Filed under: Amazon, Health, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, humor, hyperdactylism, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, Latin, literature, mutant, polydactylism, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well
Weird little trivia bit: I was born with six toes on my left foot.
No, really. Six toes. Which is a fairly uncommon condition known variously as polydactylism or hyperdactylism. Personally, I prefer to think of it as being sexy — from the Latin.
What’s even more unusual about this, is that in my case it wasn’t just a little fleshy lump of a toe. Nope. It was complete with bones and joints — including a complete extra metatarsal structure. Which I still have, though they removed the toe itself when I was a few weeks old. This factoid has been known to get some podiatrists entirely too excited.
So, yeah, I’m some kinda mutant. Just a weird little bit of trivia to share on this Day Six of our Countdown.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Discover, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, Health, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, art, blepharitis, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, fMRI, health, Jane Austin, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, Natalie Phillips, NPR, predictions, promotion, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
All my adult life I’ve suffered from chronic blepharitis — usually mild, with occasional annoying flare-ups.
* * * * * * *
“A lot of would-be professional writers dream of someday getting a book contract that includes an advance: enough money, paid up front, to let them quit their day job and write full time. Of course those advances do come with an expectation that an author will actually write the book. The Penguin Publishing Group recently filed suit against a dozen authors who failed to produce manuscripts after getting advances.”
That’s the intro to an NPR story which ran this morning. It’s worth listening to if you haven’t heard it, for the statements of clueless entitlement from some of the authors involved if nothing else.
I heard about this story when it first made the rounds a couple of weeks ago. I considered writing about it then, but I had just launched my Kickstarter, and I didn’t want to come across as having sour grapes or whining about the large advances celebrity authors can command from the conventional publishing houses.
But seriously, this stuff is nuts. Who in their right mind would think that you could sign a contract for $325,000 with a $81,250 advance, and then not provide a manuscript for six years? I mean, I know that publishing is ‘broken’ , but that’s ridiculous — from both sides of the equation.
* * * * * * *
And speaking of Jane Austin (see link just above), another interesting story this morning on NPR is worth consideration:
A Lively Mind: Your Brain On Jane Austen
At a recent academic conference, Michigan State University professor Natalie Phillips stole a glance around the room. A speaker was talking but the audience was fidgety. Some people were conferring among themselves, or reading notes. One person had dozed off.
Phillips, who studies 18th- and 19th-century literature, says the distracted audience made something pop in her head. Distractability is a theme that runs through many novels of Jane Austen, whom Phillips admires. It occurred to Phillips that there was a paradox in her own life when it came to distractability.
“I love reading, and I am someone who can actually become so absorbed in a novel that I really think the house could possibly burn down around me and I wouldn’t notice,” she said. “And I’m simultaneously someone who loses their keys at least three times a day, and I often can’t remember where in the world I parked my car.”
Phillips decided to investigate this, setting up an experiment where she had people read passages from Austin while in a functional MRI scanner. She set it up so that the readers were supposed to either just be ‘browsing’ the text, or to be fully devoting their attention to it.
What did she find?
Well, first, this was just a limited study, and the results are preliminary. And there are problems with trying to use fMRI to pin-point what portions of the brain are involved in cognition.
But what is interesting is that when the readers were fully engaged — devoting their entire attention to the passages in deep reading — their entire brain seemed to be activated.
I think anyone who has ever completely lost themselves in a book will find this hardly surprising. And, as an author who attempts to completely paint a realistic ‘world’ for people to enjoy in my novels, it’s heartening to know that science seems to back up personal experience.
* * * * * * *
All my adult life I’ve suffered from chronic blepharitis — usually mild, with occasional annoying flare-ups.
This next bit is a little gross. My apologies.
Typically, when I have a flare-up of my blepharitis, a few days of warm compresses and some antibiotic ointment take care of it. But this latest round has proven to be a bit more of a hassle.
A couple of weeks ago I felt like I got a bit of something stuck in the orbit of my left eye. Probably a small eyelash or flake of skin — this has happened before. It’ll work its way out eventually. And I think this morning it did, because there was a small gloopy bit of pus which I fished out from under my lower lid.
Like I said, a bit gross. Sorry.
But it’s a natural reaction of the body, and I suspect that now the blepharitis will clear up with the usual treatment.
And as I was taking care of this this morning, I was thinking about the next book. I’m doing this a lot, lately. As it notes on the brief blurb about St. Cybi’s Well, the main character is dealing with an eye disease which threatens his career when the book starts. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but I have very specific reasons for why this is, and what it means for the overall story line (including what plays out in Communion of Dreams). There is a long tradition in literature and mythology about the symbolism of a character who has eye problems, and a lot of that comes into play.
But I couldn’t help but note my own connection in this way, and how sometimes it might be a bit overdoing-it to so completely manifest what is happening in my own mind’s eye.
Jim Downey
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Today is October 8th.
October used to be the 8th month. That it is now the 10th month played havoc with my mind when I was a kid, since I knew damned good and well that “octo” meant “eight”. It wasn’t logical. It didn’t make sense. This may well have been my first conscious awareness that reality was kinda screwed-up. Seriously.
It is also, as it happens, day 8 in our little count-down. No, I didn’t plan it that way.
At least not consciously.
So, that brings us to this:
Have a good Monday.
Jim Downey
*Just in case. And yeah, Jung’s ideas run all through my fiction. Obviously.
Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Kindle, Politics, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, feedback, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, reviews, St. Cybi's Well, writing
Doing my routine checking of stats this morning, I saw that there was a change to the count on reviews of Communion of Dreams on Amazon. It was down by one.
It didn’t take but a moment to see which one was missing — the top ranked review.
I sighed when I saw this. I know the person who wrote that review, who is a good guy and a top-notch writer. Recently we’d had a minor dust-up over political philosophy on Facebook. At least initially I thought it was minor. That he had ‘unfriended’ me over it gave me a bit of pause, but some people get wound up before an election. So I didn’t worry about it too much, figuring that perhaps we’d sort out things later and just agree to disagree on the matter in question. I guess not.
I must admit to finding this disappointing. Oh, it doesn’t make a rat’s ass worth of difference for the novel — there’s still plenty of solid reviews and opinions on the book for people to use. I just didn’t expect this person to take such a step. Whether or not he agrees with me on all political matters should be immaterial to what he thought of the book.
A shame, really.
Jim Downey
T-minus nine days and counting.
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We’re in the final countdown of the Kickstarter. Like those old space launches I grew up with, counting down from “T-minus 10” and never being quite sure what would happen. I’m old enough to remember more than one launchpad failure.
Ten days.
And we’re only at 50% on pledges to the goal.
* * * * * * *
I’ve had several “close calls” in my life, moments when with the slightest difference in luck I probably would have died. This is probably the most dramatic. It’s certainly the most graphic. But there have been others which were just as close. A bullet which passed some two inches away from my right temple. A fall on a dark night into an unsecured excavation where I missed being impaled on rebar by about a foot. Other occasions, some more my fault than others.
I sometimes joke with my friends that the only explanation is that I’m a cat, and still have a couple of lives to go.
* * * * * * *
Saw an item in today’s paper:
Bank takes ownership of Taylor House
It was one of the first properties designated a local historic landmark. It set an example for high-quality historic restoration. It was a home. It was a bed-and-breakfast.
Now, it’s owned by the bank.
U.S. Bank now owns the house Robert and Deborah Tucker spent years and more than $1 million renovating. The bank foreclosed on the three-story home that contained The Taylor House Inn bed-and-breakfast at 716 W. Broadway on Sept. 17.
I know these folks. Not well, but the jewelry business they had prior to taking on this B&B was just down the street from my art gallery. Small business owners in Columbia’s downtown got to know one another, sharing similar interests and concerns.
I was surprised to hear that the B&B had gone into foreclosure, though I knew that they had declared bankruptcy late last year.
This is a fact of life, particularly with a small business. You can pour your heart & soul into something, only to see it fail. Same thing happened with my art gallery.
But only those who are willing to risk failure have any chance for success.
* * * * * * *
“Dark have been my dreams of late,” he said, “but I feel as one new-awakened. I would now that you had come before, Gandalf. For I fear that already you have come too late, only to see the last days of my house. Not long now shall stand the high hall which Brego son of Eorl built. Fire shall devour the high seat. What is to be done?”
That’s from JRR Tolkien’s The Two Towers, and is the character of King Théoden speaking after coming out of being beguiled by Gríma (Wormtongue). Here’s the adaptation of the scene in the 2002 movie of the same name, with the actual line spoken at about 3:15:
* * * * * * *
Ten days.
And we’re only at 50% on pledges to the goal. Unless we hit the goal, no one is out anything, and the Kickstarter “fails.”
There’s nothing wrong with failure. Like I said, only those who are willing to risk failure have any chance for success. You have to push yourself, challenge yourself. No writer or artist who is worth a damn always plays it safe. Same for any entrepreneur.
Failure hurts. It should. But it isn’t lethal, at least not in the areas I’m talking about. I’ve had close calls. That’s different. In this case, failure means only a delay in being able to complete and publish the next book on my own.
Ten days. We’ll see what happens. Help out if you can.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Music, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, music, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
On the first day of Kickstarter
my true fan sent to me:
A dollar for Saint Cybi.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to run through all 12 stanzas.
But we haven’t had much action this week on the Kickstarter, and the countdown has relentlessly continued with just 12 days remaining. Meaning that we’re 47% funded, but with 60% of the time over. That’s not a good trend.
I’d like this to be successful. It would allow me to concentrate on getting the book done and out sooner rather than later. So far 35 kind and generous souls have pledged, and I very much appreciate their support. But that’s a very small number.
If you’ve enjoyed my writing here or elsewhere, particularly if you’ve enjoyed Communion of Dreams, please take a moment and go check out the Kickstarter. There are some really great ‘rewards’ there — I’m not asking for a donation, just some advance sales of St. Cybi’s Well. A fair exchange, from $5 on up. And should St. Cybi’s Well prove to be popular, who knows, the limited edition hand-bound copies I’m offering may become valuable collector’s items.
And if you would share news of this Kickstarter effort with others, particularly those who have read Communion of Dreams, I would be very thankful.
Cheers!
Jim Downey
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This is what it said on the ‘$1 Reward’ for my Kickstarter:
Amnesty: Did you download “Communion of Dreams” for free? Assuage your guilty conscience and/or show your appreciation for a great book by pledging just one dollar. And if you haven’t gotten a download of “Communion of Dreams” yet, do so!
That, friends, is why I usually leave the comedy writing to the other Jim Downey, the one who has a more mainstream sense of humor. I was trying to have a little fun with the standard $1 Reward you find on most Kickstarters, where it says some nice but fairly generic thing about “thanking you for your support.” I should know better. The joke fell flat.
Since you can’t change an offered Reward once someone has claimed it (which is only fair), I’ve just closed that Reward and added a more typical one at the same contribution level:
A digital thank-you for your support, as well as notification when “St. Cybi’s Well” is available to the public!
So, lesson learned. Again. You’d think I’d know by now to leave the humor to the other guy.
Thanks to those who *did* make a contribution to the Kickstarter yesterday! That amounted to $365 towards the goal — very much appreciated! And there were another 167 downloads of Communion of Dreams through the day, as well!
Onward & upward.
Jim Downey*
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Wait, what? How can something free be priced for $1.00 ?
Easy: today Communion of Dreams, which normally sells for $4.95, is completely free for anyone to download. Please – go get it, if you haven’t already. In fact, if you have already gotten it, delete that one and go get it again anyway. Why? Well, it’ll help my rankings if you do.
But I’m doing this today to help promote the Kickstarter for my next book: St. Cybi’s Well.
Currently the Kickstarter is just a bit under halfway over. It is also just a bit under halfway to the funding goal. So far, so good.
The thing is, though, that only 28 people have backed the project so far. Now, I love the level of support from those backers, and greatly appreciate the contributions. But so far this year over 20,000 people have downloaded Communion of Dreams for free. And the previous version of the novel had been downloaded over 35,000 times.
If each and every person who got the book for free just this year would kick in $0.50 — fifty cents — no, not him — we’d surpass the Kickstarter goal and I could concentrate on getting St. Cybi’s Well finished and published.
But that is unlikely to happen. So I’m asking for those who see this to do two small things:
- Go over, kick in a buck on my Kickstarter. Just $1.
- Tell others about it. Word-of-mouth is excellent promotion — it’s how some 60,000 people have heard of Communion of Dreams. Now, let’s convert some of that into support for my Kickstarter.
Self-publishing is incredibly powerful. But it is also damned tough. There’s no ‘advance’ from a publishing house to allow me to concentrate on writing the next book. There’s no budget for advertising and promotion. There’s no design department handling the cover and book layout. There aren’t editors to go through the text. There aren’t copy editors to pore through the proofs. All of that has to be handled by me, one way or another.
Communion of Dreams has gotten praise from people around the world. And not just for the story. Also for the professional quality of the text. That takes a lot of hard work and attention to detail.
I don’t mind that. I take pride in the finished product. But I could use your help. If you got Communion of Dreams for free and enjoyed it, please help me out today. It’ll help get St. Cybi’s Well out that much sooner.
Thanks!
Jim Downey
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“Could you take care of this for me?” I said. “I find myself surprisingly … attached.”
* * * * * * *
Just a couple pages into Communion of Dreams, there’s this passage:
He picked up a meal at the airport and ate in the car on the way over to his office, relaxing and watching the city roll by around him.
Early in the second chapter there’s this one:
The car he was in threaded through the old suburban streets, past still vacant houses and the occasional empty lot. Following the great death of the fire-flu, many homes had simply been abandoned.
The opening paragraph of Chapter 3:
‘What was it?’ he wondered as the car wound through the streets, stopping before the USSA building. He got out, standing there in the plaza, looking up at the golden plasteel supports and the draping glass fabric.
As a writer, particularly of science fiction, you have to know what to explain and what to just assume. By this I mean you have to explain certain things to the reader, enough to give them a grasp on important story elements, but that you can assume they will fill in the background with other less important elements on their own.
Nowhere in Communion of Dreams do I state that cars are largely self-driving. There’s really no need to. Most readers are used enough to the tropes of science fiction that they can read the above passages, and fill in that detail on their own. It’s a little trick which helps anchor the reality of the book in the mind of the reader quickly.
* * * * * * *
And, honestly, the notion of a self-driving car is only barely science fiction at this point. I mean, one of the primary issues right now is having our legal system play catch-up with the technological changes in this field. From a discussion on the Diane Rehm Show yesterday:
GJELTEN: So the — I guess what — driverless cars have been in development for many years. But the big news this week is this law that passed in California allowing some driving of self-driving cars. Tell us what’s in this law exactly.
LEVANDOWSKI: Well, this law is called SB 1298, and it sets forth the framework for the DMV to set up the guidelines that vehicles will need to adhere to in order to, in the future, be able to drive themselves with or without people inside them. It outlines the type of technical standards, the types of insurance requirements. Everything that you would expect a person to go through when they get their driver’s license, you would expect a vehicle that doesn’t have a driver in it to be able to have.
* * * * * * *
“I do feel that I’m a very lucky, lucky person, in all sorts of ways. And one of the ways in which I’m fortunate is Harry Potter set me free to write whatever I want to write. I don’t — you know, we’re not living hand-to-mouth — I, clearly I can afford to pay all of my bills and now my writing life is a great experience. I can really do whatever I want to do. So I’m a fortunate person — I’m a fortunate writer.”
From JK Rowling’s interview on “Morning Edition” today.
* * * * * * *
“Could you take care of this for me?” I said. “I find myself surprisingly … attached.”
“Sure,” said my wife.
Attached?
Yeah, to my car.
Which is a surprise. Because I don’t usually become attached to things. Oh, I keep some things for sentimental value, because they are somehow connected to an important person or event in my life. But otherwise I tend to be very pragmatic about material things.
I got the car new 20 years ago. A Subaru wagon, which served me well. The last five or six years when it needed work I would weigh the pros and cons of getting the work done — was it worth it? Could I afford it? Could I afford not to?
See, I don’t *really* need a car. I work at home. For a while now when I needed to drive any distance, I took my wife’s car anyway, since it is a few years newer and in substantially better shape.
This past spring it developed some exhaust problems. The work it needed was more than the car was worth. I decided the time had come to just sell it and be done. Consolidating down to one car for the household would be a minor annoyance, but made the most sense.
Well, I made the intellectual decision. The emotional one, I found, wasn’t quite as easy.
Why?
I owned, and drove, that car for more than half the time I’ve had a driver’s license. There was simple ‘time in harness’ associated with it.
But there was more. Specifically, status.
I don’t worry a lot about status. As in, conventional measures of “success” in our society. When you don’t make a lot of money, you learn to not put so much store in such things, or it’ll drive you completely nuts. And as I noted earlier this year, I don’t make a lot of money.
But confronting the hard truth that I can not afford to buy a new car was a bit more than I really wanted to face. And selling my car meant exactly that. Because in our society, if you sell your car, you’re supposed to get another one. Preferably a new one. At the very least, a newer one. To not do so means you’re not successful.
And you should never, ever, under no circumstances, admit that you’re not successful.
So, yeah, the emotional truth was harder to come to terms with. Which would mean that I would be piss-poor at selling my car — at advertising it, at negotiating a sale, all that stuff.
But I’ve come to realize that there are other approaches to defining success, other strategies which can change how you accomplish things. My Kickstarter project is one such, stepping in to crowd-fund what a conventional publishing contract would previously do.
So I asked my wife to take care of it. She didn’t have the same emotional baggage to contend with. And she took care of it in her usual competent & efficient manner: last night the car drove away from our driveway for the last time.
Who knows? Maybe next year, after St. Cybi’s Well is done and available, it’ll be enough of a hit that I’ll be able to afford a new car. One which can partially drive itself. Stranger things have happened. Just ask JK Rowling.
Jim Downey
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Didn’t I just say that Randall Monroe is brilliant? Of course I did. That was writing about his artwork. And this morning he proved (once again) that his science is solid, as well:
Er, let me explain…
Monroe does the popular webcomic xkcd. If you don’t read it regularly, you should. Anyway, this summer he added in another feature called “What If?” which he explains with this subtitle: “Answering your hypothetical questions with physics, every Tuesday.”
And for whatever reason, today’s entry is in response to this question: “If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?”
Gee … where have I heard that question before? Hmm … perhaps in Chapter 9 of Communion of Dreams?
“You know, I could design a program that would enhance the image. Everyone who looked up at that would see our Moon,instead. Wouldn’t take much. I could even paint it red.”
“Paint it red? You mean the Moon?
“Yeah, old joke. There was this artist back at the turn of the century who had this project called ‘Paint the Moon’. He wanted to get everyone in the Western Hemisphere to focus these popular little hand-held laser pointers on the Moon all at once, with the idea that enough of the laser light would cause a red spot to appear. Had it all figured: what phase of the Moon was best to do it, how people could aim their lasers, the whole bit.”
“Crazy,” said Jon. Then, after a pause, “It didn’t work, did it?”
“Nah. But that wasn’t the point. He always described the project as a ‘shared lyrical fantasy’, designed to bring people together for a single moment, all doing the same thing. The first attempt got quite a lot of attention world-wide from the media. Millions heard about it, and maybe tens of thousands participated. It is still considered a seminal art event – we studied it in school.”
“But . . . what’s the point?”
“Oh, I just always liked that grandiose sense of whimsy. There were a number of crazy things like that back then, before everything went to hell.”
Unsurprisingly, Monroe concludes that the laser pointers wouldn’t accomplish the task. But then he uses that as a jumping-off point to explore what it *would* take to accomplish the task. And then some. It’s a fun piece, and likely the image of his I posted above has just become another instant classic, not unlike this one (which is the not-xkcd-approved Official T-shirt of BBTI).
Jim Downey
PS: Thanks to the people who sent me a link to the xkcd What If? entry this morning — very much appreciated. Now, if anyone would like to pop by the xkcd forums and mention this connection, I’d greatly appreciate it. Cheers!
Communion Of Dreams 