Some e-book love

“Acid Indigestion Eyes” got some love from www.addictedtoebooks.com today. Check it out on the front page. And dig how that cover pops out from the pack (if I do say so myself).

Trailer Park II

In last week’s Sugar Bear post, I slyly slipped in what is the second of the trailers for “Acid Indigestion Eyes.” I’ll be doing a few of these NPRish, podcast-style videos for YouTube in the coming weeks.

Book trailers are one of those things that I really didn’t think were useful when I first heard of them. Movie trailers, yes. But book trailers? How do you do a trailer for a book? I’ve come around a lot since my trip to BEA last year, when the book trailer buzz was really building. I’ve seen some pretty great ones with real cinematic feel. Check out Scott Pruden’s trailer for “Immaculate Deception.” We’ve talked about how somebody should option ID and go blockbuster. Now, after seeing Scott’s trailer, it seems like so much closer to a reality, somehow. Hopefully, he’ll be able to do the indoctrination video for the Church of the New Revelation that he’s been writing a script for. And hopefully, it’ll go viral.

It’s not as cinematic as Scott’s, but here is trailer No. 2. “The Chocolate War.”

 

 

 

 

 

Howdy, Ain’t BEA …

Went to visit my all growns up child “Acid Indigestion Eyes” at Book Expo America’s last day today in New York City at the Javits Center. BEA is the largest publishing trade show in the country, the coming-out party for thousands of new books each year. And yes, many of them have shiny, sexy vampires in them. Still.

“Acid” was partying down at the New Title Showcase, right at the front entrance to the expo. The hope is that industry folks stopped by, were drawn in hypnotically by the strangeness and creativity of the cover and want to offer up expanded distribution, foreign translation rights or any number of other tasty publishing delights.

Will that happen? Hard to say. The climate that moved Codorus Press to come into existence in the first place is still very much in play. And raining down every day. New fiction is the absolute hardest thing to sell in the marketplace. And while “Acid” isn’t fiction, depending on who you ask, being journalism, it’s not far.

I walked through the New Title Showcase to take a peek at the competition and came away with three impressions.

First: The thing independent publishers still seem to lack is a sense of tasteful design. The majority of the books I saw at the showcase looked like they came from a yearbook company’s stock, with some wavy or swirly title font and an amateurishly Photoshopped image. The whole “don’t judge a book by its cover” thing is completely false in the marketplace. Everyone judges the book by its cover. Even though I get a lot of “huh?” from people who think my book is about acid reflux, I’m actually proud that I developed a design that pops and even has some artistic merit as a bit of Pop Art-inspired weirdness. Just so you know the well I’m drawing from, check out the Andy Warhol-designed cover of Aspen magazine from 1966 that looks like a box of Fab detergent.  Much more to come on cover art choices on the Codorus Press blog soon.

Second: That New Title Showcase placement really works. The first book I saw was “Recording Secrets of the Guitar Legends.” I WILL buy this book. I’m probably gonna contact the author, too. Always need new guitar friends. AND, I was pleasantly surprised to see a new Sherman Alexie story collection one shelf over from mine. AND, by Grove Press!

Third: Whether it works or not, whether the covers “work” or not, the Showcase reminds me of the reason to do any of this at all. Publishing, for the vast majority of authors and publishers, isn’t the most lucrative life choice to make. Ask Grove Press’ Barney Rossett (on the OUIJA board now, unfortunately. He passed away recently, but admitted in an interview before he died that Grove never made much money. But it sure did publish a hell of a lot of great shit.). NYT best-selling authors still have to have day jobs. The only reason to do this is because it’s important to you to bring it out into the world. Whether the world knows it or not, it needs it, too.

ACID BONUS: Along those lines of why we write, here’s a chapter on why writers drink.

WHISKEYTOWN

What is it about writers and whiskey? When my
grandpa heard I was going into journalism, he took
my shoulder in his monumental hand and looked at me with
one of those piercing laser light gazes possible only by one
whose eyes truly have seen.

“Don’t become an alcoholic.”

Hello. My name is Wayne. And I’m not an alcoholic.
Yet. Grandpa knew. Working in Washington in the ’30s, he
got tight with the press corps. And one thing he knew about
nearly all of them was that in one hand was a notepad – and
in the other was a drink. When they weren’t writing, they
were free to utilize both fists.

It didn’t take me very long to get similarly coordinated.
The drinking I didn’t do in college got made up for in spades.
Journalists still are a two-fisted group. Alcohol has been the
choice poison for writers since time immemorial, like bottled
designer water straight from the river Lethe. There’s a good
reason why a poll a few years ago put journalists at the top of
the list of worst professionals to marry. Of course, musicians
were second. Being both, I’m doomed.

Not that writers are alone. The bars are filled, night
after night, with non-writing non-non-drinkers.
We all drink, and for as many reasons – not all bad –
as there are drinkers. Relaxation. Fun. Camaraderie. Acceptance.
Forgetfulness. Despair.
Pick a card, pick a poison.

A bunch of drunken friends in a tight bar can be as
noxious as a bunch of psychotic strangers in a mental ward.
Spend enough time at it, you can feel like you really are losing
your mind. Forgetting how you spent your previous 10 or
so hours, for instance. Getting locked outside your house
naked. Using the fridge as the toilet.

Wait, not done. Getting chased out of a bowling alley,
still clutching a lane ball, then being mistaken by a bouncer
who strangely resembled the fat Elvis – in his own drunken
haze — for someone else he wanted to kill after putting a
piledriver on one of your other drunken friends.

Like Eric Clapton said to Stevie Ray Vaughan, after
watching him polish off a bottle of Crown before he went cold
turkey, “Well, sometimes you just gotta go through that, don’t
you?” For me, the breaking point was the time my roommate
discovered that the shoe sticking precariously out of my bathroom
doorway had a foot in it. And he had to go pretty bad.

I still drink. But now, I follow Gramps’ advice. “If you
have a five-dollar bill in your pocket,” he said, “buy the best
drink you can get, instead of a lot of cheap stuff. Drink it.
Enjoy it. Then go on to other things. More important things.”
Sometimes, though, a lot of five-dollar bills change
hands. There’s more to it than just environment. My second
grandfather is a recovering alcoholic. Has been for years. I’ve
tried to be sensitive about it. Just let it be gone. A real nightmare
happened just after I moved away from home. I decided
to send him a birthday cake by mail. I filled out the wrong
cake number and he got a rum cake. Luckily, he had a sense
of humor about it.

I am convinced I carry the gene. If not a gene, a predisposition
for drinking. I’m certainly not going to get into a theoretical
debate with anyone. Somehow, I’ve always known, deep
in my soul, that I’m a marked man. And, I have to be careful.

Looks like we’re back to the original question. What
is it about writers and whiskey? I only have come up with one
answer. It seems to me, we all dive into the bottle looking for
treasure. Mostly, we just drown.

Dollar, make ya holla

In honor of the imminent approach of summer, “Acid Indigestion Eyes” is now a 99-cent book on the Kindle. Get it while it’s hot. Get it? Hot? Sheesh.

ACID BONUS: TWO CHAPTERS involving pocket change.

CH-CH-CH-CHANGE

Change isn’t good — when you try to pay for something
with it. That’s the message I’m getting all the time these
days. And yes, you guessed correctly – these aren’t exactly my
salad days.

Paying in change for something substantial marks
you as an outcast. A loser. One of the dregs. It earns you the
antipathy of fine and not-so-fine cashiers everywhere.
Lately, there’s just been no helping it. Poor is a state I
can’t pack my bags and move away from. Negative balances
between bookend paydays are following me like like that
mangy, hungry dog in the alley next to work that I feed every
day when there’s barely enough in the sack to feed me.

The cracks of the car seats, often enough, hide gas
money. Maybe only a buck or so, but that buck could be the
difference between sleeping in bed and sleeping in the car in
the parking lot at work.

Inside the jeans pockets, there’s usually enough to do
the wash. If you don’t mind taking 10 or 15 minutes to roll it
all up, there’s probably enough change around to pay for food
and gas for a few days in a pinch. But go to use it and, instead
of a knowing nod or a wink for your ingenuity, what do you
usually get? One: What is this? Two: Where did you get this?
Three: Get the hell out of here with this!

A few years ago, I needed to scrape up change to pay
for enough gas to sit in the Saturday drive-through line at the
bank to cash a check for some freelance articles. I found exactly
one dollar in the car. Or so I thought. A penny was masquerading
as a dime. Honest mistake, right? The gas station
owner hit me in the face with my change after he counted it.
“These pumps don’t even set for under a dollar!” he screamed,
along with some ugly expletives. He’s in jail now for embezzling
from his own business. The gas station? Demolished for
a parking lot. Karma hit him like a brick.

With that kind of grief, it almost seems better to wait
for the dumpster shift every two hours than to pay for a meal
in honest change. It’s not as if I stood out on the corner and
panhandled for it. I worked for it!

Oh, I forgot a step back there – the confirmation trip
to the manager: Can we take this? Of course you can. The last
I heard, at the base, the foundation of the American money
system was the cent, not the dollar. A dollar is still worth 100
cents, even though it doesn’t always feel that way. How much
of your pay do you want? Every red cent. How much do you
usually end up spending? Bingo.

The coin was the first money in history, if you don’t
count rocks shaped like coins. The coin is a sure sign of higher
civilization. It has survived through millennia, thousands of
feet of water, thousands of wars, and thousands of ugly mugs
from Cesar to Susan B. Anthony. Without change, what is
there to honor one of society’s greatest creations, the street
musician?Without change, what is there to toss out the window
to the kids for the ice cream truck? (Mom! Ice cream!
Throw down some money!)

Maybe it’s not hard to go to the bank and exchange
change for some of the crinkly stuff. But, who feels like being
admonished by a cranky teller for carrying a zero balance and
asking for a bank service? Not me.

Funny how I used to feel like a millionaire with a
handful of change from Pop. Every Christmas, he would pull
out the Folger’s coffee can full of pocket change from the past
year, then watch with glee as his three grandchildren split it
three ways. I always liked the silver dollars, so I negotiated
with my siblings to get at least a few. And I still have them.

Seems like I’m giving myself a Christmas every month or so
anymore, and from the exact same Folger’s can.
This Sunday, I read “The Born Loser” in the comics
section for some crazy reason. Old Brutus Thornapple walks
up to a pal who isn’t looking so hot, and asks him what’s
wrong. The poor guy lost his job, and his wife ran off with his
financial advisor, leaving him with just one silver dollar in his
pocket. “Well, why don’t you spend it?” he asks.
The guy answers, “Because it’s my lucky dollar.”

Strange how well a two-dimensional panel translates
into three. I’ve been very, very close to spending those silver
dollars from Pop many times. The only thing that’s kept me
from doing it is the face on the front. I don’t see Dwight D.
Eisenhower. I see my Pop. It really does look like him. He
had an Ike haircut my entire life. And his. No matter how
poor I get, I always have that.

ON MY DIME

The lack of jingling in my pocket was a sign I was about to
go broke again. I know the empty pocket is the universal
sign of brokeness, but for me, the empty pocket is really a severe
warning sign. Pocket change means I’ve been out burning
cash as always. No change means there’s not much left
and I’m trying desperately hard not to spend it.

So I walked my non-jingling, stomach-growling self
to the deli down the avenue. The one place I knew I might be
lucky enough to get lunch for what few bills I had in my
pocket. A quick menu scan told me I had to settle for egg
salad, no tomato no lettuce (30 cents extra per).Which would
leave me exactly 10 cents to my name. Luckily, they throw
the bread in for free.

Figured I better savor the egg salad since I might not
be eating for a while. So took my plastic plate out to one of
the stylish plastic outdoor patio tables, sat down in a plastic
chair and ate slowly.Washed it all down with the cool breeze
since I couldn’t afford a drink. When I finished licking the
plate, I took my trash to the bin and stepped up to the counter
to pay my check. Ahead of me was a slightly younger man,
dressed all in black. Thin and gangly with short hair, nearly
nonexistent beard and shiny black boots with shiny buckles.
Plenty of silver, but he was short of another metal.

“Can you lend me a nickel?”

Of course, not having any change in my pocket, I had
a dilemma. But once I paid the check, I got back that aforementioned
dime and I figured, what the hell, if you’re going
to go broke you might as well go all the way.

“Thanks man!” he said, and gave the dime to the
cashier. She handed a nickel back to me and, once again, beyond
explanation, life kept me five cents away from closing
the Old Bailey Building and Loan.

“Boy, living in Florida is really kicking my butt,” the
young man in black said. “I can’t believe how expensive it is
here. Half the time, I think I’m going to have to move back to
Minnesota.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I said with a wry
smile, flipping the nickel between my fingers. “I have a fulltime
job with plenty of responsibility and I make what looks
on paper to be a decent amount of money, but it just doesn’t
go anywhere but away.”

“Tell me about it,” he said, easing back into his wooden
chair, trying to find the least greasy spot to grab his Reuben.
“If I hadn’t made $150,000 last year, I couldn’t have survived.”

Suddenly, I could feel his throat in my hand.
My mind exploded into a split screen, one side of
which showed him taking a peaceful bite out of his sandwich.
The other showed me pummeling him into a bloody hunk of
corned beef. And I was yelling my lungs out. “What a pathetic
waste of luck you are! Somehow, you end up making in one
year what it will take me most of the decade to make, and you
blow it all to where you’re having a ask a stranger for his last
dime to cover your lunch! You idiot!”

Once the two pictures converged again, I slowly
walked toward him, my right fist clenched around the nickel.
Before I knew it, my left whipped out toward him and gave
him a pat on the shoulder.

“Just hang in there buddy,” I said. “It’ll all work out.”

And you could hear the madman laughing all the way
down the avenue.

The most important words you’ll write

Nope, they’re not in the first sentence of your novel. They’re the nine or 10 words you’ll use to tell people what your book is about. That ol’ elevator pitch.

Now, those could be the exact words that are on the back of your book. But often, the words that read so well in a reader’s mind at a bookstore don’t work so well coming out of your mouth at, say, a book fair booth.

My Codorus Press pals spent the weekend at the most-fine Gaithersburg Book Festival refining our pitches to a razor point — sometimes pitching a friend’s book with better precision than our own. (That one serves to reinforce my creative credo to do it with your friends. The buddy system really works with this stuff.)

For myself and Mike Argento, not counting the aborted Kensington monsoon last month, this was our first book fair pitching our own books. So, even though we spent a chunk of last year pitching Scott B. Pruden’s book at fairs, there was a little bit of a learning curve for both of us. Mike’s had his “Bad people doing bad things, badly” line locked down for a long time on “Don’t Be Cruel.” But we had to work in mob, Elvis and insurance scam in there as deftly as possible, as well.

Scott hit upon the “memoir” element of my book at some point during the show, and it really worked as a way to quantify the book. It turned into “a memoir about growing up overeducated and underemployed in the ’90s.” If they needed more, especially if they were concerned about it not having any resonance with other generations, I’d pull out the big guns: “Well, in one of the columns, I practically call Kurt Cobain the grunge Dizzy Gillespie.”

If you have the well-refined “elevator pitch,” when you hand the book to someone, those words will be amplified by what they read on the back jacket.

Here’s an example for “Acid.”

Reader: “What’s that? Will it cure acid reflux?”

Wayne: “Yes. Guaranteed, if you read the whole thing.”

Reader: “What is this really?”

Wayne: “It’s a memoir about growing up overeducated and underemployed in the ’90s.”

Reader: “Oh ok!” (Takes the book and looks at the back.) “Hey, that’s you!” (And reads the following: “Get your grunge on! Former nationally syndicated Generation X columnist Wayne Lockwood collects some of his best columns, reflecting and sharing in the promise and challenges faced by those who came of age in the early 1990s. While talking heads will harken back to St. Cobain for perspective on this misunderstood decade, this collection of works — simultaneously everyman and deeply personal — aims to give a voice to those who didn’t have a guitar to scream behind.”)

… “Why does it look like a Pepto Bismol box?”

Wayne: “It’s a pop-art nod to the first essay in the book. It’s kind of a metaphor on how your eyes can burn the same way your stomach can, from the same input.”

Reader: “Ok, ok! … This is really cool!”

By the way, if you go the highbrow art route with your cover, be prepared to explain yourself. A lot.

OK, back to the words. You might think that it’s not your responsibility/problem to come up with this pitch. Get over it. Everything’s your problem, especially if you’re a first-time fiction writer, no matter who’s doing the publishing. Anyway, having this pitch can give you tremendous focus. This is book one of the (insert writer here) brand. Better to get it right as early as you can. Like Uncle Kurt said (Vonnegut! Vonnegut!), we become what we pretend to be. So, pretend well.

ACID BONUS! Here is the Kurt/Dizzy chapter:

Generation Mutts

The evolution of the Generation X ethos has really got me down. But it’s not so much the existence lately, it’s the term. It’s popping up everywhere. Soon, there’s going to be a Generation X breakfast cereal. “X’ies! Bitter and hard to swallow!” Probably a video game. And, of course, a Saturday morning cartoon to sell it.

I’m an “X’er” – because I am. Can’t much help that. My hair, it brands me a hippie. My personal library brands me a beatnik. Who knows what my librarian brands me. All I know is I’m branded and bugged.

Here’s a little pop sociology for you. Since around the end of World War II, our society has gotten more factioned, more fractured. There’s been a lack of unifying rallying points (like world wars). As such, the group mentality has decayed. Society needs to label, sub-label and sub-sub-label so that everyone knows the boundaries on the invisible map. Boom, you get Irish-American, African-American, Mexican-American.

This goes deeper than roots. You can – and you will – get labeled depending on who you are inside (assuming, of course, you’re lucky enough to know). “Generation X” isn’t the first such label. This year’s model.

Does the wind remember the names it has blown in the past? Let’s hop in the Wayback and see.

First stop, 1940s New York City. Here beneath the signs’ seedy glow on 52nd St., rumpled musicians are changing the face of art. Then staying up all night, jamming at Minton’s, crashing in their best Zoot Suits wherever there’s a floor, couch or cot. Their iconoclastic playing and rumpled clothing leads the cultural majority to give them a name, to quantify something to which they can’t necessarily relate. Boom, you’ve got the first “hipsters.” And the music they play, it isn’t Jazz anymore. It’s “Be-Bop.” That’s not what they named it. They just thought it was music.

Wake up, Sherman. It’s 1991. Here beneath the signs’ seedy glow in Seattle, rumpled musicians are changing the face of art. In plaid shirts worn more for warmth than fashion (supposedly), they play vibrant music. And the music they play, it isn’t rock. It’s “Grunge.” No so-called grunge artist ever calls it that. The term is never used, except on sardonic T-shirts that declare “Grunge Is Dead.” And by the way, the only time psychedelic architect Jimi Hendrix used the term “hippie” was to scoff at it (see “If Six Was Nine”). It’s not so much the words anyway, it’s the connotations.

Ponder “beatnik.” What a word. In two syllables, it conjures up the intense fear of Communist oppression and slaps a set of bongos on it. Instant hate – just add vodka.

Same thing with Generation X. At first, it seemed like a catchy way to refer to a wedge of the grapefruit. Spoon on some connotation, and you taste a bunch of slacking, visionless underachievers lounging around reading Bret Easton Ellis. Or Douglas Coupland, for that matter, if he writes something good again. Four syllables – an infinity of meaning.

You can maybe lump movements and eras, but how can you lump something so complex as human beings? People aren’t lumpable like so much Play-Doh. I’m certainly not. Here on my desk (around the corner from the Wayback), I have two Kerouac novels, a picture Dizzy Gillespie signed for me, “Axis: Bold As Love” in the Walkman and an ultrayuppie credit card computer phone index.

So what am I?
Boom – I’m a mutt.
Sticks and stones still break our bones, but believe it or not, names really can hurt you. Maybe not individually. But the labels hurt us collectively, like those shaving nicks you don’t discover until you throw some cologne on them. And then they hurt like hell.

Our little group has always been and always will … until they call us something else.

Nook, Nook (Who’s there? Microsoft!)

Having somewhat of a business focus during my day job working for The Man, I knew Barnes & Noble was looking to sell its Nook division. And yes, while it might seem strange for B&N to sell off what ostensibly is the future and has the most profit potential, it also was costing way too much and in danger of sinking the company. (It’s a good lesson in focus for everyone in business, including authors. What, you didn’t know you were in business? Ask Gene Simmons).

But I didn’t really expect Microsoft to come in the way it did. I guess, in retrospect, I probably should have. For the same reason B&N created the Nook in the first place, to play catch-up with Amazon’s Kindle. Microsoft was getting left behind by Apple, which has its book arm locked and loaded already. And is looking to take over the college text market.

What’s it really going to mean for authors? I’m not sure yet. But I hope it means something. I’d really like to sell some Nook copies of Acid Indigestion Eyes to someone other than me.

Are you using a Nook? How do you like it? What do you think of its future now?

Put the needle on the record

This is something I wrote for The Wandering Heretics Indie Publishing Blog that we jointly operate at Codorus Press. I wanted to keep the publishing/writing stuff a little separate, but this particular post I think bears some repeating. Here’s my take on the place of micropublishers in the lit world:

So, your Codorus Press was listening to the first Cheap Trick album today, and got to thinking about why we bought it in the first place as a little kid.

      And that reason was that “I Want You To Want Me” had exploded on the radio, and a buddy recorded “Budokan” for us on a cassette, so we went out and started getting anything we could of Cheap Trick, like the “Dream Police” 45 (which had “VOICES” on the flip), and realizing, holy shit, there are like 4 other Cheap Trick albums out there! We got them all. And, you know, “In Color” wasn’t that great, but we sure did like the other ones.

      Back in the day, big record labels would sign you to a developmental deal, and you’d do like 3 or 4 albums before having one hit big, and they were ok with it, because they had the longview (to a point). Think about Rush, and even Bruce Springsteen. His album sales before “Born To Run” were pretty weak, despite that “Next Dylan” push from the PR machine. The label was about to drop him when he delivered that little watershed.

      It’s not that way anymore. Especially not for writers. Nobody’s taking a chance on first-time fiction in the marketplace, unless you’ve got the time-honored pedigree that might (might) mean sales. Especially since the developmental editor position seems to have shifted away from the houses to agents. When the agent is the one choosing the work, they’re gonna choose profitability. (“You bit me!” … “It’s in my nature.”) If you don’t fit the cookie cutter, you don’t get baked.

      That’s the prime reason Codorus Press exists. And we’re glad to have an old-school record label attitude toward our writers — we’re all really in developmental deals. All of our books out right now are first books. And we’re struggling with getting sales and building an audience (hell, FINDING an audience), but the best intelligence I have is that it tends to take 5 books from a writer before anything resembling a widespread readership catches up.

      When each of us hits a “Budokan,” or “Born To Run,” or “Moving Pictures,” we’re sure the kids are gonna go back and get “In Color” from us. Especially if it was an undiscovered “Budokan” in the first place.