The Stories We Tell

Last month, the Engineer and I were sitting at our local pub waiting for dinner. She was knitting something infinitely complex out of silk and glass beads and I was reading aloud to her from Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin. If you haven't read it (and I honestly think that you should) it begins with a runaway horse, loose on the streets of New York City near the turn of the last century. It's a beautiful piece of writing and I quite enjoyed reading it aloud to really experience the poetry of the piece.

Then our food arrived and I put the book down because books and burgers don't mix.

Putting it down on the table, I noticed that the couple at the next table had been listening to me read. Not because I was reading loudly -- I was barely audible above the basketball game playing on the TV nearby -- but I like to think it was because people instinctively like being told stories.

That moment touched me in a way that made me pause despite the meal getting cold in front of me to take stock of this thing that we do.  Telling stories is a vital part of who I am. I've often been told that I seem to think in anecdotes, and it's not far off. I use stories as a way for me to absorb and understand the world. I look for the beginnings, middles, and ends and attempt as best I can to celebrate the stories unfolding all around me.

Sharing them -- mine or anyone else's -- is a tradition that goes back to the handprints on the cave wall and probably further even than that. And reading aloud to my wife is something I don't do as often as I used to (we shared the entire Harry Potter series this way) and it's something I should do more often.

Yesterday Hank Green of the Vlogbrothers and SciShow announced a new convention entirely devoted to the power and magic of stories. That's the actual copy from their Facebook page, by the way: "created to celebrate the power and magic of story-telling."

I bought my ticket immediately because efforts like this a true and noble causes. I won't be a presenter, though I offered myself as a volunteer. Which is nice in a way, because when you're a presenter at conventions you often get just a keyhole view of the convention and I really love the idea of spending a chilly fall weekend in a crowd who is excited about celebrating storytelling. I mean, just imagine it: an entire convention center filled to the rafters with devotees of the vehicle we use for passing on our culture and the empathy that comes from imagining ourselves into other lives, that which in the end most makes us human. 

Who doesn't want to walk among that crowd? How does it get better than that? 

Anyway, I hope to see you there.

Throwback Thursday: Why I'm not worried about the Generation of the Book

This post was first published 24 April 2012 in a slightly different version.

The other day, I was wandering aimlessly through the campus of Pacific Lutheran University (these things happen) so of course, I stopped and wandered into their bookstore.

As I walked in, I noticed that a longstanding prediction of mine was coming true: All of the displays were YA books. Every last one of them. Down the aisles, they were selling required reading and textbooks, but the endcaps and the tables were piled with books that are generally considered "Young Adult" titles.

It hit me: The Harry Potter Generation has taken over.

(Cue instant graying of hair.)

My generation, "Generation X" has many names. We're GenX, the MTV Generation,the 13th Generation, and my favorite from France: "Génération Bof". (Bof means "Whatever".) Whatever you call us, we are the children who cut our teeth on Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Our childhoods brought us Star Wars, ET, Indiana Jones, and MTV. We sent MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice up the pop charts and turned around a few years later and supplanted them with Pearl Jam and Nirvana. And we have been told that we're the last generation to learn cursive script and the last to learn to type on a typewriter.

We are a disparate lot. We read, sure, but it wasn't a Thing with us. And I certainly don't recall us riding into college on a wave of our own literary tastes. In fact, we arrived and smacked into a wall of our parents' literary tastes and were ordered to climb it.

This seems better to me somehow.

And although the generational naming thing is more a product of news headlines than science, after us came what is often called "Generation Y" who are most noted for growing up never having known a world without an internet. These are the so-called "digital natives" the culture of the electronic. Yet I am inclined to think they might more properly be known as the generation that put their foot down and demanded their own literary canon.

For all the pissing and moaning about a generation that doesn't recognize originality, or is addicted to plagiarism, the Millenials (as we're calling them at the moment, apparently) are carving original niches out of every genre. It is a generation that breathed life into Tumblr and Youtube, and gave backbone to Steampunk.

Is it a mashup culture? Certainly, but culture has always been about the mashup. The Lord of the Rings is a mashup of Arthurian Legend, Norse Sagas and the Bible. I mentioned this in my post about SOPA: Our society's conversations have always been awash with quotes from Rhett Butler not giving a damn to Indiana Jones making it up as he went along. Heck, Harold Bloom reckons (and not entirely without merit) that most of what we consider to be modern and cosmopolitan ideas including most of what we know of humor and humanity were cribbed directly from William Shakespeare.

Do that sort of thing these days, and you would be hearing from Master Shakespeare's solicitor.

But this is not -- as is often alleged -- just a culture of the cribnote. It is also a creative culture, and dare I say, a literary culture all its own. The digital natives are restless and they are reinventing the world around them, and no matter how many fingers the RIAA and the MPAA summon to shore up the dam, they are pulling it down and revealing the rusted scaffolding beneath.

They have taken up the means of production, bypassed the gatekeepers, and flooded the world in an ocean of content. A vast, raging sea of unorganized, unedited, undisciplined content. It's raw, and unfettered, and as like to shock you as it is to enlighten you. And much of it that is good will be lost by the sheer size of the pile that you have to shift through in hopes of finding anything.

But it has always been that way, hasn't it? The chaff falls away under the millstones of the market and we find the wheat... eventually.

I hope that is still so. I really do. Because most of what we know of literature grew up within those protective walls that we've been so steadily tearing down. And wouldn't it be the cruelest trick of all if a generation of books manages to accidentally kill them as a medium by making it impossible for their creators to survive on their proceeds?

Too cynical? Yes. Yes indeed, Scott, too cynical by far.

At least I have reason to hope so.

Books will survive. Of course they will. As an object, as a symbol, as a medium for storytelling, as a bundle of bytes and bits, they have a devoted following among even the youngest readers. The average book blogger on Tumblr is in their mid twenties and more are arriving all the time. There is a whole world of young people moving up through the ranks, struggling to find their voice, to tell their tales. The formats change and evolve and storytelling trundles ever onward, reinvented, rehashed, retold by each succeeding generation.

Want proof that literature and books in general will survive? Walk into any bookstore (assuming you can find one) and ask the booksellers how large the Young Adult section was ten years ago. Then go look at how big it is now.

And this is not just shelf after shelf of trifling teenage Drama, Harry Potter ripoffs, and vampires. Some of the most exciting and innovative writers currently operating are shelved there: David Levithan, M.T. Anderson, Marcus Zusak, Maureen Johnson, Neil Gaiman, Laurie Halse Anderson, Dave Eggers, and John Green to name just a few. And their fans are motivated, engaged, fired-up... about books. Don't believe me? Let me Google that for you. Truly, an amazing and literate generation came of age waiting in the lines outside the bookstore at 1:00 am, parents and children huddled together in the cold, counting down the minutes to the next Harry Potter book's release.

Welcome. You've made it. And you've made it your own.

If Rowling taught us nothing else, she taught us that storytelling will out. Where stories need telling, there will be a place for people who know how to tell them. Will we be able to support ourselves on the proceeds? Only time will tell, but for my money, the Generation of the Book will not lightly relinquish their stories, nor those who tell them.

How to take an author photo

First of all, I am not a photographer, I'm a writer and a graphic designer. I've studied photography in a peripheral way, but not as a professional. So this is a general post about aesthetics more than anything. In that as in all things: To thine own self be true.

Before we went out on Saturday to chase the will-o-the-wisp that is the perfect authorial photo, I took a look around online to see what other authors did. I was hoping for a to-do list and ended up with a pretty extensive to-don't list to go with it.

Did we find that "perfect" picture? Well, let's say it ended up perfect for me. No matter how you feel about my photo, though, that research helped me make a better author photo, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Do

• Be in focus. This is more your photographer than you, but you get to pick the pic you use so be aware that soft focus just makes you look like you went to Glamor Shots. Also, the best outfit and artistic composition in the world won't help if I can't tell it's you.
• Be well lit. Natural lighting is the way to go if you don't want to invest in studio lighting. A slightly overcast day is awesome; a photographer friend refers to clouds as "God's diffusion filter".  If your face is too shadowed to discern, you'll have to shoot at higher speed (often resulting in a grainy picture) or lighten the photo in Photoshop (same result).
• Look like you wrote the book. The biggest objection my publisher had to my original photo was that I wasn't smiling. I didn't look funny and it's a funny book. If you're a crime novelist, a steely stare is well and good, but don't glower on the back cover of your romance novel.
• Dress comfortably. Author photography isn't usually a formal occasion. Don't look like you just came in from doing the gardening, but a tie or dress aren't necessary either. If you're comfortable, it shows; it's as simple as that.
• Pose comfortably. This goes for any portrait as far as I'm concerned, but that's another blog post. Don't lay down, but don't look like you have a stick up your butt either.
• Look as much like yourself as possible. This goes back to the second point, but deeper. The photo I chose wasn't as much about being a good photo as it was about picking something that looked like me. 
• Get a second opinion. Your publisher, your agent, or even better, a loved one can tell you if you look comfortable, happy, and ready to sell some books. "This is the one that looks the most like you" said my wife, the person who knows and likes me the most. Who can second-guess that kind of input?

Don't

• Blend into your backdrop. Mind what you have behind you, and stand out. If it's not too broad of a brush to paint with, authors tend to be the sort that blend in by preference. There are times when that is cool... this is not one of the times.
• Use a cheap-o camera Unless it's top of the line, skip the cell phone camera. If the images start to look grainy when you blow them up bigger than 5"x7", it's the wrong camera to use. (Or you need to improve your lighting, see above.) Borrow a decent camera or find someone who has a decent camera and get them to take the shot.
• Confuse this with an actor's headshot. Actors are trying to look like they could be anyone, play any role if you'd just ask them to, but especially leading man/lady if you please. An author should look like someone who wrote the book you're holding in your hands.
• Use a photo you don't have reproduction rights to. Here's a difficult thing for people to understand: Just because you're in a photo doesn't mean you have the rights to use that photo however you like. Unless you hire someone specifically to create an image for you (work for hire) and your agreement says the image is for publicity and publication, the rights to a photo belong to the photographer. If you use it in a way that was not intended, you are violating their copyright and could be sued.
• Use a photo where you cannot see your face. We want to get to know the person behind the words. That's hard to do if your face is covered or you're so shadowed or far from the camera that we cannot make out your facial expression.
• Clutter the photo. It's tempting to have a ton of writing paraphernalia or research books or whathaveyou surrounding you. It's okay, you don't need to use your author photo to convince anyone of the depth of your research or how seriously you take being a writer.
• Do the "I am deep in thought" pose. Keep your chin out of your hands, eriously, you're not convincing anyone.

Bonus Tip

• e-Ink is a thing. My publisher rightly pointed out that the image has to work in high contrast black & white, not just color. e-Ink screens cannot display color and there are millions of ereaders like the Kindle Paperwhite still using e-Ink instead of backlight screens.

Composition is key

We've discussed "The rule of thirds" before. As a compositional shorthand for photographers and graphic designers, it's the old standby. But there are other rules of composition that help you align elements in a pleasing manner whether it's photography or a book cover.

Please note: You can skip most of these concerns by hiring a professional. It's not as expensive as you might think and these photos will be seen by everyone who reads your book, visits your blog, follows you on Twitter or Facebook, or just reads your bio on your publisher's website. It's important. As I often say, writing is a business, invest in your business.

That said, if you don't have a publisher doing the cover and have to choose between paying for a decent cover and paying a photographer to take my author photo, I would opt for the graphic designer. Not because I am a graphic designer, but because though my photographer friends might disagree, I think it's easier to accidentally get a great photo than it is to stumble into great graphic design. (If you want to try it, though, I previously wrote about cover design here in this post Judged by its Cover: An introduction to book design. Good luck to you!)

While I was thinking about this today, this lovely video on the basics of photo composition crossed my desk from the folks at National Geographic. It's worth noting that the first thing discussed is the Rule of Thirds, but there are other rules and ways to break them that are worth discussing.

My wife does this instinctively. As I said, she's almost irritatingly talented sometimes. The rest of us have to think about it, but once you start seeing composition you'll start noticing it everywhere.

Howard Carter: Cover reveal, release date, author photos!

If you follow me on social media, you already know this and I apologize for repeating myself. 

Howard Carter Saves the World has a cover and a release date!

The final edits are complete, the cover is locked, and we will finally get Howard's adventures in our hands on April 14th! The release will happen online simultaneously in the US and UK. I'll provide a preorder link as soon as there is one.

An ebook release is the initial plan, followed by a print edition if it sells well, so if you like reading about Howard Carter and his strange adventures, tell your friends because in order to write more, this one needs to do well.

The cover reveal:

Cover images care of Crooked Cat Publishing

The main illustration is one of mine. I might do a 'Cover Story' post about it at some point, but since I was illustrator, not designer on this one, I might not have all that much additional to say about it.

Author Photos, or Scott wasn't made for this modeling thing...

When my publisher was updating their website recently they didn't like how serious the photo I sent them was. It was taken by my wife, Kristin. It was all writerly, I'm sitting at the window of a cafe in Portland and staring out the window with literary gravitas... or so I imagined.

My publisher staged what he called "A social media intervention" and grabbed my profile photo from Twitter to use as a placeholder. It was a still taken from a webcam conversation where I was laughing rather a lot, so it was happy and looked like someone who wrote a sci fi farce you'd actually want to read. But it also pixelated like crazy.

Needless to say, they asked for a new picture. 

I was going to be spending part of Saturday in Tacoma anyway, and you couldn't ask for a better setting for author photos. Brick walls to lean against, walls to perch on, cafes in which to stare portentiously out the windows, staircases, park benches, fountains, sculptures to play with... 

The rules were: you have to be smiling and it has to work in black & white because people have Kindle paperwhites.  The rest was a matter of putzing around downtown Tacoma's cafes and museums with a camera.

My wife is an excellent photographer and I'm a terribly insecure model. I suck at being at ease in front of a lens, but she knows how to get the shot when I think she's pointing at something else. That's a rare talent, but she's a talented woman.

The nice thing about being married to your photographer is you get to keep the outtakes...

This is me remembering not to fall into the fountains behind The Museum of Glass.

This is me deciding Not to Fall Off of a Wall.

Save me!! Don't make me take any more pictures!!

Seriously, Tacoma's a great town, Thanks for playing host this weekend!

The results are in the new header for this blog, or you can see it on my official author's bio at Crooked Cat. 

Futurist Fridays: This is not a flying car

New Feature: I plan to spend Fridays thinking about the future... well, thinking about the future even more than I usually do.  And in my typical style, today's Futurist Friday is posting late.  (Why is the future never here when we want it to be?)

The news has been lighting up recently with "OMG We Finally Get a Flying Car!" stories.  It's a moment I've been waiting for my entire life. The future is here!

Or is it?

What they're talking about is the Aeromobile 3.0 which is billing itself as a flying car.

That sure is neat. Neat and disappointing. Just like all the previous "Flying Cars" that have been trumpeted since the concept was conceived (probably about ten minutes after the invention of the car itself).

Look, I want the futurific world we were promised too, but this is not it it. As a piece of engineering, it is no doubt brilliant. Meeting the demands of aviation and transportation authorities at the same time? That's quite a trick. But it's still not the futurific flying car we've all been dreaming about. I hate to bust bubbles, but it's not even really a step towards it. This isn't a flying car, it's a light airplane that happens to be road legal. That's neat, but not all that original; carplanes have been a thing for decades and none of them have gone anywhere commercially. There's even a category for them: "Roadable Aircraft".

This is the Taylor Aerocar III that is currently on display at Seattle's Museum of Flight. It was designed and built in the 1940's.  You can see another one on the wing in this article from the Daily Mail.

Photo by MarkWarren, used under Creative Commons License

There are other people pushing this than the company who made the video, though, so apparently they're going to be a Thing now, at least for awhile and for people in a certain income bracket. But let's be honest: it's neither practical nor particularly awesome since you still need a runway for taking off and landing the thing.

I doubt any state or municipality in the world is going to let you deploy wings and take off as you approach a traffic jam.  Aeromobile is apparently suggesting that governments begin building grass landing strips alongside every highway but does anyone really think that's likely? Either way, it's a long way from "Where we're going we don't need roads."

Does anyone believe that the people who can afford this thing will keep it around as anything other than a toy? It lacks even the semblance of practicality.  Lamborghinis are neat too, but how many of those do you see around? Western Washington is one of the wealthiest areas of one of the wealthiest countries in the world and I can't think of the last time I saw one tooling down the road. I was passed by a Ferrari California the other day though, but I digress... this is -- at best -- an airborne Lambo.

So now what?

The kind of engineering revolution that is needed to get most of humanity off the tarmac and up into the skies just isn't here. Maybe once DARPA finishes their I-kid-you-not-this-is-real Transformer project we could see the needle move on this. Milspec technology has a way of finding its way into the mainstream much faster than the toys of the super rich ever do.

View image | gettyimages.com

Look, I'm a dyed in the wool futurist, but even I don't believe that the sky cities of the Jetsons and all those Amazing Stories magazine covers are within reach. The engineering challenges are too steep, the costs too high, and the current technologies too convenient to really spur the kind of investment of time needed to do that.

And how ubiquitous would it be if no one could afford to buy one?  As long as even "Roadable Aircraft" are in the airborne Lamborghini range, that's unattainable for at best 90% of humanity. And then there's the licensing and training required to fly one.  (After Google and Elon Musk crack driverless cars, maybe driverless flying cars?)

Sure, it's a car and it can fly, but is it really a "Flying Car" as we've come to define them as a culture? Unrealistic as they may be, there is a commonly-held mental image of a flying car and this doesn't hit any of those sweet spots.  We want a flying Delorean or a spinner from Bladerunner, not a Cessna that mated with a BMW.  At least this VW concept car is close even if it is ridiculous and unstable.

The truth is, we need a little more ridiculous in our lives and everytime I look at a calendar I sigh a little that our lives lack the levels of ridiculosity that we were promised. 

Of course, the real trouble with the Aeromobile is that it doesn't live up to my Buck Rogers dreams. And it's not lost on me that my expectations are completely unrealistic and not nearly grounded in reality.

That's the messed up thing about dreams. Sometimes they suck the magic out of reality. But it's no reason to stop dreaming.