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
Happy 100!
This is my 100th post here, and there are a couple of other mildly interesting milestones to report: sometime in the next few days the 3,000th download of Communion of Dreams will happen, keeping the average up to about 600 downloads a month. We’ll also likely cross 2,000 visits to this blog in the same time-frame (plus those folks who receive feeds).
Not huge numbers, but better than I might have hoped for in each case – thanks to those who visit here, thanks particularly to those who help to spread the word about the novel to friends. My goal is still very much to land a conventional book publishing deal, but I am encouraged that people are still at least downloading the book.
I’d like to invite any and all to just say hello in comments, and of course I’m always happy to have feedback on the book or blog.
Best,
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Apollo program, Buzz Aldrin, Heinlein, Heinlein Centennial, movies, N. Am. Welsh Choir, NASA, Promotion, Publishing, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Writing stuff
I don’t get out much – being a full time caregiver for someone with Alzheimer’s is very demanding, and my wife and I are both careful not to leave all the responsibilities in the other’s lap for any real length of time (like over a weekend). If this was just a short-time thing, it wouldn’t be much of an issue. But we’ve been caregivers in this capacity for four years now, and we could easily have several more years ahead of us. You have to think long-term. This is the reason why I ignore the advice given to all unpublished authors to attend conventions – getting away is almost impossible for me at this time.
But as it happens, she has a concert scheduled with the North American Welsh Choir the weekend of July 7th in Kansas City, and made arrangements some months back to have her sister in from California to take care of my mother-in-law, in order that I could also attend the concert if I wanted. Otherwise, she would be here to help make sure that I didn’t carry an undue burden for the several days my wife would be away.
Then I heard about the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial celebration occuring at the same time – also in Kansas City!
Heinlein hasn’t really been a direct influence on my writing; I haven’t tried to emulate any of his style, or pay homage to his ideas. But few can deny that he was a huge influence in Science Fiction last century. And I certainly read a lot of his stuff when I was young – it helped shape and inform my world view, to some extent. Even to this day, I consider him to have been visionary on a number of points, and going back and rereading some of his classics is a good exercise for any writer – his stuff holds up surprisingly well, even 40 – 50 years after it was published.
Besides, this will be about more than just Heinlein’s legacy. A number of luminaries from the history of space exploration will be there, not to mention lots of science fiction writers and people involved in the publishing industry (check out the list of attendees!). It will be interesting, and a phenomenal opportunity to do some serious networking.
So, I’m going. Given that the big Gala Dinner is being held at the same time as my wife’s concert, I’ll be missing the concert altogether. I’m lucky to have such an understanding spouse.
See you there?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, General Musings, movies, NYT, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, Press, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
Brent Staples has a good opinion piece in today’s New York Times, titled: Philip K. Dick: A Sage of the Future Whose Time Has Finally Come. Staples notes that Dick is now getting the kind of recognition he deserves (see also this post on the subject previously), but I was particularly struck with the ending:
The science fiction writer’s job is to survey the future and report back to the rest of us. Dick took this role seriously. He spent his life writing in ardent defense of the human and warning against the perils that would flow from an uncritical embrace of technology. As his work becomes more popular, readers who know him only from the movies will find it even darker and more disturbing — and quite relevant to the technologically obsessed present.
I couldn’t agree more.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
JK, a good friend of mine, just had a chance to read the novel through for the first time, and sent me a response. He’s clearly going be biased by his friendship, but I still thought that it might be interesting to see the email exchange we had. Caution: [Major Spoilers Ahead.] JK’s comments are in italics, my replies after.
I really liked the book. For what it’s worth, I expected the return of the fire flu and guessed that Mallory was the carrier and that there was likely to be something screwy about the cyberwear he made, guessed that Gates had some strong connection to the clones, figured that Darnell had told earth about the artifact.
I’m not sure whether this was due to reading it so slowly that I had ample time to consider and reconsider or if it a result of my analyzing everything these days. As I restrict my access to the general noise in the human world I find myself looking deeper into those bits I do let in. It’s been getting to the point that when I take Tasha for walks that I have to remind myself about that little physics story – and that the sky is simply blue and has birds in it 🙂
Heheheheehehehe. I’m not in the slightest bothered that you were able to figure out those things – in fact, I’m glad to hear it. I was very careful to build the necessary clues into the narrative so that anyone could go back and find them. That carries a risk that a few people who are reading carefully and are smart enough will pick up on some or all of the ‘mysteries’. That you did so just means that I did a good job in having sufficient information there to draw the legitimate conclusions later – that I was ‘playing fair’ with my reader.
Anyway, I loved how you developed the action around my expectations. And the biggest surprise to me was the “use” of the artifact. I had really been convinced from early on it was going to be an alien art show direct to the solar system and the gel was part of the power system required for the “beaming” into our heads.
An interesting idea. I hope that the final revelation was nonetheless satisfactory, and fit the available data.
As I mentioned earlier, I found it especially entertaining to have the clear references to current and recent past happenings.
Good, good.
The only technical part I keep coming back to is the experts and their trouble with non-inertial frames. I haven’t gone back through all of it so the following is “lose”. The experts can’t travel well on the space transports but they can seemingly do ok with the quick change of the AG systems. I know for several of the technologies you mentioned oddities in the theories surrounding them. I don’t recall details about the AG that would explain the differences, but then I read Chapter one more than 6 weeks ago and I am nearing 50 🙂
Nah, it is a fair criticism. There are two ‘weak’ spots in the tech of the book – that is one of them, and the other is the biology which lead to the creation of Ling with her latent abilities (which, interestingly enough, I was going to blog about this morning). My only defense is that it *is* science fiction, and while I make a good-faith effort to keep everything working and compliant with science as we understand it today, there is some slop allowed for the effects of the artifact and discoveries we’ve not made yet.
The quickening of the pace of the story in the final chapters was exhilarating! To quote a hackneyed phrase – I couldn’t put it down. Really. I read straight through from C 15 to the end (letting the weeds have a reprieve 🙂 )
Excellent. Paul [another friend] and I were talking about this last night, and he said that he just couldn’t understand people who wouldn’t feel compelled by the book this way. I know I have had a couple of people tell me that was the case. Then again, I have had several tell me that they dived in and didn’t put it down until they were finished 12 or 13 hours later. I don’t expect *everyone* to love it, or even like it – people have different tastes, and that’s OK.
Thanks!!
My pleasure. With your permission, I’d like to post this entire exchange on the blog, since it might just help some agent or publisher to see that there is a readership out there for the thing. I’ll not ID you other than by initials, unless you want to claim ID.
Well, about time to get MMIL up, get the morning really going.
So, there it is. Draw your own conclusions, or make your own comments.
Jim Downey
…why anyone would even bother wanting to have a book printed any more these days.
Tom Wayne has amassed thousands of books in a warehouse during the 10 years he has run his used book store, Prospero’s Books.
His collection ranges from best sellers, such as Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October” and Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities,” to obscure titles, like a bound report from the Fourth Pan-American Conference held in Buenos Aires in 1910. But when he wanted to thin out the collection, he found he couldn’t even give away books to libraries or thrift shops; they said they were full.
So on Sunday, Wayne began burning his books in protest of what he sees as society’s diminishing support for the printed word.
“This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.
From this story. And it’s depressing enough that I don’t think I have anything else to add, except to note that it has now been three full months since I sent off my batch of queries, and have yet to hear back from 5 of the 7 agents I contacted. All of whom stated that they would respond within a month…
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 