I am SUCH a nerd. I spent a good thirty minutes yesterday googlating how to properly sign a book. Apparently there is a whole arcane system of rituals involving placement, pen, personalization, punctuality, pears, poplars.
Alliteration may have just gotten the best of me. Again. It’s a weakness, I admit.
I took my steps down this dark internet path for a very important reason: my books came! The copies sent to me by Cool Well Press (my publishers) arrived in a big happy brown box that made me happy, especially considering that they arrived right as I was walking out the door to go to my non-writey job. Double surprise: the Deadgirl paperbacks are the big ass trade paperbacks, not the little standard paperbacks I thought they were gonna be.
Naturally I just tossed the whole shebang in my truck and drove to work, making sure to drop a copy into the pool of high school dancers / dance teachers that were prancing and wheeling in my theater that night. Because marketing, that’s why. Demographics, etc. I’m not wearing a suit right now, but if I was, oh man. The grown-up sounding marketing terms would be buffeting your sensibilities like a handful of shurikens tossed into a tornado.
Which, I mean, ow. Anyway. I’ll go back to ogling my books now. Or playing Mass Effect. You know, whichever. Writing more books might be a good idea as well.
– B.C. Johnson
I spent Valentine’s in Temecula, doing wine-stuff. Tasting, drinking, spilling in moving vehicles.
Wait, before you get mad at the last one: it involved a parking lot, a bathrobe, and a poor attempt at juggling. I won’t go into it, but just know that it was wild.
A few things I learned about myself, about vacationing, and about wine:
1. Even after having had it explained to me, I have no idea what “tannins” are. I suspect tiny elves.
2. Women are to werewolves as sangria is to silver bullets. Yeah, I went SAT Prep on that one.
3. Jacuzzi’s are more fun when you have to snap caution tape to get to them.
4. A hint that you are lying to yourself: “If I bring my laptop, I can do some work. Just in the morning, before we go anywhere.”
5. Room service is the key to World Peace. I haven’t quite figured out the specifics, but give me time.
Have a great post-Valentine’s Day. And remember: if you give your gal flowers a week after a successful Valentine’s Day, it’s worth about a billion points.
– B.C.
Raymond Chandler, famous author of detective noir fiction, said it best:
“When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.”
I’ve always loved this bit of advice. Now it doesn’t have to turn every slow scene into a gun battle, but the idea is wonderful: when in doubt, tension. When in doubt, action. When in doubt, raise the stakes. The introduction of a “Chandler’s Gunman” puts a point on any scene. The air becomes thicker, the characters more desperate, and more importantly, it helps to clear away the bullshit.
Have two characters bogged down by indecision, personal conflict, or (worse) agreeing with each other? Add someone or something they have to deal with. Something they can’t ignore, something that unites them or divides them or just does something. Chandler’s Gunman can be a guy with a gun, or a fire, or a realization, or a death, or even just that piece of time-sensitive vital information that gets our lazy protagonists off their asses.
Chandler’s Gunman saved the manuscript I’m working on. Just this week, in fact.
I’ll admit an ugly truth – writer’s block exists. Now I’ll admit an even more uggo truth: it exists because writers think everything they wrote is awesome and etched in awesome stone. Unwillingness to adapt, to change, to ride out what the story is rather than what you thought it was going to be.
I had a safe place that slowed my characters down. I had a bunch of backup they could call to solve their problems, a fortress they could return to, a base camp. My story, in addition to growing long and boring (oh yeah), had ground to a halt.
I blew the fortress up. Fire, flames, death. I hideously murdered all of the friendly people there, introduced the nasty S.O.B. who did the chopping, and walked away from the wreckage laughing my author head off. In one fell swoop I’d saved my manuscript, introduced a villain, and pushed the story into its third act.
A man with a gun works wonders.
Yesterday I signed my first book deal. I had reactions of my own, namely extreme excitement combined with an odd sensation of worrying vertigo. It turns out finding the handle of one of your dreams and finally getting a grip on it is just as terrifying as it is satisfying – I find myself thinking of the work ahead. Of which there is plenty: having signed with a small company, I’m about to get an exciting crash course in marketing.
It doesn’t feel like a brass ring, or like a lottery ticket. It feels like another step, if it is a by-and-large HUGE and wonderful step filled with bacon cheeseburgers and puppies and happy things. It made me wonder, what would previous incarnations of myself think?
26 and 7
Bobby (26) : “Hey, seven-year-old me! We finally got published!”
Bobby (7) : “Well duuuuh. Was your story about cats or penguins, like my story?”
Bobby (26): “Sorry bud. I’m afraid I’ve pretty much retired myself from ‘anthropomorphic animals go somewhere wacky’ genre.”
Bobby (7): “I don’t even know who you are. Is Raphael still your favorite ninja turtle?”
Bobby (26): “Well, obviously.”
Bobby (7): “Wanna play Power Rangers? I’m the Red Ranger!”
Bobby (26): “What? That’s ridiculous . . . I’m the Red Ranger.”
26 and 12
Bobby (26) : “Hey, twelve-year-old me! We finally got published!”
Bobby (12): “Yeah, sure. Hey, so you’re from the future then?”
Bobby (26) : “Obviously.”
Bobby (12): “So . . . wow, you’re tall.”
Bobby (26): “Very true. I know you’re shorter than all the girls right now, and pretty fat, and your haircut is . . . really, a ponytail? Anyway, it gets a lot better.”
Bobby (12): “We’re still fat, I see.”
Bobby (26): “Well, we get much thinner. Then after high school we get REALLY fat, but then we get thin again. Now we’re somewhere in the middle because – you know what? Listen. That’s not really what I’m here to talk about. I’m saying – ”
Bobby (12): “Quiet. Be honest with me. Have we touched a booby yet? Don’t bullshit me here.”
Bobby (26): “That’s not really important – ”
Bobby (12): “You shut your cow mouth. Boobies. Touched. Go.”
Bobby (26): “Little Bobby . . . ”
Bobby (12): “Remember how much I’m getting bullied right now? I will end you.”
Bobby (26): “Well . . . yeah. All the time. It’s pretty awesome.”
Bobby (12): “WoooooOOOOO!”
Bobby (26): “Sigh”
26 and 16
Bobby (26): “Hey, sixteen-year-old Bobby! We just got published!”
Bobby (16): “Um, how old are you?”
Bobby (26): “I’m . . . twenty six. I’m twenty six. Why?”
Bobby (16): “So, we got published like, again?”
Bobby (26): “What do you mean ‘again’?”
Bobby (16): “You published like, your ninth book, right?”
Bobby (26): “No, it’s the first one. I dont . . . ”
Bobby (16): “THE FIRST ONE? Are you HIGH?”
Bobby (26): “We don’t really get into drugs – ”
Bobby (16): “You, just now, ten years from now, publish your first book. Wow. Wow On a Pogo Stick. Were you kidnapped somewhere in the intervening years? Did you overcome a debilitating illness? Fight in a war?”
Bobby (26): “No, no, and no. It’s a slow process, dude.”
Bobby (16): “Most authors write a book in a year, right? How many books have been fully completed in ten years?”
Bobby (26): “Hold on. A book a year is pretty fast. And besides, you don’t start seriously writing for another four years.”
Bobby (16): “What? Why?! Oh, oh. College. Right. I guess that makes sense.”
Bobby (26): “Oh, uh . . . ”
Bobby (16): “What? Oh what now? You didn’t GO TO COLLEGE?!”
Bobby (26): “I went . . .”
Bobby (16): “Oh Jesus, man.”
Bobby (26): “So, to uh, answer your earlier question . . . two books.”
Bobby (16): “I don’t even want to talk to you anymore.”
Bobby (26): “I’m sorry, dude.”
Bobby (16): “You know what? Whatever. What’s the booby situation?”
Bobby (26): “Excellent, really.”
Bobby (16): “One out of three ain’t bad, I guess. We have a show tonight, wanna come? It’ll freak everyone out.”
Bobby (26): “Sure! I’ll jump and be like ‘I’m from the future, where the zombies are! Ahhhhh!'”
Bobby (16): “Ha, nice. There aren’t . . . ”
Bobby (26): “No, no zombies. But I’ve got some bad news for you about vampire movies . . . “
Let’s not bury the lead: I think I may be in the last few hours of one of the best days of my life.
So far, obviously. Someday when I’m riding a pterodactyl into a week-long game of naked laser tag (in space!), I’ll look back on this auspicious Wednesday and think: Was there really a time before I had a pterodactyl? What in the hell did I spend all of my time doing back then? Not riding pterodactyls, that’s what.
First off: I nailed a job interview. This is the least exciting of the three things that made my day, though noteworthy, certainly.
My agent also sent me a publishing contract, which is a sentence I’ve wanted to write my whole life. Eight months ago I didn’t have a contract, or an agent. Just two manuscripts (one particularly dusty, and liable to stay that way) sitting in my hard drive, playing harmonica and singing prison songs. But not like, “Jail House Rock” prison songs. The sad ones, about “nobody knowing” and the like. A miserable state, happily ended.
The funny thing is, we haven’t decided if we’re taking the contract. Lots of questions still to be had, especially for a raw green publishing newbie like myself. Percentages, rights, maths – all of the stuff I spent most of my academic career trying to get the hell away from. My agent and I are talking about small presses and big presses and working out the details but here’s the best part:
None of that matters.
My worst case scenario at the moment is getting published.
The third thing that put a nice fucking cherry on top of all of this: today was the last day of NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. And I finished, at around nine o’clock. 50,000 words this month.
I’m feeling lucky. Tired. Filled with a voice telling me to enjoy the moment, which is so not a problem. I tried to watch TV, I tried to play some PS3, I tried to tell myself that now was the time to take a much needed break from writing.
So naturally I came here, to type it out.
Fuckin’ writers.
I blog, therefore, I am.
I’ve had a few blogs before, here and there, scraps of personal info or jokes or comics starring action figures (hilarious, but unprofitable).
I’m first and foremost a writer, and I thought I’d use this particular space to shake loose all the random thoughts, memories, and sea-shanties pertaining to that most hallowed profession. Well, maybe not most hallowed. I mean, we authors basically enjoy “lying to people“ and “wearing sweatpants,” and other than drug-dealer, writer is the only job that allows for both in great quantities.
I’m B.C. Johnson, and I’ll be your host this evening. Actually it’s the middle of the day, and I’m supposed to be working on my manuscript. But I couldn’t help myself – today, I received my first offer to be published(!). A contract is in the mail, folks, and I almost exploded from sheer childish explosive, exploding glee. Whether I’ll be signing it has a lot to do with stuff out my hands, the content of the contract, how many sheep it requires I trade them, etc.
I told my agent I wouldn’t mind being paid in Assassin’s Creed games and Buffy Blurays, but apparently that isn’t “industry standard.”
My first novel sits on my hard drive and in a box, where it will likely remain until the Earth is taken over by Morlocks. My second novel, however, is out there. And someone wants it. Its a difficult feeling to express, but its sort of like OOOOOHHHHHHHHHHOOOOLLLLYYYCRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP.
Basically.
When my brain remembers how to function properly, I’ll be back here to try to sort it all out.
– B.C. Johnson
Meet the girl who just won't die . . .
All the world's a stage
On the road again...
We all go a little mad sometimes
This is the end, my friend
B.C. Johnson 