…ain’t that just a hell of a thing:
Yup, that’s me holding the proof copy of the paperback version of Communion of Dreams. As predicted, it’s arrived, looks good, and so we can move forward with setting everything up for people to order their own copy (signed, even!) later this week.
Cool. It’s a real thing. This is even better than with Her Final Year. No mixed emotions today.
Yay!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Kindle, Marketing, NPR, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
I mentioned a month ago that I was going to be moving to self-publish Communion of Dreams. I just wanted to note that we’re actually moving to accomplish that goal – I need to do a close read-through of the prepped text for the hardcopy version, and when that is done then my Good Lady Wife will work to create a html version for the Kindle edition. When that is done, then we’ll ‘launch’ the book officially – perhaps even yet this month. We’ll see how everything comes together, and whether the 35,000+ downloads of the pdf version of the book is an indication that people will actually buy a copy of the book or not.
If not? Perhaps I’ll take up writing ‘paranormal romance’…
Jim Downey
Consider first Basham:
Cut to a pleasantly warm evening in Bahrain. My companion, a senior UK investment banker and I, are discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.
He then makes an astonishing confession: “At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles.”
Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.
Then Smith:
All corporations are run like this [as dictatorships]. The bonuses are handed out to the people who determine the fate of the CEO. It’s a tiny number of people—ten to 20. There are very few shareholder revolts that work. Most leaders are deposed internally. This is why corporations pay huge bonuses.
And finally Madison:
But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Then draw your own conclusions.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Failure, Guns, Health, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
. . . looking over my New Years post last January is just mostly painful. Because 2011, while it had some good things about it, was mostly just painful. Literally. In many regards, I’d just as soon forget the bulk of it.
But this look-back is something of a tradition, so let’s get it out of the way.
Total downloads of Communion of Dreams dropped off a fair bit in 2011, with just an additional 5,444 versions of the book zipping across the aether. I have long since lost track of the exact number of downloads that makes, but it’s something in excess of 35,000. Yay.
What also dropped off was my focus on the book, as I waited for The Publisher Who Shall Not Be Named to return any of my emails or calls, and turned my attention to other projects. Like getting Her Final Year published. And doing the big BBTI tests and site revamp. And doing a bunch of writing for Guns.com. So it’s not too surprising that interest in CoD waned a bit.
So, not a great year, particularly since most of my other projects didn’t work out like either I hoped or predicted. Still, I stubbornly refuse to learn from my failures, and hope to have a self-published version of Communion of Dreams available “soon.” Maybe even “real soon.” We’ll see.
Meanwhile, let’s all work to make 2012 a better year. Deal?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Blade Runner, movies, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, tech
My, my, my. Hit the mother lode: Future Noir.
Just one of the gems there is the Blade Runner Sketchbook.
Less than 8 years to go.
Jim Downey
Via Mefi.
Filed under: Art, Depression, Failure, General Musings, Health, Migraine, Predictions, Survival
“So, how’re you doing?”
It’s the sort of question which comes after all the preliminary stuff, all the catching-up with an old friend who I haven’t seen in a couple of years. Your best friends are like that: able to ask the same question that everyone asks, but have it mean something more.
* * * * * * *
This morning I woke up, not hurting.
This was unexpected. Yesterday had been a long day, and I hurt a lot. The source of the pain was just a minor case of post-nasal drip. No, that didn’t hurt. But it caused me to do a fair amount of coughing. That’s what hurt. Yeah, because of the torn intercostal muscle high on my right side, which feels like a broken rib. The one I’ve had for about 16 months now.
So I expected to hurt. In fact, most of the time I expect to hurt.
Chronic pain is different than short-term pain. Oh, I’ve broken plenty of bones, and know what it means to *really* hurt for days, and then to ache for weeks. For a couple of decades now I’ve had a knee which can cause an immense amount of pain if I subject it to the wrong kind of use, and that pain will remain intense for a week or so. Pain is no stranger in my life. Never has been.
But chronic pain, that’s different, as I’ve come to learn. It almost takes on a physical weight, which you have to carry around. That wears you out, sometimes sooner in the day, sometimes later. It functions like a restraint you have to strain against to accomplish anything. It’s like having a migraine – a full fledged, nausea-inducing, sparkly lights & mild vertigo migraine – and still having to drive over an icy road into the sun.
* * * * * * *
My garden still hasn’t been put to bed for the year. Yeah, it’s really late.
It’s just one manifestation of how this year has gone. Everything has taken longer than I expected, cost more than I thought it would, and didn’t work out quite the way I hoped it to.
Partly this is due to the chronic pain. Partly it is due to mistakes on my part. Partly it is just because of chance. By turns this has made me depressed, disappointed, disgusted. Sometimes even on the brink of despair.
And yet…
* * * * * * *
“So, how’re you doing?”
It’s the sort of question which comes after all the preliminary stuff, all the catching-up with an old friend who I haven’t seen in a couple of years. Your best friends are like that: able to ask the same question that everyone asks, but have it mean something more. I am fortunate enough to have several such close friends.
“It’s been a long year. And not a good one.” I looked at my friend. She nodded. “But I’ve had worse. And I’ve had an idea about a new story I want to tell…”
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Failure, Feedback, Guns, Marketing, Music, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
I’m a blockhead.
No, really. Samuel Johnson’s quote establishes it beyond a doubt:
“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”
For years I listened to people go on and on about how beneficial my writing about being a care-giver was. All the praise, the sharing, the requests to write more, to collect my writings into a book. The final result has been for Her Final Year to sell a grand total of 32 copies, after years of work and months of flogging the book. What a staggering success.
Yup, a blockhead.
Also for years now I’ve listened to countless proclamations of how incredible and valuable Ballistics By The Inch is. How it is an amazing resource for anyone interested in hard data. This has been in discussions on different forums and blogs which I have stumbled upon. And it’s reflected in the hits & usage of the site, as well, with over 8 million hits total and something on the order of 500,000 unique visitors. There’ve been plenty of people who have written me, thanking me, telling me that we should accept donations to support our work. So, for the re-launch we have done just that – added a way for people to show how much they value the site with a small donation. And in the short time we’ve had the new site up we’ve had over 5,000 unique visitors, and gotten just one donation of $10. At that rate, we’d have gotten a stunning total of $1,000 in donations since the start – it wouldn’t even cover the cost of hosting the website.
Yup, a blockhead.
My novel has been downloaded over 35,000 times in the last 5 years. People have told me they love it, that it’s brilliant and just like the classic SF of the golden era. Sometime in the next few weeks we’ll offer a self-published version of the book in hardcopy and for the Kindle. And I’m not so much a blockhead that I expect to actually sell copies of the thing. But I bet – I just bet – that somehow I’ll manage to be disappointed, nonetheless. Probably when I start getting complaints that the book is no longer free.
Screw it. I swear, I am seriously tempted to just shut down all the websites. Yup, BBTI too. Just leave a brief description of the project up with an email address where people can contact me to buy access to the data. Like the song says:
Little Joe never once gave it away
Everybody had to pay and pay
A hustle here and a hustle there
New York City’s the place where
They said hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
They said hey Joe, take a walk on the wild side
But being a blockhead, we’ll see what happens.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
From Communion of Dreams, Chapter Seventeen:
“Sorry.” She looked over at him, the dread in her eye replaced by something else. “The 1918 flu was recreated in the early part of this century, as there was a growing concern about Avian flu. The scientists at the time discovered that the prevailing form of Avian Flu, the H5N1 virus, was surprisingly related to the 1918 pandemic virus. Almost identical RNA structure, similar DNA.”
“But you say this one is different.”
“Yeah. Ignis was such a nasty bug because it spread by aerosol, but it also had a very short incubation period, just a couple of days. Then the disease itself was very swift, and victims died within hours of onset. Like it was all time-compressed, hyper-virulent. This is one of the reasons that people thought then, and still debate now, whether it was a weaponized version of Avian flu.”
From Science:
ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS—Locked up in the bowels of the medical faculty building here and accessible to only a handful of scientists lies a man-made flu virus that could change world history if it were ever set free.
The virus is an H5N1 avian influenza strain that has been genetically altered and is now easily transmissible between ferrets, the animals that most closely mimic the human response to flu. Scientists believe it’s likely that the pathogen, if it emerged in nature or were released, would trigger an influenza pandemic, quite possibly with many millions of deaths.
In a 17th floor office in the same building, virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center calmly explains why his team created what he says is “probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make”—and why he wants to publish a paper describing how they did it. Fouchier is also bracing for a media storm. After he talked to ScienceInsider yesterday, he had an appointment with an institutional press officer to chart a communication strategy.
Remember, as noted on the ‘blurb’ on the CoD homepage:
Communion of Dreams is an “alternative future history” set in 2052 where the human race is still struggling to recover from a massive pandemic flu some 40 years previously.
Let’s see . . . 2052, minus 40 years . . .
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Alzheimer's, Daily Kos, General Musings, Guns, Politics, Predictions, RKBA, Society, Writing stuff
Over the last week or so, I’ve tried to write this piece about a dozen times, only to give up and delete what I had come up with. I’m not sure whether this one will work or not.
What’s the problem? Well, it’s easy for whatever I say to only be seen as bitterness. And while I am a bit bitter, that’s not the reason for my writing.
* * * * * * *
Timing is everything.
The best ice cream in the world won’t sell worth a damn in the middle of a blizzard.
And so it is with writing.
I’ve been very frustrated with our inability to sell Her Final Year. I don’t think we’ve broken 30 sales yet. It’s depressing enough that I don’t even bother to check the sales figures these days. And it seems that nothing we do makes the slightest difference.
I thought that the timing for the book would be perfect. There’s been a slew of studies and warnings about the impending crunch of an aging population, and how that will require more care-givers. Organizations such as the Alzheimer’s Association have been working hard to build awareness, create support mechanisms for care-providers and their charges.
But people don’t want to think about such things. The news of the day is depressing enough as it is, with little prospect for getting better anytime soon.
* * * * * * *
And it isn’t just that. I’ve noticed that increasingly, people are not in a mood for conversation. They’re in a mood for argument. Or just shouting at one another.
I was relieved a couple of years ago when Brent decided to shut down Unscrewing the Inscrutable. Because I had gotten tired of having the same old arguments time and again, frequently with the same people. No one was willing to change their mind, they just wanted to rehash the same words, endlessly.
The same was true of making a pro-2nd Amendment argument on the political blog Daily Kos. For years, I had been engaged, and it seemed to make a real difference – people would change their minds when presented with a cogent position, supported by facts and logic. But then earlier this year, the mood changed. And even trying to hold those conversations became pointless – no one would ever change their mind, no matter what.
I’ve seen the same thing happen in other venues, as well. My writing for Guns.com is generally well received, but anything which is even the slightest challenge to the conventional wisdom or political alignment of the bulk of the readers tends to get less attention and support. If I write something which is ‘preaching to the choir’, people go nuts and love it.
* * * * * * *
And it isn’t just me, either. Others have noticed the same thing, though I’m not sure anyone has phrased it in quite the same terms.
I don’t think people want to be challenged at all. They want to hear familiar, soothing tones. They want to be told that they are right, and that the “other side” is wrong. They want to be certain that only they are being reasonable and open minded.
Now, this is usually the case to a greater or lesser extent. People always want to have their prejudices and biases affirmed. That is a human trait – one we all share, whether or not we like it or are willing to admit it.
But it has become even more strident of late. Politics in this country has been polarized for a while, and the rhetoric from all sides has been dire building to extreme. I get the sense that a kind of madness is developing, a mindless tribalism that shunts off all contrary data in favor of those things which serve the tribal identity.
Things change. I think the time to rend is coming.
Certainly, the season of persuasion is ending.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, George Orwell, Government, movies, Predictions, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, tech, The Prisoner
I’m beginning to think that Orwell was an optimist:
Oxford taxi conversations to be recorded, council rules
By April 2015 it will be mandatory for all of the city’s 600 plus cabs to have cameras fitted to record passengers.
The council said the cameras would run continuously, but only view footage relating to police matters would be reviewed.
Big Brother Watch said it was “a total disregard for civil liberties”.
When I first saw this on BoingBoing, I thought “oh, another DailyMail exaggeration piece, blowing something relatively innocuous all out of proportion.” Then I saw it was from the BBC. Reading the full article makes it quite clear that this is not exaggerated in the slightest.
>sigh<
How long before you think someplace in the US follows suit? I give it five years.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 