Asleep at the Wheel

 

Normally, I write a spooky Halloween story. This year, however, I wasn’t feeling the seasonal spooky vibe.

Halloween came and went like any other day. We had only about 30 tricker-treaters. In the past, we have had over 100+ and the oddity, the weather was perfect, unlike years past.

Another sleepy moment, I started a book, (2 chapters into it) got side tracked with real world stuff and totally forgot to get back to the book. (Getting old is my current spooky)

I do have a great memory, no onset of Alzheimer’s, I simply have a man’s brain. When I have over three things to remember, my brain shuts down the extra unimportant stuff until I do one of the three important things. It’s a first come, first served system. One in, one out.

Anything beyond three gets put in a holding queue. I’ve always been that way. I prioritize. If something really important comes up, there is a strong chance one of the three things will get bumped out.

Another however – in the case when my wife went to Greece for 2 months and I was home alone; my brain automatically made adjustments. Odd, yes. But True.

This is me, but I like to think it's jimmy too.

For those of you who have read some of my blog posts, I have my pal jimmy in my brain to help me. (Don’t judge me, I’m just weird.)

Jimmy is my Guardian Angel, my friend, my advisor, and my cousin who died shortly after he was born. We share the same name – James Lee. I am living the life he never had a chance to experience. (And he habitually gets upset with me for not doing a better job.)

Back to sleeping at the wheel.

For some reason, when I am left alone for a long period of time, I can focus on more than three things – I don’t why, I just can. I call it, ‘Survival Mode’.

It’s amazing how the brain functions when life presses us into a situation that forces the brain to re-calibrate the way we normally think on a daily basis.

Just wanted I’d share that.

Have a nice day and week.

"Thank you for giving me some of the credit, Mr. Kafka."

"No problem, jimmy. We go up and down as a team."

"Oh, I see. I'm your scape-goat."

"No, no. I said, up or down, jimmy."

"Whatever. I'm hungry, Mr. Kafka."

"Leftover meatloaf?"

"Sound good to me."

 -jk-

Self-Published vs. Traditional

 

My view from the cheap seats:

 

When I read an indie book, long ago, for the first time, I didn’t know it was self-published until about half way through it. It was a good story, but badly edited.

At the time, I didn’t know a person could self-publish their own book. Yes, it stirred several thoughts in my head, mainly one, I could do that! Yeah, I could climb a mountain too, but why? Because it’s there.

The ‘because it’s there’, has grown the self-publishing world into a major industry. The general notion people have when they find out they can self-publish is, ‘I can write a book’. That’s poppycock! Writing a book for the first time is not that easy – and add the entire process of editing, marketing, etc. which makes it even tougher.

Fast Forward to the indie world of today.

I look better in person.

Once again – my view from the cheap seats:

The millions of indie books out there is out of control and they are a dime-a-dozen. The stories, for those I have read, are average at best. I admit have a read a few good ones, but overall, blah, blah, blah. However, the writing style of the books I have read – A+. Editing books has improved greatly, because the industry demanded it. The covers improved, because the competition demanded it.

I won’t talk about reviews – I’ll save that for another post.

Back to the stories I’ve read – I blame the blah stories on world opinion. An internet junkie who (writes and self-publishes) books knows what sells and cranks out what’s popular. Good idea? Yes/ maybe. But you have to hustle the readers and that’s a full-time job. But the stories are crap. Writing a popular genre book doesn’t magically make it a good story. I remember when ‘Zombies’ were the bomb! Zombie books flowed like the Nile River. I credit part of that to the popular Undead TV series. And before Zombies were the always popular Vampires.

It’s amazing how fast books latch on to a trend and flood the market; and now add AI into the mix for speed to the market place and it all becomes a shit storm of garbage, which means the actually really good books rarely, if ever, get noticed.

Indie Recap time:

Old days – stories good – editing bad

Today – stories blah – editing and writing really good and editing good.

For the record, I haven’t read every indie book out there, and I generally stick to fantasy, action, adventure.

The three book trilogy (I know that’s redundant) I wrote are no longer available. They were/ are about what most would call ‘coming of age’. I prefer to label them as ‘about a guy and his life in a fantasy setting with action and adventure’. I didn’t sell very many copies, mainly because I just didn’t care about sales is what I tell myself – the real reason is the genre or (bad writing bad story).

They way I write is why agents rejected my queries. I write like I’m talking to you right now. I love adjectives and adverbs, I love punctuation in all forms, and I use all forms however I want. I would marry a semi-colon if I could. Also, it’s the reason why I sub-titled my books ‘Broke Fiction’.

Okay, that’s my current opinion on the matter and it's subject to change after I read a few more books.

I have a very large TBR pile and little time left to read them all.

Have a great time doing what you like doing whatever that may be.

And always, ‘Write like you mean it’.

 

-jk-

How the World Works

 

It’s Not Who Said It First – It’s Who Said It the Loudest.

 

How many times have you heard someone say something that you have said hundreds of times, but because a well-known person suddenly said it, it’s now a thing. And consequently, you’re a little pissed off about it.

I have often said, “You live long enough, you see enough.” Which is a very true statement now that I have lived long enough.

The opportunity to be the first, is a one chance per customer circumstance. No one remembers second place. Therefore, you could write down your thoughts or ideas and date it, get it notarized to prove you were first. But that doesn’t solve the problem – you have to be well-known or famous.

Case in point – On the day it went live, I said, “The internet will ruin the world.” I knew very little about it, but the little I did know told me nothing good will come of it. And here I am using it. (Yes, I am a hypocrite and I do see the irony.)

If fire was invented today, someone would find a way to ruin it.

Another case that is as old as the first tree – every new thing starts out hot and then someone throws a bucket of cold water on it. Why? Because when something is too good to be true, the all-seeing eye (Government – King – Dictator) realizes they might lose control/ power and so they quickly hose it down and moderate the output. This formula is a repeat offender. Think about everything that you truly loved doing or playing with, then think a little more, and then you’ll get that dumb look on your face, you know the one – and finally you’ll say, “Dammit!”

Books and games are great examples – When indie authors and game producers finally got a chance to create their own unshackled content – WOW! The stuff I remember seeing, reading, playing, was amazing.

And yes, I told my oldest son at the time, enjoy it while you can, it won’t last long. I was right. The bucket of cold water was fast and furious.

The line – “We need to protect the children!”  or any variation of that was and is the battle cry.

There is only one thing that survived. I won’t mention it here, but most adults know what it is.

The bright spot in this circle of madness is that – “What goes around, comes around.” A very true statement. However, the coming around part normally takes a long time to resurface.

Currently, writers/ authors have experienced this phenomenon. Write what you want. Make it gritty, hard, daring, bloody, and, . . . a handful buy and read. Next step – tone it down, followed by, that’s boring, and then the good stuff returns – and then it gets squashed again, because, “We need to protect the children.”

I have lived long enough to see it in action. Don’t even get me started about board games and D&D – that’s a 200k essay on how pissed off I got about the tone it down.

 

Enough gibberish – have a nice day, week, year, life.

 

-jk-