Rolled Gold

What will a dog do for a pretzel? My dog is a rescue mutt. Once we decided to get a dog, we searched for a long time, trying to locate a Golden Retriever of the more mellow variety that would get along with our children. We found very few. Apparently Goldens are in big demand. But we didn’t need a pure bred or anything, just a dog, and so we ended up looking at a wide variety.

The dog we ended up with is a mixture of breeds I’ve never been able to identify. She has the body of a Golden Retriever, but she’s slightly more muscular and a bit larger than your average golden. I was told that the police officer who caught her in assumed she was some type of Rottie mix. At first, I found this somewhat unlikely. She doesn’t have a Rottweiler’s snout, and isn’t quite that muscular. But I can see where someone might think she’s part Rottie, as she has similar coloring (albeit with very long hair). And later, when I learned her personality, I discovered it was very similar to a Rottie’s protective nature. She’s a barker, and might be potentially dangerous to people who don’t know her, and that she considers a threat to her family. In the end, I decided that she might be some kind of Burmese / Golden / Rottie / Gorden-Setter mix. She has a small white spot on her chest, and white tips on her paws. The coat of a Burmese, but the coloring of a Rottie. At the same time she has the feathering of a Golden, and the retriever instincts of a Setter.

In any case, we’ve had her for over ten years, and while she’s getting on in age, I’m surprised at how spry she still is. She’ll still play, although she won’t fetch anymore. She must be at least twelve or thirteen years old now, because she was fully grown when we got her. I think she may have had pups. When we first got her, she looked like she was still getting over lactating, although that might be because she was so emaciated. I was tempted to name her “Nipples,” but my wife nixed that.

Recently, I decided to teach her to roll over. She’s always known how to sit and how to lay down, so I think someone must have spent some time training her. (She also doesn’t beg – or didn’t used to until the kids started feeding her at the table).

Using Rolled Gold pretzels, I told her to sit, lay down, and then roll over. She looked at me like I was crazy, so I made a circular motion with my hand and repeated the command again. To my surprise, she rolled onto her back! Praising her, I fed her the pretzel and repeated the sequence. Sure enough, she did it again. So, for the past few weeks, I’ve been reinforcing the behavior, and now she’ll do it without the pretzels (although this is obviously disappointing to her).

I can’t help but wonder if she used to know this command, or if she just happened to roll over at one point and figured out that’s what I wanted.

Playlists and Personalities

Is there an association between how you listen to music, and who you are? Could looking at your music playback habits (not the music itself) tell others something about what they can expect from you? Fortune tellers – pay attention. Surely this is just as accurate as counting the number of macadamia nuts in a jar of mixed nuts to determine the state of the world economy. Surely this is just as effective as reading about your zodiac attributes on a menu in a restaurant. And since those techniques obviously work, perhaps using attributes of musical behavior to identify other behaviors might actually have some validity. (Or not).

Now, in order to actually map the traits to the way people listen to music, a large sampling of music listeners and their habits must be taken and correlated. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate such a study, and in the absence of evidence, I am left to create my own, largely from opinion. I will now endeavor to do so, mainly because I find it fun. So a word of advice, opinions are cheap. After all, you aren’t paying anything to read this. That’s what the ads are for. And now, to the types and their definitions.

Alpha-listers

Alpha-listers are people who listen to their music straight down the list. And, because the list is typically alphabetical, these people are denoted by this label. Chronic Alpha-listers can sometimes be classified as lazy or as ignorant. Lazy because they didn’t bother creating a playlist, or ignorant because they don’t know how. Other types can become Alpha-listers from time to time, if they are bored with their playlists and do not have the opportunity to create a new one. Alpha-listers often have many friends, but only a few good friends. They are easy to get to know, and hard to get to know well.

Randomizers

Your typical Randomizer sets their music to play randomly and is happy with what they get. These people are often anal about their music library and purchase only those songs they really want. Randomizers don’t often purchase albums. Randomizers love surprises, and enjoy getting new things. They aren’t particularly creative, and despite the name, they enjoy absolute control over their music via the initial selection. Randomizers are excellent planners. Randomizers often have many friends, and are happy to meet new people. They are outgoing and confident.

Snipers

Snipers look for specific songs. They’re prone to getting a song in their head, and then wanting to hear it. They’re also prone to getting in car accidents while surfing through their music. Snipers are often creative types that live in their heads. Some of them have excellent memories, and can identify a song in just a few bars. Repeat Snipers are prone to obsession. See Repeaters in the sub-categories section for more information. Snipers prefer meat. Very few of them are vegetarian. And when they are, they’re lethal cauliflower hunters. Beware cauliflowers.

Secret Agents

Secret Agents use a queue to create a temporary playlist. This playlist vanishes right after it’s used, just like IMF briefings. You listen once, and it’s gone, then you create the queue again. Like Randomizers, Secret Agents are good planners, but they are obsessed with immediate control, and better at short-term planning than long-term planning. They must have it now rather than later, and are bad at delaying satisfaction. They think quickly, and can become impatient with others. In meetings, they’re the ones shaking their legs or staring out the window.

Playlisters

Playlisters are planners of another sort. These are the people that construct their music lists ahead of time, preparing for contingencies by envisioning the future. Playlisters are often dreamers, and they consider both their own needs and the needs of others. They control their circumstances through contingencies. They’re often excellent at risk aversion, and can identify potential problems before they occur. They love pleasing and surprising other people. Most of them also like pastry and pasta.

Compact Diskers

People who still listen to music on CDs in their car represent a shrinking class of users that haven’t yet transitioned to the new all-digital paradigm. This may not be their fault. It may not be by choice. Therefore there are actually two sets (and further sub-classes). Those who could transition and haven’t, and those that would like to, but can’t. Diskers are often burners. They’re limited to a small set of music at a time, and so they are similar to Playlisters in that regard. They plan their music ahead of time. You can identify chaotic Diskers, and organized Diskers by the state of their music collection. If the disks are scattered all over the car and poorly labeled, then the individual is likely chaotic and may be good at planning, but poor at implementation. These are your creative types, and they’re fine swimming through chaos and searching for what they want. The other type – the anal planners – will have an organized library they keep intact. These people know exactly where everything is, and need to control their environment. They’re hard workers, and excellent at administrative tasks.

Artist Afficiendos

Those who listen to specific artists are music lovers who recognize the talents of specific individuals. These are people who understand patterns and use them to make their decisions. They’re often quiet people, excellent listeners, and effective advice-givers. They pay attention to their music just as they pay attention to other people. They’re cerebral thinkers, with a penchant for analysis. “Can you dig it, can you dig it?” Oh yeah. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the undisputed truth, baby. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re close to everyone, they just understand. A lot of the time, they may keep their mouths shut about “what it is.”

Sub-Categories

Seekers

Seekers will move through a song to get to the “good” parts. They know what they want, and they’re impatient to get it. Seekers are those you’ll find in line at fast food restaurants most often. Chronic seekers can be shallow people, and sometimes callous and blunt. They can be creative, but they move from project to project and seldom complete anything, even though they may be capable of brilliant work.

Repeaters

Like Seekers, Repeaters know what they want, but they’re more patient. They can practice delayed gratification to get to the “good parts” but they also enjoy the whole song. They follow the path of the music, letting it wash over them. They’re also prone to obsession, and may have large music libraries because they’ve become bored with specific songs by playing them over and over. Repeaters are most often Playlisters or Snipers.

Viewing Decline

Not that I care overly much since this blog is generally blather anyway, but my viewing stats have seen a noticeable decline since Dec 2012. This made me wonder if something has changed. Sure, it could be that I’m not posting anything anyone’s interested in. Yeah, that’s probably true. Most of the things I blog about are rather boring. But it could also be a decrease in hits due to a change in Google, or a change in WordPress. Researching a bit, I haven’t found much to indicate that others have also seen this decrease.

I used to see daily hit averages close to a hundred. Since Dec 2012, it’s decreased to a trickle. The big jumps on the stats are from Freshly Pressed. Flattening that would probably show an average closer to around 1500 / month. Maybe I’m seeing something that just isn’t there, and this is normal. I can’t say for sure.

Anyway, fading into obscurity isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. I mean, if I really wanted to get serious, I’d put up a Facebook page and start cross-linking and such. I’d probably subscribe to WP and actually pay, upgrade my theme, submit to search engines, yadda yadda. But I’m not going to do that. This is an archive, not a project intended to make money. Yes… writerdood is a non-profit venture. Also an unfocused one without any clear theme.

If I wanted to make money blogging, I’d probably just host my own site. I’ve gone that route before with other topics. But if I did, it wouldn’t be an unthemed blog. I’d look for a specific topic to write about. For me, that would probably be tech reviews, or movie reviews, or book reviews, or just a site on writing SF and Fantasy. But I have enough time-issues trying to find time to finish my current series of novels, so that’s not going to happen unless I get laid-off and can’t find work for some reason.

Is this the fall of Sargastic Irrevelancy? Nah… It’s just another day.

Back to work!

To the Emergency Room!

There’s something wrong with the boy. He’s lying lethargically on the couch, covering his head with a blanket and moaning. “What’s wrong, little dude?” But all we get is more groaning. My wife checks his forehead. I examine his pupil dilation with my pen light and everything seems normal. We check is skin for red spots and see that he’s been scratching his neck. “It’s hard to breathe,” he tells us. I really knew he wasn’t feeling good when his girlfriend calls on Skype and he doesn’t even get up to chat with her.

My wife gets nervous. She jumps on the internet to search for newly discovered diseases. She checks her medical insurance and shuffles around the kitchen in obvious distress. Me, I leave the kid alone. The Bachelor is on, and it’s the final night. Either Lindsey or Catherine is going to get a ring, and I’ve been watching this crap with my wife for weeks, just to spend some time with her. “Who do you think is going to get the ring?” I ask my son. “Unhhh,” he replies. My wife manages to coax more out of him. “My chest is tight, down here,” he mutters.

Mentally, I’m going through the possibilities. Odds are really really good that there’s absolutely nothing life-threatening going on here. I mean, he’s pretty healthy overall. Other than a bout with rotovirus when he was three, and some problems with his tonsils (which were removed) when he was seven, he hasn’t had anything but the usual adenovirus and influenza common to kids his age. What could be causing a respiratory issue? There are a million different things. I’m guessing it’s school stress combined with sinus drainage from a cold, and lack of sleep. That could have caused respiratory inflammation of some kind. I consider it a ‘wait and see’ situation.

On the television, Catherine gets the ring. I’m surprised. I had expected Sean would pick Lindsey, even though Catherine is probably the better choice. But he picked Catherine, and I’m impressed with his decision. I’m also impressed with how well Lindsey took the rejection. Both of them turn out to be pretty cool girls. Now that this crap is over, I’ll be subjected to HGTV some more, but I rather enjoy the new Hawaii Life show. I often fantasize about living in Maui.

Getting tired, I decide to go to bed. My wife stays up to watch the boy. An hour later she informs me that she’s off to the emergency room. His situation hasn’t changed, but her anxiety has increased to the point where she can no longer wait. I expected this. She has to do something. I don’t argue. I can’t. I mean, what if something is really wrong with him and I try to get her to chill out? Bad move. “Go ahead,” I tell her. “If that’s what you think you need to do.” She heads off with the boy in tow.

“To the Emergency Room, Bat-Boy!” Dunh dunh DAA!

Several hours later, she drops into bed next to me and wakes me up. “Find out anything?” I ask. Nope. They did a soft tissue x-ray and examined him. They couldn’t find anything wrong – pretty much as I expected. Prognosis? None. Prescription? Rest. The bill will, of course, have a massive deductible. The whole thing will cost over a thousand dollars. We’ll probably end up paying close to half of it out of pocket since the yearly deductible hasn’t been met yet. The effects of this decision will trickle down like trickle-down economics, tearing a nice little hole in my summer vacation plans, and limiting a few meals to macaroni and cheese, or perhaps some homemade pizza (with limited toppings, of course).

I don’t bitch about it. That’s life. Kids are like cars. Sometimes you have to maintain them, and this is the price I must pay for the privilege of procreation. Besides, there’s probably a shortage of cute intelligent creative little blond boys somewhere in the world. Not in my neighborhood, to be sure, but somewhere. So I’m promoting diversity by keeping him alive and paying for his education. That way, when I’m old and burned out, I’ll have somewhere to go at Christmas and Thanksgiving, and maybe even New Years (if I’m lucky). Of course, if I’m not invited, maybe my daughter will have me over. That’s the nice thing about having two.

Ka-CHING!

And the next day he felt fine. She made him go to school.

Going Open Office

Open Office

This concerns what’s called the “Agile Office Environment.” The term “Agile” refers to a “way” of developing a product. It’s considered a “methodology,” and it spans a lot of different techniques and concepts. Mainly, it has to do with how your company / team / department, operates, inter-operates, and functions on a daily basis. It focuses on visibility and accountability, but there is a lot more to it. Smaller release cycles, faster development, better tracking, better estimation – all of that is part of Agile. But one of the key methods is pair programming, and that means putting developers in close proximity so that they don’t code by themselves.

There are advantages and disadvantages to Agile. One of the key disadvantages is that it doesn’t suit all personality types. Another is that its focus on small iterative development can cause issues with long-term planning and long-term architecture. Agile is great for high speed shallow development, but not so good for depth and complexity where one person must spend long hours creatively designing concepts. Everything is collaborative. If you don’t collaborate well, then Agile is not going to make you happy.

Recently, my company has decided to go “open office.” We’re getting rid of the cubicles. Those of us who have offices (myself included) will be losing them. We’re going to tear down the walls, and we’ll all be working in one big office with rolling desks so that we can “embed” with other teams as needed. This is intended to increase collaboration and make the environment more suited to pair-programming, code reviews, and easy collaboration. On the other hand, there’s still the question of, “who wants to work in a big open office?” I think the answer is that probably very few of us find this completely satisfactory.

My first reaction was to find another job. But, after thinking about it, (and I’ve been at this company for 5 years mind you), I decided that before going off half-cocked and ditching for some other employment, that maybe I should try it first. So that’s my plan. Give it a shot for a few months first and see if I can adapt. Personally, I’ve become used to having my own office. I can go out into the maelstrom and engage, or I can isolate myself to focus on my writing. I’m not one of the programmers, I’m the guy who explains how things work – I write the documentation. I’m used to engaging with the developers all the time. Realistically, what will change for me is my level of focus. It’s hard to focus in noisy environments. I may need a good pair of ear mufflers. I’m going to need a decent desk and an ergonomic chair. I sit low and I need arm support and I have to be able to extend my right leg due to knee issues. I can’t be stuck at a small square desk for long periods of time. This puts me at something of a disadvantage.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve outlived my usefulness. I’m not sure if this company really needs a tech-writer of my capabilities. I’m not even sure if I want to continue being a tech-writer. Maybe it’s time for a career switch. Maybe I should code more and write less. It’s a small company, and I fill multiple roles. I’ve been QA, and still work QA on a regular basis. I enjoy writing the test cases, but I find manual testing rather boring and tedious. To that end, I’ve been working on creating automated tests for mobile devices using Robotium and integrating that with our build system. But every one of the devs knows far more than I do, and in that regard, I’m very junior, whereas I’m a senior technical writer. It’s difficult to start over at my age, and there’s a huge amount of work ahead of me. Working with Java in Eclipse constantly confuses me. GitHub runs me in circles just trying to commit and pull and push. Yet, this is a place where I can fill both roles and learn the skills I need. So even if I hate the office environment, this is the best opportunity for me to learn on the job.

Writerdood <- currently depressed about losing his office.

The Parrots

Hyacinth Macaw

In my twenties, an old friend asked me to help him house sit for his sister and her husband. His Sister was married to a successful doctor, and they owned a lake house. They were taking a vacation, and my friend invited me to come over and stay for a while. It sounded like fun. They owned several parrots, a green parrot, a blue Macaw and an African Grey. All of them needed watching.

Figuring we’d spend the night watching movies and getting drunk, I brought a fifth with me and we headed over to the lake house. They had quite a collection of movies (this was the pre-DVD era, so they were all on VHS cassette). My friend, I’ll call him Jake, introduced me to the parrots. I knew virtually nothing about parrots, so it was interesting how different they were.

Green Parrot

They were all quite intelligent in their own way. The Macaw couldn’t speak, but he was very active. The green parrot liked to immitate whistles, but I don’t recall him having any words. The African Grey parrot, on the other hand, could make all sorts of noises, and knew a slew of words, all of which were spontaneously generated, and you never knew what you were going to get out of him. When we let them out of their cages, the African Grey – I’ll call him BoBo as I can’t remember his name, landed on my shoulder. Jake told me the bird must like me for some reason. I was a  little nervous having him on my shoulder as I’d been warned he could bite, but I left him there and made a drink for myself. He watched the process, seemingly fascinated by what I was doing.

The parrots all had toys, one of which was an ice cream cone with a foam rubber ice cream ball on the top, and a button that would launch the ball from a spring inside. It flew out on a string, and you could coil it back into the ice cream cone. When I picked it up, BoBo immediately bit my shoulder hard. “What the Hell?!” Jake explained that BoBo didn’t like that toy. Even picking it up was enough to get him to bite me. That was his way of telling me no. Great, I thought, every time I do something this bird doesn’t like, he’s going to bite me. I was being trained by a bird! Needless to say, I left the ice cream cone toy alone.

African Grey

Settling in to watch some SF movie I don’t remember, the Macaw proceeded to fly around the house. We had to keep an eye on him. Jake’s sister had warned us that he has a tendency to chew on the furniture (not to mention poop around the house). The green parrot seemed happy sitting on top of his cage. BoBo stayed with us, watching the TV and bobbing his head, moving back and forth over the chairs, and making statements and sounds.

One of BoBo’s sounds was a high pitched beep. I asked Jake about it and he explained it was the smoke alarm. Every once in a while, it would beep to let you know it was working, and BoBo had picked up the sound, perfectly mimicking it. At one point, BoBo started sounding like a lawn mower, and Jake explained that the landscaping guys came by once a week, and BoBo had picked up the lawn mower from them. When the night ended, we put the birds away. Jake went up and crashed in the bedroom, while I took the couch in the living room where the bird cages were. The birds slept for the most part, but occasionally I’d hear them rustle. They didn’t make a lot of noise with the lights off. In the morning, though, they were back to full activity and we let them out again.

Overall, I’d have to say they were a lot of fun. I think Jake’s sister goes through a lot of remotes. The birds like to eat the rubber buttons off them if they aren’t watched. They also chew the wooden legs on the end tables. I thought about owning a parrot, but they make a mess, destroy your stuff, and generally live a really long time. It’s not like owning a cat, that’s for sure. They take a lot of work. As I result, I never bought one, but I’d have to say they’re pretty cool animals to play with.

Searching for Love in All the Wrong Places

Do you have love in your heart? What’s it doing there? How’d we end up with the concept that love comes out of the heart anyway?

Classical philosophers like Aristotle regarded the heart as the seat of thought, reason, and emotion. They disregarded the brain entirely. The Greek Stoics considered the heart to be the seat of the soul. But the current shape of the heart is identified as coming out of European tradition, art, and folklore. You know the heart I’m talking about, the one all the valentines candy comes in. The one on all the boxes of crap and all the cards. Does it look like a heart? Not even remotely. Maybe if you cut a heart in half and split it open, then it kind of looks like a heart. One wonders if that’s what the medieval Europeans were doing.

Some theories suggest the heart shape originates from Pompeii where it was used to indicate brothels. Others suggest it’s a female buttocks. And other’s suggest it’s a set of testicales turned upside-down. Whatever the origin, it’s obviously become our primary cultural symbol for indicating emotional love, and metaphors regarding the heart as the source of emotional love abound throughout our media, even though we know better.

Love has been analyzed by neurobiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, astrologists, cardiologists, radiologists, cosmetologists, numerologists, astrobiologists, and every other “ologist” you can think of. They’ve all got their definitions. Whatever the stuff is, there’s no argument that it’s a brain thing. You can have a damaged heart or an artificial heart, and your capacity for feeling the emotion doesn’t change. But what is it? Personally, I like the definition that “love is a drug.” Yep. Love is like oxygen. You get too much of it, you’re high. Not enough and you’re gonna die. I think the term “love-stoned” fits. When you’re in it, particularly at the beginning, you feel like you’re on something. And it’s addictive nasty stuff. Sometimes you just want to run from it screaming at the top of your lungs, but you can’t. You’re hooked. You’re a love junky. If the stuff could be put into pills, they’d be flying off the shelf. But what about a cure?

I think time is the only cure for love. Give someone enough time, and they’ll get over it. The sensation fades, the intensity drops back to tolerable levels. Eventually, it might go away entirely. And, if the process is slow enough, you might not even notice when it happens. Some may suggest this is a bad thing. I disagree. I don’t want to walk around in a love-stoned haze all the time, and people who do, well… they’ve succumbed to the addiction. I don’t mind having an occasional hit of love, but it needs to be taken in moderation. When it comes to love, you can forget about logic. Love makes you do incredibly stupid things. Be careful with it.

Pop-Culture Zombie Obessions

There seems to be an obsession with zombies fluttering through the bowels of common pop culture, and I can’t help but wonder if the vampire craze is finally over. My daughter is fully snapped-in to the Walking Dead series, and I’ll admit that despite being overly dramatic and containing characters that operate without logic or common sense, I have enjoyed watching the show with her. But is it really zombies that is the obsession, or is it more a fascination with anarchy and the fall of society?

Daydreams of surviving a zombie apocalypse aren’t that different than surviving anarchy spawned by a plague, or a nuclear holocaust. They simply have the added benefit of a slow moving threat, easily vanquished in small numbers. The existence of the zombies allows the writers to impose tension and action, but in small degrees. More threatening, of course, are the people in the story who aren’t zombies. Apparently, in a zombie apocalypse, people will band together in groups that distrust each other, shoot at each other, and are willing to engage in extremely odd anti-social behavior. I expect this would probably occur to some degree, although were a plague (for example) actually to occur, I also think there would be bastions of sanity. You see, one of the things missing much of the time is the concept that people ARE resources, and when resources are few, you don’t squander them.

One of the most illogical parts of these shows is the lack of creativity in regards to killing the zombies. Shooting them or engaging in close combat seems to be the preferred methods of zombie slaughter. But what if you want to kill all of them and get it over with? No one seems to consider baiting large numbers into an enclosure and then setting them on fire in a controlled burn. Thinking about this, there are many different ways to rid the world of zombies without any risk to the living. Why? Because zombies are stupid. Well… not all of them. It depends on your story. In any case, slaughtering all the zombies wouldn’t give the story its tension, would it? And that’s part of the appeal, I think. The constant threat, but also the ease at which zombies are dispatched in comparison to the living.

Vampires, on the other hand, were given a completely different treatment by common pop culture, becoming heroes and anti-heroes as needed. They were given the “romance” treatment. It’s possible to do that with zombies too. There is an upcoming series that includes some zombie romance. But, obviously, the idea of zombie romance is somewhat repelling. Vampires could be made to seem like real people – as if they were still living, but different. Zombies are traditionally rotting corpses, not magically preserved ones like vampires.

What will pop-culture pick next, I wonder. Will we go back to aliens after the zombie craze fades, or will it be something else? Maybe shape-shifters will have their time in the spotlight, or faeries, or a modern day X-Files type Call of Cthulhu? It’s almost impossible to tell. It only takes one movie or one book – one big win – to start the spin-offs rolling.

I think back to the 4th book in my current series – still in a draft state and one I’ve put on the back burner to rewrite the first book – and I remember the “zombie plague” that drove the plot-line. It was my 2011 Nano project, and it was an enjoyable effort that concluded well, although I did not finish the actual story. I spewed out 100k in a rolling draft, as is my practice, with little concern for where it was going or how it would end. I’m not sure if I’ll use it, and my spin on zombies was unconventional to say the least. But do I still want to go with a plague of undead? I’m not so sure now. There are plenty of other ways to engage in anarchy and compose the fall of a society. I’ll have to think about it. Given the pace of my rewrites, I have a long time to consider.

Does Self-Publishing Hurt Your Chances?

If you self-publish your novel, will it hurt your chances of finding an agent or publisher? This is a question I’ve thought about occasionally as I’ve spammed agents. Just a few years ago, the answer to this would probably be yes. Publishers were reluctant to work with authors who had already placed their material in the marketplace. But a few years changes everything.

The world is awash in indie books. It’s a tidal wave of independently produced material available for relatively cheap. And more people are buying it. Why? Because it is cheap? – sure, that’s part of it. But it’s not the only reason. It’s also because some of it is quite good. Yes, we all have our favorite name-brand authors, and we look for them, but in between waiting for the sequel to that wonderful story that ended with that nasty cliff-hanger, we’re starting to peruse the indie material. What end result has this had on the publishing industry? Well, they ain’t happy. On the other hand, they ain’t stupid either.

In the world of mainstream publications, there are many readers. I mean, how could there not be? They have lots to read. It’s part of the job. So is it surprising to think that those in the industry might occasionally look at the wall and read the writing on it? Only a fool could witness the current tsunami of indie authors and think it would have no effect on the standard model of publication. Sticking your head in the sand is only going to result in suffocation.

Indie books have become a new portal for developing writers. Ignoring them because they self-published not only prevents the potential for establishing a revenue-generating relationship, it also provides the competition with an opportunity to excel and dominate. It’s a cut-throat business in a cut-throat world, where traditional marketing and viral marketing collide. More and more authors are foregoing the traditional route altogether, creating their own websites, generating their own marketing, finding their way through the miasmic haze of the interwebs and hopping over the slush piles of their less ambitious cohorts to find their own success elsewhere. And what is it that makes an author popular? This is the question they have asked, and the question they have learned the answer to. It’s a combination of quality work AND public exposure. Both are required by necessity.

We live in a day where it is possible to produce the greatest book ever written, and have it fall through the cracks for lack of exposure. It may never be discovered. And by never, I really do mean never. Without exposure, the odds of your work becoming a cult classic are virtually nil. Traditionally, that exposure was handled strictly by the publication industry. No longer is this true. Now one can do it on their own. How?

After self-publication, you’d like to move on to your next story, wouldn’t you? I think this is true of most of us. Our main desire is to write, not to market. But this is where we fail. If we take this route, and we cease to stop seeking publishers or agents, and we leave our novel sitting on some website, found only by search, then success is NOT going to fall into our laps. There is work to be done, and successful indie authors have done it. Name brand recognition is what you want, and your brand IS your name.

Marketing Habits of the Successful Indie Writer

• They create one or more web sites for their material.
• They have named domains for their web sites.
• They submit to search engines and learn how to optimize their pages.
• They advertise, pay for impressions and click-throughs
• They co-market material on successful commercial sites.
• They publish their work in multiple places.
• They maintain a blog about their book.
• They post you-tube video interviews regarding their book.
• They cross-link their tiny spiderweb with appropriate material.
• They form relationships with other indie authors.
• They work with indie artists.
• They don’t write-off or ignore agents and publishers.

So, in short, feel free to self-publish. As you probably suspected, it’s a portal, a way in – but not without some additional work. There’s effort you have to put forth, and it’s effort that authors of the past never had to worry about. The world has changed. Can you still go the traditional route of spamming agents and publishers, and putting your work on the slush pile? Absolutely! And you should. But if you get nowhere, and you elect to go indie, don’t go halfway. Play the game. Do it right, and maybe you’ll win. Your odds are slightly better than winning the lottery, and your success may well be commensurate with your level of effort. Yes, you could get lucky and hit the nail on the head the first time, but if you’re going to take a swing, then why not use a really big hammer?

Accidental Exposure

My son came home the other day and mentioned something about the wrestling team. Not that he wanted to join the wrestling team, but that they were having tryouts. I looked at him and decided to tell him my experience with wrestling.

When I was in middle school, they MADE us participate in wrestling as part of gym class. I suppose you could call it an introduction to wrestling. Our gym teacher, Mr. Bruzas (pronounced bruises, and yeah, that was his real name) had us all suited up in shorts and tee-shirts, and sitting around the big matted floor in a circle. The circle of combat, like some kind of gladiatorial arena, except the walls were grey cinder blocks and the whole room smelled of stale sweat.

Bruzas would point to two of us and the chosen would then proceed to “assume the position” which meant one would be on the bottom, and one would be on the top. Stuck in this homoerotic position, the match would begin at the sound of a whistle, and the poor bastard on the bottom would try to escape. Bruzas would start his watch, and the guy on top would have about sixty seconds to pin the dude on the bottom. This went on until the bell rang and we were allowed to return to the unsupervised locker room for the usual bullying, name calling, and harassment from the more aggressive assholes among us that took advantage of the situation to gain acceptance from the cronies and followers among us. I remember getting into more than one fight in that locker room. As a loner, I despised bullies as much as I despised peer groups, and kept my distance from both unless I was required to prove myself.

Anyway, during one of the wrestling matches, one poor kid named Scott got himself into a bind. The bigger kid he was wrestling got him twisted around, and locked his arms back. Scott’s legs spread wide. His jock fell away. And his entire package fell out, completely exposing his poorly endowed genitals to all present. I turned my head away and stared at the kid sitting next to me. “I won’t say anything if you don’t,” I told him, feeling sorry for Scott. “About what?” he stated, still staring at the combat. I shrugged, glad that hadn’t been me. But it could happen to anyone forced into this situation – accidental exposure.

That’s not why I chose to avoid wrestling, though. Being strictly heterosexual, the idea of rolling around on a mat with a sweaty dude just never appealed to me. Actually, I found it rather repulsive. Martial arts was a better choice, and I migrated in that direction. But I did find wrestling to be occasionally useful. I’m a big guy (6’3″) and I discovered that combat against smaller, faster, agile opponents was difficult using standard martial techniques. What did work was grappling them. There, my longer limbs and greater strength gave me the advantage. And so I used this technique, but only against small opponents in one-on-one contests. Against people close to my own size (given a deviation of + or minus a foot) I stuck with blocks, blows and sweeps – which I greatly prefer in all cases anyway.

In high school, I had friends that enjoyed wrestling and participated on the school team. I recall one kid telling me how he reduced his weight by every method possible. Apparently they try to match weight as closely as they can between opponents, and there are different weight divisions or something like that. He trimmed his nails short. He skipped meals. He shaved his head. He slept without a blanket in order to cause his body to generate heat, and therefore consume calories at night. It sounded pretty miserable.

I stuck with band. I did try the basketball team for a while, but that didn’t work out. It’s a story filled with personal embarrassment and public horror. I’ll have to tell that one sometime. It’s kind of funny looking back on it, but at the time I was ready to find a hole and bury myself. It’s not as bad as what happened to Scott, I suppose. There was no accidental exposure. But it was BAD.