connections into Hollywood.
Huh.
Nothing certain, this person says (and I have reason to trust him). But the novel has been passed on to some people who will at least take a look at it. A serious look. And they’re the sorts who can get things accomplished.
What a weird idea, that the novel could first be sold as a movie. Then it wouldn’t be too hard to do the conventional publishing thing as well.
This is all speculative, of course. And I’ve known about this for a while. But after the last couple of posts being about personal stuff unrelated to the book, I thought I’d mention this.
Could be interesting. Granted, once given the Hollywood treatment, Communion would probably wind up looking like I described above, but still.
So, who would you see in what roles? Any suggestions?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Failure, Fireworks, Guns, Marketing, movies, NASA, Science, Society, Space, tech, YouTube
A buddy of mine sent me a bunch of YouTube links last night to clips of explosions (among other things). Some were compilations of failed rocket launches, some were ‘stupid human tricks’. He knows, budding pyromaniac that I am, that I would enjoy such things. Hey, what do you expect from someone whose birthday is the Fourth of July?
Anyway, it got me thinking about a niche cable channel which would be sure to be a huge hit: The Explosions Channel. Oh, I know that The Discovery Channel does some of this, as does The History Channel. But on those, explosions provide the punctuation for other stories, with the occasional feature on firearms, artillery, fireworks, demolitions, et cetera which has a higher-than-average explosion count. But think of the potential for a channel where you just *know* that you could tune in and catch some big explosions, anytime, day or night! It’d be like MTV for the jaded geek, pure visual heroin for the explosions junkie. Guys like me could turn it on, and sit there, slack-jawed and drooling, eyes wide, as explosion after fireball after thunderous report . . .
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Heinlein, Heinlein Centennial, Marketing, Promotion, Religion, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction
Over the next week or so I’ll be writing a lot about some of the things I saw/heard/experienced at the Heinlein Centennial this past weekend. It was a fantastic, and for me, transformative experience, which will play out in interesting ways for some time, I think. Here on CommunionBlog I will be posting everything I write, some of which will be also posted on UTI and dKos). This will not be in any kind of order, and this first item was in fact just about the last thing that happened over the weekend.
Jim D
*******************************************************
I went to the Heinlein Centennial for a lot of reasons. Robert A. Heinlein was one of the ‘Big Three’ SF authors of the 20th century. His work had a profound effect on me in my early years, and still informs much of my world view. There was going to be a large component to the Centennial devoted to private space ventures, with leaders in the field there talking about the work they were doing and what was on the horizon. There were going to be any number of other top-notch SF writers in attendance. And it would provide me the opportunity to do some networking, in promotion of my own writing.
I am not much of a fanboy. I’ve only attended a few SF conventions – I’m not real big on large crowds, and the time period of my life when most people get plugged into that world I was busy doing something else which entirely preoccupied my time and energy. By the early ’90s I was busy (and broke) starting a business, then re-inventing that business in ’96, then closing that business in ’04. Since then I’ve been largely devoted to caring for my Mother-in-law, as noted in my brief bio on the left.
Anyway, while I knew the routine and what to expect from such an event, I was a bit of an outsider, a noob. On the other hand, because of some of my other life experience, I can usually pull off having a ‘presence’ – of looking like someone who is a little more established, a little more experienced, a little more than just a noob. (More on that later.) But the truth is, I had been largely fighting out of my weight class for three days, bluffing my way into discussions, handing out cards for my novel, et cetera – and was pretty much exhausted from it all.
So, the last panel discussion I decided to attend yesterday was on a topic of interest to me, but somewhat outside my main areas of knowledge, and I went intending on just keeping my fool mouth shut and listening (I’m keeping all the details vague for a reason). The three panelists came in, got started with introductions, a brief statement on the topic, and so forth. I’d seen a couple of them in other panel discussions, and had some idea of what to expect. Then one of them made some silly statements about his new-agey religious beliefs that didn’t really pertain to the subject, but he thought they did, about how the soul exists outside of the physical body, et cetera.
One of the other panelists, an academic with established cred on the subject, an author with a number of highly-regarded books to his name, got up and nicely, but very energetically and with considerable verve, tore Mr. New-Age a new asshole and shoved all the crap he’d been spewing back into it. It was a thing of beauty to behold, and I sat there thinking “cool – this guy’s a rationalist, in addition to his other credentials”.
The panel discussion proceeded, returning to the topic at hand, and everyone had a good time. Mr. New-Age didn’t seem to mind the slam-dunk he’d suffered, probably because it was done with such artistry, and the contributions of the other panel member and the audience kept things lively and interesting. I kept my mouth shut, but the fellow who’d shut down the nonesense made a comment about something that made me think he might be open to reading my book. When all was wrapped up, and the room was emptying, the panelists gathering together their things, I stepped up to the table, said something to the Rationalist, and handed him my card. As is usual in such situations, he made nice noises about thanking me, said he’d check it out if he had a chance, and I turned to go.
As I did so, I heard an exclamation behind me: “You’re Jim Downey!” (The business cards I’d had printed up say ‘James Downey’.)
Huh?
I turned to see what the hell caused that. Mr. Rationalist looked like he’d just been handed a big fat check, standing there, my card in hand, looking from me to it and back again with a huge grin on his face. “You’re Jim Downey!”
He thrust his hand across the table at me. “I’m a raging atheist – I read Unscrewing the Inscrutable all the time!! In fact, you’re the reason I’m here! I read the post you put up a couple months back about the Heinlein Centennial, and so I contacted the organizers and told them I wanted to participate! Wow!”
I was gobsmacked. Bumfuzzled. (And if you’ve never had your bum fuzzled, you don’t know what you’re missing.) I’m sure I stood there like an idiot as he continued: “Oh, here, let me…”
He reached over to his bag and pulled out his latest book. Inscibed it to me. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to run and catch the shuttle to the airport, so I can make my flight…I really wish we had time for a drink or something…”
***
Mr. Rationalist, I wish I could convey to you what an astonishing experience that was. (Actually, I dropped him a note and told him that I was going to be posting this, and invited him to come by and contribute – but I don’t “out” someone without expressed permission.) As I mentioned, I was weary from fighting the good fight all weekend, having a phenomenal time, but also very much feeling like I was completely outclassed by all the brilliant engineers, entrepreneurs, academics, and writers. To have one such panel member even recognize me based on my ramblings here, let alone to be so enthusiastic and gracious about it – well, it was a shot of rejuvenation juice which would make Lazarus Long jump for joy. Thank you.
Jim Downey
UPDATE: and in comments: Mr. Rationalist has dropped me a note and said it was OK to ID him: Richard Hanley, Assoc. Prof of Philosophy at U. Delaware, and author of South Park and Philosophy: Bigger, Longer, and More Penetrating and The Metaphysics of Star Trek among others. I mean, how cool is that?
JD
(Cross-posted, with tweaks, from UTI.)
Filed under: Failure, Mark Twain, Marketing, NPR, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
There was a very good segment on this morning’s Weekend Edition Sunday with Jon Clinch, the author of the novel Finn. Clinch talks about his experience in working on several prior novels, none of which were satisfactory to him, before embarking on Finn. It is interesting that he used the web to first promote himself, then land an agent, then get a publisher for the novel – the same kind of thing I am attempting to do with this site and Communion of Dreams.
But even more interesting was the business with his attitude towards his previous novels, which he thought were important in helping him as a writer, even though they were “failed” projects ultimately in terms of artistic satisfaction (and not being published.) I think we tend to underestimate the value of failure, in our focus on success. I have lots of what would conventionally be characterized as “failures” in my life, but each one was an experience which helped lead me to new understanding about myself and the world. Basically, I’m of the opinion that if a failure doesn’t kill you, it isn’t really a failure. And since none of us gets out of this life alive, anyway, we’re all doomed to “failure”.
The most interesting people I know are not the ones who have only succeeded in everything they’ve tried – that type is either too self-satisfied to be interesting, or so unambitious to have never pushed themselves. Give me people who go too far, who push themselves in what they do past their abilities, who are ambitious enough to want to Paint the Moon. Those are the people who are interesting.
Communion was not my first novel. No, during college I wrote one, another near-term speculative novel, once again based on the notion that a pandemic had caused a general societal collapse. I think it is stuck away in a box someplace in the attic. Even though post college I spent several months trying to rewrite it, it is fairly dreadful, and deserves banishment to the attic. But it helped me learn a *lot* about writing a novel, and allowed me to work out a number of themes and ideas which I then used in Communion to much better effect. So that book (titled Equipoise) was not entirely a failure. And I’d bet that most ‘successful’ authors have one or more such books tucked away in a box somewhere, if you can only get them to admit it.
Anyway, I enjoyed the interview with Clinch, and will have to look up his book one of these days.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Marketing, NPR, Podcast, Promotion, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
A suggestion early on was that I do a series of podcasts of the book. The topic came up over dinner with friends the other evening, too, with my friends (only one of whom has read the book) being very positive about the idea.
I’ve got some experience in radio and public speaking. I think I could do this, though it would require me to relax in my speaking style (my good lady wife, when I bounced this idea off of her this morning, was somewhat more frank than my friends about my tendency to become “RadioMan!”…you can see what she means in this interview I did with NPR almost 6 years ago), and go with something more conversational. It would also require me to go through the learning curve and get the necessary components (hardware and software) to produce the podcasts, though I’m less concerned about that.
Given that at this time I find it difficult to maintain the kind of concentration necessary to be working on a new long piece of fiction, this might give me an additional creative outlet. It could also help to market the book, and is a strategy being used by many other authors.
So, if you have some thoughts on the matter, or some advice to offer, I’d love to hear it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Depression, General Musings, Health, Marketing, Promotion, Writing stuff
I was chatting online with a friend who is a bookseller, and asked whether there was a “Caring for an Alzheimer’s patient from a male perspective” book out there, since most men aren’t care-givers in the way I am. The response I got back:
On an average day, we carry 6-8 titles on understanding Alzheimer’s and caring for people who have it. They are geared towards children dealing with parents. None of them are from a male point of view. However, watching the titles that come out and do well, my suggestion would be to write a memoir. That’s what sells. People love crisis memoir…
To which I replied:
Let’s see…think I have the material to pull one off? Orphaned at 13…adolescence of acting out, violence, drug abuse… but pulled it together enough to get into one of the premier small colleges…car accident during my sophomore year which left me partially paralyzed, but I got involved in a martial art, recovered almost full function and went on to be a world class athlete in an obscure but increasingly popular sport…rejected by the Writer’s Workshop, but found a career in grad school…opened a business, grew that business into the largest gallery in the state, but that failed in spite of working 70-80 hours per week, leaving me in huge debt and struggling with depression…in spite of that managed to write a work of fiction and become a seminal ‘internet performance artist’ (Wikipedia says so!)…became a beloved newspaper columnist while caring for my Alzheimer’s-suffering mother-in-law, fighting the recurrence of depression and flirting with alcoholism…all the while a victim of migraines, having ‘lost my relationship with the God of my childhood’…
Yeah, with the right kind of spin, Oprah would love it. 😉
Actually, all of that is true, and there’s a lot more besides. Maybe I ought to consider this if I can’t get someone to pick up Communion of Dreams…hmmm…
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 