The Voice

Writers are commonly told that they need to find their own voice, a way to express their unique vision of the world. That's true. Who wants to sound like everyone else? What reader wants to read someone who doesn't show a personal flair?

It's less often mentioned that an author needs to find the right voice for a particular story. Every story puts its own demands on the writer. He or she is faced with selecting the parts that matter and portraying them in an interesting, effective way (with the reader getting to decide if it is interesting; the effective part is the writer's call.) That can be easy, or hard.

When I wrote THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO (available at Amazon and everywhere else), the voice was simple enough. The story is intended to be mostly humorous and it's based, loosely (playing free with reality) on real events and people who chose to live around, in, or on boats in the Caribbean. Dagny and I were among them on our boat, and what I saw, the people I met intrigued and amused me and I wanted to capture that life. I took the role of a naive narrator relaying the antics of people around him and the world he was swept up into. Never mind that in the more real world, the one most people live in, I was directly involved. Some might say even an instigator. But nothing was ever proven and we were never caught. I mean charged.

For the book, I took a step back and told the story, focusing on the aspects that I found (dare I say it?) exciting and funny.

Jammed into the mangroves in Carriacou for a hurricane

That was relatively easy. As you can see by the photo above, at times we were all rather cheek and jowl. That provided a ready source of story material for sure. (There was, however, a rather mobile hurricane party in the mangroves that didn't make the book... maybe another time.)

The book I'm writing now is quite different. It's a serious attempt to deal with some issues that I wonder about. What they are, specifically, isn't the difficulty. The challenge is finding a way to address "issues" (see, it's an important word, warranting quotes and everything) with screwing up a perfectly good story. It's a balance between a desire to be a good storyteller and a good writer, which aren't necessarily the same thing. Most successful thriller writers are excellent storytellers. Few do much in the way of elegant or interesting writing.

There's a difference.

Finding that balance, the right approach to this story, is what currently is filling my white boards (yes, plural. I have three) with multiple colored notes, admonitions to self, and various bits and pieces of what I consider good writing. The basic story is powerful and bittersweet. This time it takes place in a border town--in Cambodia.

It's a fun struggle and that kind of challenge is one worth taking on.

"A Human Touch" continues

I'm not sure how long this novel will be when it is done. At the moment my guess is that 50,000 words won't do the trick, but whatever it is, I think the draft is moving along nicely. I've hit a few sticking points as the story develops and had to stop, think over and do some minor rewrites, but overall it seems to be going well. The characters are evolving (always a concern) and I am enjoying the process.

Given that I am working on another project at the same time this month, I am pleased with the way things are going. Now back to writing.

Standing up for literature

Back sometime around the time of Charlemagne, I remember reading a bio of Hemingway and being struck by the idea that he wrote standing up. That, I thought, was about the dumbest thing a person could do. After all, being comfortable let the mind flow around in all that creative space.

Somewhere along the line, that idea went out along with the one that smoking a pipe and wearing jackets with leather elbow patches improved my writing. Not that I snub anything that would improve my writing, but I had come to realize that looking like I thought a writer should look didn't really help me get better prose on paper.

I came, somehow (I really don't recall) to embrace the idea of writing standing up, at least part of the time. In Cambodia, Dagny made me a standing desk and a local carpenter made a stool exactly to my dimensions. (I do wish I could have brought that stool back -- I modeled it after one I saw in a bar in Koh Kong). So my writing station looked like this.

The motorcyle didn't improve my writing either, but this was Cambodia, and the office was in what had been a bar (and a church and a brothel) before we rented it.

This set up worked pretty well, although standing on concrete limited my stints at the computer. And yes, the little notebook was all I had for quite some time. Worked okay, but slow.

Then, coming back to the US, I knew I wanted something different. Dagny and I both spent a lot of time looking at office designs that were aesthetically pleasing and ergonomic (and finding out what that meant to various folks). We found lots of high-tech solutions like the one below but that seemed too expensive and overkill. I am not that high tech anymore.

Then we found a nice solution. And it looks like this.

It's an adjustable stand up desk (Focal Upright Furniture) and works better than the one in Cambodia. This is just a recent incarnation of the setup and I am getting used it, but I think it is working great. The light (optional) is fantastic. Good friend and coauthor, Jim Beckett, loaned me a monitor and printer and keyboard so that my laptop thinks its a tower. Life is good.

And there go my excuses for not writing.

A single focus for an eclectic person

I read the blogs of other writers and I am often impressed that they seem able to write a book, just one book, and stay with it to the end before starting another. If that is the sign of a writing discipline, then it is one I lack.

Not that I lack focus, exactly. I can sit down at my desk and work on a story, one story, until I look up and notice that the say disappeared somewhere (days do that to me a lot). I can even be interrupted, stopping to answer the door or make lunch or play with the dog, and get back to the task.

What I am talking about is lacking the kind of focus that means every day I sit down and work on the same story. I can go days in that mode, but then wake from a lucid dream (or something) with another idea in my head. It could be an idea on how to fix a story I previously shelved, or a new story altogether.

And I, of course, feel compelled to get it down. Some of it, at least.

It isn't that I think this is the best way to work, but it seems to be part of me. And not an occasional part, either. I almost always have several stories in the works. So when people ask, "What are you writing?" my answer tends to be more of a catalog than it ought to be.

I have no idea if this tendency makes my writing better or worse, but I do know that it plays hell with my "to-do" list. It ebbs and flows like some erratic tidal system. But the writing is enjoyable, and that is the important thing.

Book stores and readers

We are in the process of scheduling some book signings and readings (aka "events") for THE INVENTION OF CLAY MCKENZIE. The people who have read it are few, but have been enthusiastic and we are determined to help it find more readers.

 

 This is the story of a reclusive New Mexican author (whose name is not Clay McKenzie) and a brilliant first novel. It is about an ambitious (and young) New York editor who wants to prove herself; and mostly of her well-intended attempt to make things appear as they are not, and the consequences of putting that in motion.

As an avid reader and a fan of bookstores (real bookstores, where the people who work in them know and love books), logic dictated working through bookstores to encounter the elusive reader. 

The attitudes of stores toward author events prooved mixed... some enjoy them and see their value (authors and readers in the same place and maybe some sales), and some do not. Fair enough. We work with the willing.

COAS Books in Las Cruces, New Mexico is one that does work with authors willingly, and we have scheduled a book signing there on Saturday October 26th from 10 am to noon (during the Farmer's Market!). Jim Beckett and I will be there to chat with readers and sign books. It should be fun.

On January 4th we will travel to Albuquerque's North Valley, north of Griegos, in the Flying Star Plaza, for an 3pm event at Bookworks.

We hope to do a few more, perhaps in Tucson or elsewhere in the Eastern part of Arizona.  Our intent is to try and convey some of our excitement about the book and meet readers. If you are in the area, we'd love to meet you. If your favorite bookstore is open to such things and not too far from New Mexico, let us know and we will see what is possible.

Lasagne and Publishers

Sometimes there are things in life that elude you. The two things I notice that I am never able to nail down are lasagne and publishers. I wonder if there is a connection?

I love lasagne. With meat. (Note to chefs, lasagne has meat. Meatless lasagne should be condemned to the same hell as light beer) Throughout my life I have had great difficulty getting lasagne in restaurants. I have walked into restaurants that specialize in lasagne and not been able to get it. They are out. I have ordered it ahead of time, going into the restaurant and saying, "I am coming in on Wednesday. The only thing I am coming for is lasagne. With meat. I don't care if you have running water, but promise you will have lasagne." They write down my name and my order.

When I arrive they don't have it.Or they made a mistake and saved some meatless thing that vaguely resembles what I ordered. Even if the waiter says yes they have it and takes my order, I won't get it (once a group of 24 people came into a restaurant and ordered all the lasagne about three minutes before they took my order.)

This has nothing to do with where I live. It has happened:
In the United States. (Boston, Austin, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland OR...)

In Italy (for crying out loud!).

And now in Cambodia.

A neighbor, out of pity for my plight, went to the same damn place that I struck out the last time and called to ask if I wanted her to bring me some as she was there and they had lasagne coming out of their ears. So sometimes I actually get some, but not when I go out to eat.

It has been this way all my life and isn't likely to change now. My wife laughed when I told her about. Now, lo these many years later she has seen this in operation too many times and always hints nicely that I might consider the lovely ravioli.


I've been writing for many years now. Magazine articles, nonfiction books, poetry, short stories and novels.
My luck with publishers, at least with fiction, follows a path reminiscent of my search for lasagne. I write a book, and after a great deal of effort, find a publisher who loves it. Hurrah, I cry.

But just because the waiter took the order, it doesn't mean you get the lasagne.

So the publisher loves the book. Contract is signed. Celebrate! The publisher gets to work (we are not talking cons here) and spends eons working on the book. Me too. Back in the old days I wrote a lot of science fiction and Ermine Publishing was excited about bringing out a double novella of mine. That was in the days of physical galleys. They hired someone to do the cover art. They edited the text. They typeset it. Lots of work.

Then they went out of business.

A few years later I sold a book to a publisher I won't name, but the editor got fired a week later and it turned out he didn't have the authority to sign the contract and anyway, they were changing their focus to cook books.

Then I sold a humorous novel (THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO) to NovelBooks. They actually published it. A lot of angst and chaos later, they were out of business and, fortunately, the rights returned to me. (Lucky you can get it through the link on the right.)

A little bit ago, I announced that Glass Page Books was going to publish my murder mystery novel, based in Venezuela, called UNDER LOW SKIES. They did a nice cover. And then... went out of business.

So I will publish the book myself, along with the sequel, BANDIDO, that is almost done.

Fortunately, I've worked in publishing a lot of my adult life as a magazine editor, book editor (freelance) and sometimes publisher. I can see why the publishers I worked with failed. Float Street Press, my imprint, is a more cautious toe in those waters. I publish myself and a few others. We will try to develop the process and have fun with it.

Meantime, I have to remember not to expect to get lasagne or a publisher. And interestingly enough, I can actually do fine without either. It turns out that neither is particularly healthy.

Rainy day blogging and publishing

Sunday was a lovely rainy morning. It is easy to get my writing done on a rainy day. It is cool then and there is something about the rain that makes my thoughts seem to go deeper. Perhaps it is just that I am less distracted by things outside the window.

Thanks to those who responded to the story about the creative assistant. Pat confirmed that it was a Tokay gecko. I have to find out if this one is a mongo Tokay or just on the large size of normal. Uncle Steve reminded me that Carlos Castenada was taught divination with lizards and suggested that I not limit the new friend to the duties of an assistant. That merits investigation as well.

My apologies to those who tried to leave comments and found that they couldn't. I didn't realize that this software defaulted to letting only registered users leave comments and that has been fixed now.

Other things going on... My coauthor Jim Beckett is taking his turn on the final draft of our novel THE INVENTION OF CLAY McKENZIE, which we will be publishing in ebook and paperback. The publishing empire grows and FLOAT STEET PRESS now has four paperbacks out through CreateSpace. The first two were THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO and FLOAT STREET NOTES, then we published an adult crime/suspense story A BURGLAR IN MALAY
by Kurt Dysan, a fellow traveler in these parts, who has been writing for years but need encouragement to publish.

Most recently we republished my friend Javaid Qazi's collection of short stories called

Unlikely Stories: Fatal Fantasies and Delusions

This first published by Penguin Books in 1998 and had gone out of print. The editors returned the rights and now it is available again, as is a single story in ebook format called THE KING OF PATIO WORLD

All of the paperbacks are available in ebook format as well. We are still
working on getting them linked together but all are available through Amazon. The ebooks also find their way into Barnes & Noble, Diesel, Kobo, Sony, iTunes and so on through Smashwords and you can always find the books in almost every ebook format there.

This will build up slowly. It has taken most of a year to get to this point, but there are many good things in the works. And SE Asia is a wonderful place to work, even if now I need to go into town and muster enough Khmer words to get someone to find and fix an intermittent problem in one of the motorbikes.

A New Creative Assistant

Everyone knows that writers need all the help they can get, so I was pleased to find that a local has volunteered to help me with my struggles. It is good to have someone who not only appreciates the struggle of making art but also has an extensive knowledge of the local environment.

I don't know my new assistant's name, or even if he or she has one (yes, the CV was a bit sparse in places but there have been remarkably few applicants and this one seemed of good character and rather fearless -- two admirable qualities). Perhaps some of you could make a suggestion. Now bear in mind that this is a rather large lizard and I doubt some cutesie gecko name would be appropriate or appreciated. Since the pay for this position is paltry, showing the proper respect will prove important in retaining our first staff member here at Float Street Press.

The new assistant has many virtues, not the least of which is being somewhat indifferent to gravitational forces. I can only hope that this provides a certain immunity to depression.

So any names that come to mind would be appreciated. And despite the rather distinct coloration, management here has already discounted "spot" as being too saccharine. But I look forward to your ideas.

Losing time

I read other people's blogs, especially those that help me understand more about publishing. And I blog to share thoughts and observations and, with luck, sell a few books and songs to those who enjoy what I write. Yet blogging often seems the wrong thing for a writer to be doing. Thinking up a topic (or even stumbling over one) and then taking the time to write it is time taken away from working on writing or music projects. If I write about things unrelated to the project I am working on, it increases the multitasking workload, which is a problem for a person who seriously does not believe that people actually multitask (they do, however perform threaded tasks). If I write about what I am writing about then I am putting work here instead of there, if you see what I mean.

It's a problem of time. We each have twenty-four hours in a day and I often wonder where mine went. I lose chunks of that time. I understand the chunks that go to what Dagny and I call domestic stuff, a broad category that we use to refer to almost anything that isn't either making art or simply having some fun. Shopping, cleaning, doing paperwork, even checking email all fits in there.

Mostly it is the art time that I can't find. If I sit down to write at nine and get a few pages rolling under my fingers, then I will look up and see that it is lunch time. And I was just getting started. The afternoon disappears the same way.

My life must contain some automatically activated time-compression plug-in. I want it out! Now!
   

This artwork has nothing whatsoever to do with this blog except that I put it here.

Collecting and republishing the past

I got an email today from someone curious as to what I was up to. He wanted to know if I had a blog, and I sent him the link, but I realized that primarily what I have posted is observations, not updates of the ongoing effort to proved the world with new and improved art and music. So here is an update.

When we lived on an old wooden boat in the Caribbean, part of the way I earned my keep, when not doing boat work, was writing about living on a boat. I did a monthly column in the journal Caribbean Compass for at least five years, probably longer. It was caustic, and made fun of the readers, other people who wrote for people on boats, and even the very idea of life on board. It turned out to be very popular with readers, and advertisers didn't seem to hate it. At least the editor, Sally Erdle, never complained.

As I worked to edit and republish The Legend of Ron Anejo  and worked with my friends John Pocock and Tom Tsui to finish and publish Chancy,which is also about sailing, I thought of those short pieces and wondered it they still held up. Were they still funny? Would a collection be something worth republishing as a book.

But first, did they even still exist? My traveling lifestyle has been death on any old manuscripts that I might have had. Hell, the computers haven't survived, and I threw out the 5-inch floppy disks they were stored on years ago (any of you too young to know what those are can Google to find out).

I contacted Sally in Bequia and told her of my idea of publishing them as a book. She not only had the text files, but happily zipped them  and sent them to me. Dagny and I read through them, kicked out a few, and now are editing the 60,000 words that remain into a fun book. The good news is that very little turned out to be perishable. Since I seldom  address ideas more topical than what I had for breakfast, there is little to fade.

The intention is to publish the book both in ebook and in paperback formats; the ebook should be ready fairly soon, fairly being a time interval between one and three months. Being the chief editor, formatter, designer and distribution manager takes time. And this isn't the only project going on. But here is the dummy for the ebook cover.

So, if you happen to pass up the Kampot River and don't see us swimming, you now know what is going on in those strange wooden houses along river.

Publishing in print

Since I got to Cambodia I've been learning all about ebook publishing, but I always wanted to see one of my older books back in print. The original publisher went belly up, and I got the rights back, but producing paperback books has been expensive.

Learning the ropes more, I found things were changing and life was better on that front. So her is the re release of my humorous novel of the world best Caribbean boat bum.

It is available here Amazon. And it is also available in Kindle (same location) and in other ebook formats from Smashwords

Even in Paradise

It is tempting to think that once you have moved to a tropical location, life becomes simple. All you need to do is sit back, drink wonderful drinks with umbrellas in them (don't eat the umbrellas, as they can reuse those), served by lovely serving girls and enjoy life. Unfortunately, life follows you. There are always domestic chores and the business of life. Some are more onerous than others.

A couple of days ago, my office was perfumed with a familiar and unwelcome odor. Shortly I was surrounded by the noise of work going on. When I investigated, I learned that the sediment filter from the septic tanks was backed up. Our landlord had the staff hard at work, and he joined in. This was important. After all the blockage was from his house. So for three days, the crew hauled out the gravel, cleaned and sorted and put it back together.

In case you were wondering, Mr. Ka, who is smiling on the left, wasn't thrilled by this particular job, or at having his photo taken standing in the tank.... he just smiles a lot. Very nice man. Our landlord is the one in clean clothes. (These guys are good workers!)

The right temperature

It's the hot season in Cambodia. May will be hot too. But each day is different. Some mornings it gets hot early, while on others it stays pleasant until ten or so. In the evening it might cool quickly or stay hot until nearly midnight. So far, however, it always cools off at night.

Our house

Yesterday evening, about six, I tool a stroll to the front gate of the compound that the house we rent is part of. Actually, I was taking out the garbage, but everyone knows that writers don't take out garbage, so I was taking a stroll, communing with the universe. Those are things writers are expected to do, and I intend to represent my group proudly.

It had been a hot and still day, but suddenly I noticed that the temperature was absolutely perfect. I didn't recall a moment when it began getting cooler,but clearly, while my attention was elsewhere, it had dropped to a perfect temperature. Now don't expect any numbers from me in either Celsius, which is what we use her, of Fahrenheit, as  if I had a thermometer it would most likely be in whatever oblivion I assigned my watch to many moons ago. Time and precise measurement don't fit this kind of living well. The very idea of quantifying pleasant is, well, unpleasant.

Pretty much every day, since it likes regularity, the Kampot sun sets behind Bokor Mountain, which is behind our house. If you guessed it was to the West, you've been paying attention. When I returned to the house from my stroll, and the garbage mysteriously taken care of, I was still enjoying the evening, so I hung out on the porch. I noticed our neighbor Andreas standing in the yard looking at something. He pointed behind my house.

"The sky," he said.

I looked and saw a yellow orange sky, fading out as the sun set. I should mention that he is from Sweden and the idea of sunset always being at six is a bit of an adjustment for him, even though he lived for a time in Thailand before coming here.

This morning was cool. We eat a breakfast of fruit on the porch and look out at the river. Some mornings are too hot to sit long, but clouds rolled in from Viet Nam with no Visa whatsoever and blocked the direct sun. The weather pattern is already shifting. The clouds were coming from the Northeast and now they are from the Southeast. Perhaps the rains will come soon and May won't be so hot.

We find that it is easy to deal with the heat when you become aware of those magic moments when the temperature is perfect. It's easier to deal with anything that isn't going well when you see the magical light of sunset and sunrise surprising you with its choice of colors and patterns.

Perhaps I am easily amused these days, but it feels like a gentle time.

Finishing a book means you get to write the next one

I just finished writing a book with my good friend Jim Beckett. It was largely a long distance cowrite, with him in the US and me in Asia, which produced its own challenges, but overall it was a fun experience. I have written with other writers before, but on nonfiction projects, mostly about computers and voice recognition. So Jim and I needed to work out a method that let us collaborate, push each other, and then agree on some final choices.

As I said, it went rather well. Jim and I were always both focused on what made the book better, with little regard for who was doing what (which generally depended on who had the idea and energy for the task). My agent, Rebecca Pratt, is reading it now, and will give her thoughts on how marketable it is, but that is, and always has to be a separate issue for me.

Jim and I had bounced several story ideas off each other when we launched this project, sitting in his living room in Silver City, New Mexico, and perhaps we will pick up one of those to tackle in the future. More likely, we will take the lessons learned in writing this one and come up with something new altogether. Time will tell. In the meantime, I am working on another book project that is moving along nicely. I can't keep from writing, and usually have several stories in some stage of development, so there is never a problem in having something to work on.

I find it an interesting contrast to write one story with another writer, and then go back to work on one that is entirely mine. When it is all yours, you have the freedom to do almost anything, but you have to provide all the effort, the ideas, and inspiration. Both are good and interesting ways to work. And working, keeping writing, is the important thing; although I want to finish books, get them published and see them being read, I want to be deeply involved in the next one.

Writing--the tough racket

Writing well is a tough racket and good writing often doesn't come easily.

I think that literature, which to me means good and important writing, should be about life. The treatment can be humorous or serious, but it should provide some insights into life. They don't have to be profound, but they have to be there. But insight first demands sight. That means that the writing job begins with observation. The observations are digested, then used in writing. With luck the subconscious provides some better thoughts based on the observations than our dull conscious mind comes up with, and that the writer manages to tap into those while getting the story down. When the writing accurately represents honest observations, and demonstrates true human qualities on a fictional stage, there is a chance, a small chance, that we have produced something worthy of being called literature.

As an aside, it's just another damn word, of course, that literature term, but you have to believe in something, and if you want to communicate, you need to express it somehow. The idea of literature as something that provides a bit more than other writing, has persisted for a long time and I hope it holds its meaning for a while longer. I think I need it.

So it is quite a rough racket, this business of writing literature. All this seeing and thinking and trying to understand cuts into the limited time available for thinking and writing, and so it competes with itself for the only resources a writer has--a brain, energy and time. I find it all too easy to wrap myself deep inside a novel or story and forget to come up for air, much less to observe.

I suppose it is possible to write entirely from a strictly intellectual perspective, to write well, to write accurately and honestly, relying on nothing but your own logic and emotion. Yet, it strikes me that such a limitation will flatten the work. An author might produce one such work, but subsequent books would be imitations of the first--the same material written about as freshly as possible. It gets difficult not to repeat yourself.

My theory is that we who write to sell, write to be read need to dig deep enough to offer the reader characters with a variety of emotions and feelings. It isn't easy, but a book must honestly represent characters and ideas that he or she disagrees with or even finds disagreeable. And it is in honesty that so many of us stumble. When the reader encounters a two-dimensional cardboard representation of something complex and astoundingly three dimensional, it is because the writer hasn't taken the time (or had the interest, perhaps) to explore and understand what he or she is writing about.

Exploration and understanding are two writing tools that don't get used nearly enough. But then writing is a tough racket.

The Writer Traveler

The traveling life is not necessarily the easiest one for a writer. It can be inspiring, but also dispiriting at times. Writing in a SE Asian guesthouse sounds kind of romantic, but noise, unreliable electricity and the need to get out and find another place to eat, can play havoc with trying to write on a regular basis.

So I choose to travel as Paul Bowles suggested in SHELTERING SKY, moving slowly over the face of the planet. Rather than spend a night or two in Kuala Lumpur, my preference would be a few months. Then there is time to capture the feel of the place, get in tune with its rhythms, and learn to live well.

I am in Cambodia now, working in a bungalow that overlooks a river where I can swim in the afternoons. It isn't quite as idyllic as that might sound, for this the wedding season, and Cambodian weddings are loud, and annoying especially as the amplified music comes on at five in the morning and can go on until after midnight, with several weddings competing for airspace and earspace. But this doesn't happen every day, and life is usually bittersweet anyway.

I have started this blog to document my writing life and to take a look at various demons and angels that you encounter when working as a writer. I have been a writer for many years now, and all that has changed is my focus, which has shifted from nonfiction to fiction. Poetry has been a constant, along with my music.

I am finishing up a novel that I started in the United States last year, writing with a friend, Jim Beckett. We finished the cowriting and managed to remain friends as well, and that feels like an accomplishment. In a few days we will complete the last bits of editing and send it off to Rebecca, my agent, to see if she can find a home for it. The publishing world is one built on shifting sands, she assures me, and we will have to treat everything we do as another grand experiment. I am comfortable with that.