Friday, September 7, 2012

Update of sorts on book 2, and stuff. Part 1, maybe


.OK, so, I still suck at blogging. I'm not even sure what I want to blog about right now. I keep telling myself if I ever want to make it as a writer, I've got to up my output. I get lost in my head sometimes, and I can't find my way out.
Anyway, book 2, The Lines We Cross, is with the editor/ proofers. I'm waiting on them and on cover art. That's it. Don't worry, I'm fucking done. I promise. Sometimes I have a spark of genius, something I need to go back over and check, some piece of dialogue I need to add or take out, but I'm fucking done.
I can beg your forgiveness for my tardiness, or I can just do the fucking work, and putting the fucking thing out there.
Maybe it's true of all second books. I don't know. I do know, this one was much harder than the first. I touched on deeper subjects, some of them political, and I tried to do so without trivializing or completely disrespecting people whose opinions might differ from my own.

Not that the book is really all that political. I don't think it is really more political than it needs to be to be relevant and reveal a snap shot of the world in which we live right now.

I believe if you're going to enter into a political discourse, or use the issues of the day as touchstones, you have a responsibility to show the world the way it is, not what you think it is or want it to be. You do not have all the answers, shut the fuck up.

To do otherwise, I think that it is the definition of hubris. I'm a four star fuck up. What fucking answers do I have for anyone?

I read a lot. Well, OK, I used to read a lot. Mostly detective fiction. This may surprise you, might I never really got into Men's Action/ Adventure. Didn't like pulp until my mid to late twenties. The writers I liked were the ones who lifted the genre into the literary realm. Most of these writers were liberals.

They provided much joy, entertainment, and in some cases, heroes for me to look up to. I learned a lot of from them. I learned the power of words, what they can mean when woven together correctly. A well written novel will expand both your mind and knowledge base, give you information you didn't have, and show you different ways of looking at the world and the people in it. Food, single malt scotch, weaponry, philosophy, survival and preparedness, women, music, poetry. These are all passions of mine that were either celebrated, show cased, or utilized in ways that fermented in my young mind, and often led me down wonderful rabbits holes looking for knowledge.

They made me think!

But sometimes I go back and read the same stories, and I realize just how completely one sided many of them are. The complicated, multifaceted, often conflicted characters I'd thought of as heroes really aren't always that intelligent or insightful. Like their creators, their complexities are very often nothing more than shallow concessions, brightly colored vestments, draped over extremely narrow world views, often held by people who have never considered themselves wrong in anything. Their view of the issues largely romantic dogmatism, their treatment of opposing viewpoints rarely meaningful, honest, or deep.


Simply put, they love the smell of their own farts, and look down on you for not doing so as well.

Anyone that tells you they have all the answers, deserves to get punched in the fucking throat.
Hard.

This is probably not the proper tact one should take as a struggling writer. If I really wanted to get out there, and make a name for myself, and make some money, the thing to do would be to choose a side, and defend it, right or wrong, come hell or high water. To tow a party line. To speak solely in idiotic bumper sticker slogans and bullshit euphemisms that do absolutely nothing but alienate people who don't agree with you, while galvanizing sycophantic followers into a rabid cult with literally nothing of substance to offer the world.

I don't say this because I'm a poor, pissed off, hack indie with a very narrow base. As much as I would really like for book 2 to be some sort of breakout work, to have steady, real money coming in, and the validation writers yearn for, my work on the shelf, I'm not going to do that. Despite the usual pretensions writers suffer, or indulge ourselves, I know my I'm not ever going to be a literary dynamo. I'll never be the cool kid, A list, whatever. I don't care. I don't care if New York likes me. I don't care if a bunch of tenured liberal college professors who write the same story over and over again, ever recognize my work. Men soft of hand, weak of heart, limp of dick. I don't give a fuck. I just don't care. I did for a long time. I wanted to be a part of that world. I thought, for a short while, I was on my way. To what? To associate with people who hate everything I believe in? Maybe be the token conservative, despite the fact that I'm obviously not a fucking conservative?

Fuck them.

My readers are veterans. Gun nuts. Welders and diesel mechanics. The occasional lost house wife. Alcoholics, and addicts and broken people. I have a strong suspicion a good portion of my reader base doesn't actually read all that much. Which kind of makes it even more of an honor that they read my work.








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