One Month After Launch…Non-update.
So, I launched Murder. Theatre. Solitaire one month ago today. And I have a surprise for you all; I’m uncertain how many copies have sold, because I haven’t checked on the numbers.
That must shock some of you into a coma. I don’t blame you if that’s the case, as at first blush I’ve as much as admitted to going against the very nature of independent publishing-keeping up with the business side of things.
Perhaps it will put your mind at ease to know that I have not been avoiding promotion. I can’t afford as much deep promotion as a lot of indie-authors use, but I have been talking it up on Twitter, and mentioning it in person when applicable. I have friends who are reading it now, and that makes me happy.
I have another idea or two for promoting that won’t cost any money, which I hope to start soon.
But, I’ve not been checking numbers. Why not?
To begin with, that seems like a quick way to take the air out of my sales. The numbers for Flowers of Dionysus were not, to be frank, ever good. They fell short even of my own modest expectations. While most people would see that and read yet another pile of articles about promotion in an attempt to improve, I saw that and felt somewhat gutted. Call me a bad author for feeling that way if you must, but that just wasn’t as easy to get over and move beyond as was the lack of sales for Thank You For Ten. (That wasn’t exactly easy either.)
We’re not talking about a lack of fame and fortune here, folks. We’re talking about being very close to nothing happening. After all of the work and excitement leading into releasing that novel, (which I promoted more heavily than I am my current one), seeing that not even most of my friends and colleagues picked up the book was not easy for me to get beyond. In some ways, I’m still bummed about it.
So this time around, I’m not checking. I’ll talk it up, promote it in the best way I am capable with my personality and resources, and thank those who express their enjoyment to me. But the way I see it now, if this novel should become a hit, or even become a hit by my own modest standards, I’ll become aware of that soon enough one way or the other. To me, remaining at least someone optimistic and excited about the idea of writing, editing and publishing a novel to sell by myself is more significant that allowing depressing numbers to push me into studying targeted audience research, paying thousands of dollars to have someone do it for me, or any number of other things which would only in the end drag the bait that is my book across the eyes of more fish who may or may not even bite.
Whatever success I’m going to have will likely be because people meet and converse with me online or in person, or otherwise by word of mouth. In the future I may save money for in depth data analysis and all of the other things I still desperately do not understand and cannot afford. But for now, I’m happy to say the book has been out for a month, and I’m still happy to let people know that I’ve written a murder mystery, if they are in to such things.
I will probably also make this one available eventually in a paper version, which could change things a bit. But that’s for another post.
For now, give Murder.Theatre.Solitaire a try. You can’t go wrong on a quick-paced mystery for only two dollars, can you?
Launch! “Murder. Theatre. Solitaire.” is Live!
Well, here I am again, announcing the launch of another novel. I will admit, it’s not as scary or roller-coaster like as the first time, but nonetheless I’m happy to make my first ever murder mystery available to all of you.
For you Kindle types, you’ll find it here. Other formats are available right over here.
If you are at all a mystery lover, I ask you to give this one a try, at $1.99, and be sure to rate it and write a review if you liked it, if you please.
Off we go.
Why I’m Reading a Book About Opera
It’s actually not a book about opera, but rather about operas. One hundred of them in fact.
Appropriately titled 100 Great Operas and Their Stories, it’s a book I picked up at good will for about a dollar earlier this year. Originally published in the 1950’s, this volume by Henry W. Simon is a famous collection of plot summaries for what at least the author considered great operas. Also included are brief histories and facts pertaining to the composition and performance debuts of each piece.
Like many people, I’m familiar with a few opera tunes that have over the years entered into the popular consciousness, even outside of the opera world. (I temporary hurt my throat while cleaning the house a few weeks ago trying to sing, far too loudly, Largo al Factotum. Drawing a blank? That’s the “Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!” song. (You know it now, don’t you?) I only know its actual title from this book. I never thought to look it up before then.
Truth be told, I don’t think about opera much. “Figaro!” and a handful of other songs and instrumentals represent most of my knowledge of the art form before I picked up this book. Though I’ve looked up the songs mentioned in this book to get a sense of the sound sometimes, I’ve never listened to an entire opera, let alone attended one. (I did have to man the college radio station on Saturdays when a live feed of the Metropolitan Opera in New York was piped in, but I’d usually turn the sound down low and do homework in the booth.) That was the closest I’d come to opera knowledge until now.
And it’s mostly knowledge I’m seeking by reading this book. Concise knowledge. Familiarity with what the basics are of some of the top operas in the world. I imagine at some point in my life I will attend at least a short comic opera, but there are plenty of things I want to do before that. This isn’t a prelude to becoming an opera buff. I doubt I will ever be so. But as a performer myself, I thought at least a bare working knowledge of opera would be prudent, given that it would only cost me a dollar or so. I was unlikely to look up every individual opera online that I happen to hear something about, but with a book on my shelf, the knowledge is right there.
Believe it or not, though the summaries are short, I have, at around the halfway point of the book, detected some of the patterns and tendencies of opera plots. (At least those seemingly timeless ones from the 19th and 20th centuries.) Already I can say with the tiniest bit of authority that “it sounds like an opera twist.”
Plus, as a writer, I want to be open to story lines, characters and settings from all sources. Many operas are interpretations or re-imaginings of older stories, myths, plays, novels, even other operas. I’m never going to write the libretto of an opera, (and double-never will I compose the music for one.) But unlike studying one specific opera in great detail, this accessible volume of synopses introduces the reader to a wealth of story telling material. The arc of an opera is generally different than that of a novel, but exposure to at least the summaries of plots from enduring operas has already sparked the tiniest seed of an idea in my mind here and there for future work.
Operas borrow from novels, and there is no reason the reverse shouldn’t be true either. (In fact, I’m certain it already is, somewhere.) Be careful of copyright issues if you decide to mine this book, or opera in general, though most in this volume would be long in the public domain.
So for a buck or so I have a source not only for a basic non-opera guy’s crash education in opera, but a writer’s potential inspiration, 100 times.
Not a bad use of a little pocket change. If you ever see it in a used bookstore, pick up your own copy.
“Murder. Theatre. Solitaire.” An Overview
As I put the final touches on the formatting for my upcoming novel, (and prepare myself for the possibility that unseen mistakes will still have to be corrected in the coming days), I thought I’d take some time to acquaint you with Murder. Theatre. Solitaire. (No spoilers, of course.) Some of this I’ve mentioned before, but not all in one place, in one appeal.
It began life as a Nanowrimo project a few years ago. I had no intention of publishing it at that time. It was at first merely a challenge to myself. I had up until that point reached the word requirements for Nano multiple times, but I had never completed an entire book during November. I was determined to write an entire novel, beginning to end, within the time period. That’s why I opted to try a mystery. The genre, it seems, lends itself well to the “this happened and then this happened” flow which would be crucial in finishing a whole story so quickly.
Yet only if it wasn’t an in depth procedural. That would have required more research, and besides, Nano or not, I’m not interested in writing one of those. I knew I wanted to focus more on character and less on procedure and bureaucracy and such. Plus, I didn’t want to pursue the story from the perspective of the police. That, to me is a difficult perspective to get correct, and the focus is extra sharp from readers. I felt I would have more freedom to go the “amateur” route.
I won Nano with this idea, but thought no more about it, until months turned into years on my planned second novel, and it became clear that “Novel 2” simply wasn’t going to work. Reboots and all, I just couldn’t make it happen, and the rest of my writing was being delayed because of it. So when I finally iced that, I thought my first ever mystery deserved a chance at life beyond Nano after all. I began the usual editing and revising process on it, and here we are, less than a month from launching it.
I’ve been calling it a “quasi-cozy” mystery. It does have several elements of the “cozies,” amateur sleuth, less gore, unified setting, and so on. Cozies have anywhere from a slightly lighter tone, to a straight up darker-comedy vibe. (Like the movie “Clue.”) Those qualities appealed to me, even when this was just a Nano experiment.
Yet it is not totally a “cozy.” I don’t know if i can give many reasons why it isn’t without giving away plot points, but suffice to say, I bent or even ignored the conventions of the cozy mystery when I felt moved to do so. I started there, but chose to go in the direction the story took me, for the most part.
It’s on the shorter end of the novel spectrum, at about 54 thousand words. The story, though third person, is from the perspective of Milton Crouse, a regional, semi-professional theatre director. Milton has been working too hard lately, and his sister has insisted he take a break from theatre work for a while, so he can collect himself. He reluctantly agrees, and his sister books him for a week in November at a Vermont mansion turned retreat known as Elwood Mansion. He is forbidden to take any theatre related material with him.
He’s allowed to play cards though, which he does frequently wen trying to relax or think. Experienced in almost all versions of solitaire, Milton is rarely without a deck of cards, wherever he goes.
Yet not long after his arrival at the modest but comfortable “mansion,” one of his fellow winter guests turns up dead. A blizzard delays the police from getting in, and him from getting out. While stuck there, Milton begins to use various skills and instincts he’s developed from years in the theatre to determine who the killer may be…and if said killer is still on the property.
As with most of my fiction, I’ve gone to great care with all aspects of this story, but especially into the characters. I’ve often said that if people read my fiction, and enjoy who they have spent time with, (my characters), and find them real and memorable, I’ve done my main job as an author, and can forgive myself for other bumps in a manuscript. That being said, by the nature of the genre, this is one of the more plot-oriented pieces I’ve ever written, and I’m proud of how it turned out.
The audience for this one? Those looking for a shorter, fast-paced read. Those who enjoy character-driven situations and frictions. Mystery readers looking for an entertaining read that hearkens back, (if I’ve done my job) to the smaller literary mysteries of old. It might even make a good beach and/or airport read, though hopefully it will stick with you longer than most books so categorized.
As with Flowers of Dionysus I might post a few brief character overviews between now and the book’s release, it depends on how much time I have. But hopefully this by itself is enough to whet you interest.
I look forward to making it available for purchase next month.
Second Look at the Second Amendment
Do any of you remember that awful day when a murderer rushed into a crowded place with an ax, and within minutes killed 50 people by hacking them to death? How about the time someone stabbed about 30 people to death on a college campus with a Swiss Army knife? Or the horrific moment when an evil person forced his way into an elementary school, and strangled 25 children with his bare hands?
Of course you don’t remember those things, and neither do I. That’s because they didn’t happen. They couldn’t happen, because the time and effort it would take for one person to cause that level of carnage with such legal devices would never be allowed to accumulate; such people in these fantasy scenarios would be stopped, one way or another, before it got to that.
Give each of those fictional assailants a gun, however, and suddenly the carnage is faster, easier, and much more difficult, if not impossible to stop. You don’t have to imagine such scenarios; they happen in the United States every few weeks anymore. All three of my bogus examples at the start of this post are based on actual mass shooting events with which you are all familiar.
The guns vs. ax/knife/noose/poison/bare hands argument is not a new one. It shows up time again in the alleged “gun debate” in this country. But it only shows up so often because it’s obvious, without a true counterargument. It cannot be disputed by rational, brave, civilized societies.
But this is the United States, and increasingly, those adjectives don’t seem to apply to it.
These obvious statements about the danger of guns available in this country are met with opposition statements that are as familiar as they are wrong. You’ve heard them all before too, but let’s list some anyway:
–Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
–If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
–The only defense against tyranny is an armed society.
–The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
–The first thing Hitler did was take away the people’s guns.
–Everyone in Switzerland owns a gun, and they have no violent crime there.
And of course, say it with me:
–The Second Amendment. The Second Amendment. The Second Amendment. The Second Amendment. The Second Amendment. The Second Amendment. The Second Amendment. The Second Amendment….
Pathetic as it may be, the above responses are on the high end of what passes for the intelligence of the modern gun-advocate. You are probably just as likely, if not more likely to run into the lower-level defense offer by wild eyed, possibly drooling gun-nuts who will respond to any talk of changing gun policy with things like, “libtard,” “faggot,” “Obama (or any Democrat in the White House) is going to set up a dictatorship,” “They can have my gun when the pry it from my cold dead hands…”
Macho bullshit from people who have done nothing but exacerbate the situation. The only cold, dead hands we see with any consistency in this country anymore are those of innocent people, babies even, getting their heads blown off by legal weapons. “Good guys with guns,” were too far off and too damn late to do a fucking thing about that. But it’s all right…they will pray for all who died, and maybe throw in a bogus appeal to “mental health issues.” Then they remind the mourning communities, the country and the world of…Second Amendment, Second Amendment, Second Amendment.
Their approach, even in their moments of silence, is ineffective, cowardly, and inhumane. If that wasn’t bad enough, it’s presented, as I’ve said, most often in the coldest, foulest, most insulting and least helpful language possible in the wake of mass casualty events. I don’t want to hear anything about “not all gun owners are like that.” The loudest, richest, most influential and most angry and dangerous members of the “gun enthusiast” community are in fact, and for years and years have been, the sort of callous, heartless, cave people I’ve been talking about here. They’ve been allowed to control the so-called debate, and so they are the ones that get the spotlight, and my response.
And they are the ones that have to be countered now with the same amount of frankness and anger and lack of tact by those who want something done about the guns. Statistics don’t work. Facts don’t work. Intelligent conversation clearly does not work, and neither does shame. The murdered babies of Sandy Hook, and the complete lack of effect on policy that that brought about is proof of that.
It’s time to at least attempt to shut them up, and finally tell these lunatics, whether they be in Washington or down the street just how full of shit they are. It’s time to shout back. It’s time to rise up against a philosophy and approach to society that to the rest of the civilized world is archaic, bizarre, irresponsible and dangerous in the 21st century. It’s time to stop being afraid of considering a change, even if it means a change in the Second Amendment.
You can hear the collective gasp from the gun enthusiasts, can’t you? I’m another libtard pansy that wants to surrender my manhood to a tyrant and destroy the founding document of this great nation. If that’s my attitude, why don’t I just leave the country?
No, Johnny Gun, why don’t you leave the country, so the rest of us who are actually impacted greatly by mass murders in elementary schools and night clubs can get on with attempting real change in our society. Don’t want to leave the country? Fine, stay, but I’m not going to show you and your viewpoint any more calmness and respect than you have shown mine, just because you throw an amendment in my face. The time for polite debate is over.
So, allow me to repeat…as a society we need to take another look at the Second Amendment. Not just talk about it, not cower in the corner in the shadow of the NRA and throw out toothless terms like “common sense gun measures.” In a world where a long, sickening phalanx of disturbed bastards can purchase guns designed for warfare with more ease than I can buy a car, “common sense” is no longer a useful tactic. No, we need to examine the issue, thoroughly, honestly, and without concern for fall out, and being called nasty names by Johnny Gun and the Gun Racks.
Even if I accepted, (which I do not) that the Second Amendment applied to every single citizen, (and not just a “well-regulated” militia, even though those are the exact words in the Constitution), I don’t have to accept that it must forever remain that way. It’s called an amendment for a reason. As a nation we’ve amended the Constitution 27 times, almost always for good reasons.
We came to realize that people of color probably shouldn’t be considered only three-fifths of a human being. Even though our mighty Constitution said otherwise, we came to believe that we can’t own people. We grew up, and we amended the Constitution.
It occurred to us at some point that yes, women deserved the right to vote for their leaders, instead of relying on the men in their lives to do so. The glorious Constitution had to be altered in order for that to happen, though.
We’ve only had the right to elect our own Senators to the United States Senate for about 100 years. That’s because, as written, the Constitution didn’t allow for that. Other people chose our senators for us, until as a country we decided, “this isn’t right. Let’s change this.”
The Constitution can, has, and should be changed to reflect a changing world and an ever more educated and enlightened citizenry. It is not a scripture. It is not a document from the hand of God. It isn’t even a gift of demi-gods. The Founders were humans with an idea. A great idea in many ways, but they were only people trying to get something done over 200 years ago. We can change our minds about what they said.
We do this peacefully, through a prescribed system. It wasn’t through tyranny or violent force that each of those 27 amendments came about, but through a democratic process. Plenty of people on the losing side of that process each time were of course none too happy about it. “Blacks are not people,” a lot of whites continued to say. “Women should be submissive to men, not be allowed to vote on their own.” And so on. Those small minds had their say, the mechanism was put forth, and ultimately, they lost.
Even when the “wrong” side wins in the process of amending the all-too human Constitution, all is not lost. One of the amendments after all exists solely to cancel a previous amendment once the country realized, “we went too far on that one. It’s not working.”
And sometimes the right side loses. The Equal Rights Amendment failed. But it failed after the mechanism was in place.
Race. Gender. Booze. As a nation we’ve had the courage to ask the questions about what it means to be a civilized society. We’ve shown we can and have taken a hard, deep look at what it means to be an American society, and when we have decided, through much consideration that our founding document is steering us the wrong way, we fix it, or at least open ourselves to the possibility of change.
But when it comes to guns? Half the country (and I’m being generous with that fraction) screams that it would be unthinkable. The death of the nation. The destruction of the Constitution. The other “half” meanwhile has for too long said, “Well, um, sir, I don’t want to take your guns away, I just think that maybe if there were some common sense gun reforms…” And that great mechanism of Constitutional change is cut off before it even gets rolling.
Horseshit. If you don’t want the guns, or don’t want as many of them, get ugly about it. The gun lobby certainly has no problem being ugly. Their tone deaf and mostly money-driven response to America’s mass-shooting flavor of the month has established that sad fact already. So let’s at least force them to encounter the same mechanism that bigots and teetotalers had to face and eventually lose.
If ever there were ever a time when once again because of the original wording of the Constitution our society has begun to veer into self-destruction, it would be this borderline masturbatory obsession with guns of all kinds being available, with relative ease to just about everyone.
You love your guns. Wonderful. You love them so much that you need to be able to have whatever kind you want, as many as you want, whenever you want. You’re willing to pay the price of making mass murder of children and unarmed people easier. I understand your position now. What you personally find entertaining and exciting takes priority over even the slightest increase in the safety of your nation. Got it.
What’s that you say? The more guns you have, and the easier they are to purchase, the safer we all are as a society? How many mass shootings have you thwarted, exactly? How many can you name were thwarted by any one that was not a law-enforcement officer? How many of those few did so with a semi-automatic military style assault weapon? You can get back to me on that one; meanwhile I’ll be watching reports on an unarmed group of movie fans getting blown to pieces in a matter of seconds. (Too bad you and your superhuman reflexes weren’t there to stop it. You know, again.)
Arm everyone? So you mean, be like the highly civilized and not at all dangerous world of the Old West? That time of tranquility?
But at least you’ll be safe from the government, right? The AR-15 you insist on being allowed to walk around with at Chucky Cheese in front of my children because “Second Amendment” will serve the dual purpose of stopping a government attempt to arrest you, and compensate for whatever sexual inadequacies or “daddy-don’t-love-me” issues you’re dealing with.
I have news for you, Rambo. If the government comes, it’s coming, and there’s nothing you are going to do to even slow it down. The honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier would likely blow you and your macho friends away without so much as putting a wrinkle in his uniform. You’d be dead before your bodies even hit the skee-ball machine. All of you jackasses put together across the country wouldn’t last an hour against a single division of any of our Armed Forces.
The only thing you’re protecting by walking around in public with your guns is your ego. You like to see people afraid of you. You’re a bully and you’re full of shit. You’ve got nothing intelligent to say, and you deserve to hear nothing intelligent from me. You go ahead and terrify innocent people while you play “army man” with live ammo. I’ll use my kind weapons and point out on my blog what an insufferable and deranged knucklehead you are.
Could the Second Amendment remain as is, while we truly and effectively outlaw weapons that can fire about 13 bullets per second, and kill dozens of people in the blink of an eye? That’s a big “maybe,” but you’d need the right judges and the right attitudes, and neither are in great supply in this “debate.” More and more it is the judicial and political elevation of the Second Amendment into sacrosanct status that is making “common sense reforms” less and less likely to be proposed, let alone survive. To borrow some of Lincoln’s phraseology, if I could decrease mass shootings by keeping the Second Amendment as it is, I would do that. If I could decrease mass shootings by changing some words of the Second Amendment and leaving others alone, I would do that.
Furthermore, if I could decrease mass shootings and the number of guns, and power of same by presenting fact-based intelligent arguments as to why such steps should be taken, I would do that. Australia did it. The United Kingdom did it. Free nations have done it. As I’ve been saying here, though, I believe the time for thoughtfulness in this discussion is over.
Those who want gun control and gun reform need to get louder, angrier, meaner and more arrogant than we are. If so, at least we may provoke a Constitutional discussion that this country desperately needs on the gun issue. Lobbyists are far more powerful today than they were during previous amendment fights, and they wouldn’t play fair. But at least let’s make them spend the money and time in this battle. Let’s stand up and say that doing nothing but shrugging and praying as scores of citizens are mowed down by easily available, legal guns without a chance of defending themselves is immoral, and must come to an end.
Maybe it all starts by more people becoming willing to tell extreme gun enthusiasts to conceal such firearms up their own asses from now on.
Ty Unglebower 