Drinking from the font of ideas (Also Laser Sharks!)

This morning, I found out that some brilliant and/or daft people mounted a laser on a shark just to prove that they could. I rushed over here with every intention of telling you all about how I was right and we really are living in the future. I mean, flying cars are all well and good, but after laser sharks, everything else is just gravy, right?

And then my inner geek became my outer geek and I said: "Heh. Dude... Laser Shark!"

Talk about a gift that just keeps on giving; you could do almost anything with a premise like that. Almost any story can be grafted on. Science fiction? Of course; c'mon, that writes itself. How about something hard...
Military Fiction: The brave men and women in uniform who labor shoulder-to-should to bring together the ultimate weapon, lasers and sharks!
Techno-thriller: Terrorists (there are always terrorists) hijack the laser sharks and threaten to loose them upon an unsuspecting world.
Mystery: A body washes up on a desolate stretch of the Australian coast, burned and bitten beyond recognition. Was it murder? What could possibly have committed such a heinous act?
Spy Thriller: A foreign power is developing a secret weapon at their base beneath a volcanic island.
Romance: A handsome marine biologist meets a winsome laser engineer with a dreadful secret.
Steampunk: Aetheric amplification of Sol's brilliant light reaps unexpected rewards in the submarine base of the nefarious Doctor Villainous Deeds!

The list goes on and on and on. Ideas tumbling over ideas in a rush to get their hands on a real-live laser shark. And it occurred to me that this week, of all weeks, was the perfect opportunity to talk about where ideas come from.

Are they delivered to me by Laser Sharks?

Sadly, no.

I started thinking about this when thriller writer Joseph Finder said this:

Then, he said this:

And got me thinking about just how fertile is the daily news crawl that crosses my screen. Not just for things like digital organ thieves and shark-mounted lasers. Take that same Facebook-borne logic leap that Joe was talking about and graft on a story about an MI-6 codebreaker found locked in a bag in his locked apartment and you have the material for quite a thrill ride.

How about a conservator in the rare book room at Brown University that found an engraving signed by Paul Revere stuck in a medical book? How did it get there? Who put it there? Were they hiding it from someone? Historical fiction, thriller, romance, the world's your oyster with a core story like that. And how about a 400 year old map that was found to have a fortress marked in invisible ink that could lead to a lost city in West Virginia? Really! Where can't you go with a lead like that?

Historical fiction and thrillers aren't your thing? Want something that's sweet, but just a little creepy? How about this story from NPR about how a baby's cells lurk in mom's tummy long after the baby is born.  If you're not interested in sweet and want to focus on the creept, there are cannibal shrimp are invading the gulf coast, Iceland is sending tourists into the heart of dormant volcanoes,  and scientists are getting blood samples and DNA from 5,300 year old Alpine mummy.  

That reminds me, there's a GIANT statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of tombs, being carted around Seattle like a parade float.  That's either a horror story, the next Indiana Jones movie, or a lawsuit waiting to happen. Maybe all three.

Speaking of lawsuits, I found out this week that space lawyers are apparently a real thing. My high school career councilor really dropped the ball on that one. But you want a comedic legal thriller? Fine. A bear fell out of a tree and led to a lawsuit that could literally change the face of copyright law in America. yes, really.

Mysteries? A guy carrying a big bag of money had a heart attack on a train platform at Penn Station and no one knows where the money came from. And how about those thieves that staged an elaborate movie-worthy heist in Connecticut to steal a few truckloads of pharmaceuticals? Heck, just today I found out about a robot petting zoo and a hexapodal walking car that will, oh yes, it will be my next ride.

But I write Children's books you say? This week provided me with a harmonica-playing pachyderm, a kidnapped penguin, and an escaped Tokyo parakeet made it home because it could tell the cops its address. No excuses.

So where do I get my ideas? I pay attention. Because in the end, it's not coffee, or my favorite pen, or a special table at the coffee shop, or mystical muse that brings me my stories. It's not even the friends and news sites that dropped those leads into my inbox. I bring me my stories. I get them by paying attention, by collecting all the various bits of the history that came before me and the world around me right now. And I find the bits that fit together but don't fit with anything else.  And the glory of this weird enterprise of writing is that anyone else can take in the same elements from the same news items and they will create entirely different stories from the same ingredients.

So that's it. And the next person who asks me where I get my ideas gets poked in the eye. Seriously. Safety glasses are advised.  Don't worry, you can get a new bionic eye to replace it. Because this is the future we're living in. 

Oh, and I'd stay out of the water until the batteries on that laser run dry. 

Just a thought.

Book news you might have missed in the shadow of larger events...

In the wake of world events, it's easy to lose track of even the biggest doings in the bookworld. Compared to earthquakes, volcanos, civil wars, air raids, and nuclear meltdowns (not necessarily in that order, of course) it gets difficult to think about anything else right now.

via: wikipedia commons

Even though I no longer get ink on my hands most days, I still try to read the whole newspaper every day, even when the headlines are less than encouraging.  My dad taught me that it's important to stay abreast of even the stories that seem less important or ones that wilt in the shadows of larger events.  Because those are the stories that are more likely to affect you directly, even if it takes awhile.

Here are three book-related news stories you might have missed in the shadows of the larger stories unfolding worldwide...


Neither a borrower, nor a lender be...

Earlier this week, Amazon apparently backed away from e-book lending, revoking access for the third party Kindle application "Lendle" which allowed those who signed up to lend e-books to others who had signed up for the service as well.  Only those willing to lend could borrow and vice-versa.  According to Lendle's initial statement, the letter they received from Amazon cited concerns that their app would hurt Kindle sales.


A day later, Lendle was back up and issued a statement saying that Amazon's concerns were with a part of their app which synced their service with the user's Kindle library.  Lendle deactivated the 'Book Sync' app and they were back in business.  How or why Book Sync was of concern wasn't entirely clear in the initial statements from either party.

"Late today, we received an email from an Associates Account Specialist at Amazon informing us that their concern only relates to our Book Sync tool, which syncs a user’s Kindle books with their Lendle account. Amazon informed us that if we disabled this feature, our access to the API, as well as our Amazon Associates account, would be reinstated. We appreciate Amazon’s willingness to modify the position stated in the original access revocation email and work with us to get Lendle back on line. We have complied with the request to disable the Book Sync tool (which was a very useful, but non-essential, feature of Lendle)."

-Lendle's official statment regarding revocation & reinstatement
http://lendle.me/amazon-api-revocation/

Was this another Amazon cockup and a demonstration that they've finally learned how to correct course and move on before it becomes a thing?  The difference in reasons cited between one day and the next would seem to imply that it was.  Actually, I hope it was, because it would indicate that Amazon is learning from their past missteps.

The ability to lend and borrow e-books is a step in the right direction for e-book providers and publishers.  As Neil Gaiman stated in the video I posted a few days ago, new authors are found via recommendations from friends.  "This was awesome, you have to read this, here borrow mine..." is a phrase that launched a thousand literary careers and a phrase that should never die out if the publishing industry wishes to thrive. 

An unsettling development...
The most recent iteration of the Google Books Settlement was rejected by the judge who is overseeing the case.  The judge found that the settlement was too much in favor of Google and gave them too much power in the developing digital marketplace.

"...Citing copyright, antitrust and other concerns, Judge Denny Chin said that the settlement went too far. He said it would have granted Google a “de facto monopoly” and the right to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners. Judge Chin acknowledged that “the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many,” but said that the proposed agreement was “not fair, adequate and reasonable.”

Read the full story in the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.html

Born to be Kurzweil'd
Noted futurist Ray Kurzweil and Baker & Taylor (a literary distributor) perhaps inadvertantly dragged his landmark Blio project into the fray surrounding AT&T's announced plan to buy T-Mobile.  Blio, you might recall, is a free e-reader app designed to create a truly immersive and interactive e-books experience.  I may not be anti e-book, but most of what they can do has been pretty pedestrian thus far.  The Blio is the happy exception and its abundant possibilities for cross-platform use legitimately wows me.

How all this will be impacted by the AT&T acquisition of T Mobile is anyone's guess at this point...

"Bob Nelson, president of B&T’s digital group, said the deal allows T-Mobile to deliver “premium bonus applications to its customers. Blio brings e-books to life, in vivid color and with a variety of enhanced features, including audio read along, Web browsing from inside the book and its patented Read Logic technology.”

-via Publisher's Weekly
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/46578-blio-b-t-ink-bundling-pact-with-t-mobile.html

And that's the highlights from this end of the publishing pool -- things I think we would be well served to pay attention to, even in light of more pressing concerns in Libya and Japan.

My thoughts continue to be with my friends in Japan and all across the Pacific Rim.  In case you've been living in a cave and haven't yet heard, you can donate $10 to the Japanese Red Cross by texting REDCROSS to 90999.  The amount will be added to your cell phone bill.  You can donate more, of course, by contacting the Red Cross directly.

Click to find out more

Can the Apple Tablet Save Print Media?

Can a digital device "save" print media? Will people be willing to pay for previously-free content if it's packaged in the right way? Provocative questions that strike to the heart of the digital divide and the inherent paradoxes of digital content delivery...

New York Times - The Media Equation

A Savior in the Form of a Tablet

By DAVID CARR

Published: January 4, 2010

"Is an Apple tablet the second coming of the iPhone: a device that can do anything, including saving embattled print providers from doom?"

Fair warning, the tablet-related religious metaphors lie thick across this article. Nevertheless, I think my biggest beef with it is when he tries to answer my question: "It's free now, what's to entice readers to pay for it plus the cost of the new device needed to view it?" His answer is this: "...why would people suddenly be compelled to pay for something that they’ve gotten for free? That’s where Apple comes in. A simple, reliable interface for gaining access to paid content can do amazing things: Five years ago, almost no one paid for music online and now, nine billion or so songs sold later, we know that people are willing to pay if the price is right and the convenience is there." I find this difficult to swallow. Mostly because the comparison isn't apples-to-apples (if you'll forgive the pun). Before iTunes and their imitators, most digital music was illegally downloaded. The dominant portion of our society is inclined to follow laws as long as they make sense and aren't the pragmatic equivalent of going five miles over the speed limit. So a cheap, easy and reliable legal path to digital music was win/win for the listener. This paradigm doesn't apply to print media. It's free and legal at the moment. I'm not downloading New York Times and Wall Street Journal articles from Napster, I'm reading them for free on those newspapers' websites. So a simple comparison simply doesn't work. For better or worse, print media from the New York Times to Sports Illustrated have been offering free, legal online content almost since they opened their first website. In order for it to change now, all of them would have to change together so that no one site continues to give away the milk for free. Which is called 'collusion' and it's my understanding that that's still illegal. Attempts prior to this to get people to pay to view news stories & feature content have been met with mixed results outside of niche markets like stock tracking. At the moment, the market stands thus: If you're offering a unique service that others cannot duplicate at all or at least as well, you can charge for access and people who need that information will pay to see it. Outside of a few exclusive scoops, news reporting is not unique to you. Put another way: if I can get perfectly legal milk free from the New York Times, why would I buy it from Slate? I feel for print media, as you may recall I began my college career as a journalism major before - perhaps wisely - deciding that my future lay in more artistic directions. And I have all the sympathy in the world for people who would like to get paid to write. Me too, please! If they're ballsy enough, then they could conceivably gradually shut down their websites all together (which is probably what we're talking about without really saying it in the NYT article) and offer more and more of the content on the new Apple Tablet, iPhone/Droid apps, Nook or Kindle. But that's still a dicey proposition when free, legal, content that competes isn't going away. It's a format-shift that beggars comparison to the shift from CD's to MP-3's. It's about shutting off a tap altogether and replacing it with a new outlet, and that's beyond risky, it's damn near suicidal. Then again, something's got to give or we'll lose print media as a viable business altogether which would be a blow to us all whether we realize it or not.

Read Related Posts:

March 2009 - Quotable Quandry April 2009 - What We Call the News

Scott Walker Perkins blogs on technology and literary culture and writes literary thrillers. His current novel is titled The Palimpsest and he is working on a project tentatively titled 42 Lines. Email: swalkerperkins@gmail.com

What We Call the News

Are Google & Yahoo thieves for using their search abilities to create news-feeds aggregated from all the news sites? Rupert Murdoch thinks so. The Wired story I just linked to is nothing new -- we've talked about this before if you remember. That time, it was in relation to the Wall Street Journal (owned by Murdoch's News Corp) raising objections to other news sites quoting them so extensively that they were essentially re-publishing the articles from WSJ. Now Murdoch is expanding his complaint to include the search engines that display the top stories of the day from various partners and unaffiliated news sites, operating (so it is thought) within the "Fair Use" provisions of US copyright law (Title 17 USC). Because - as ever - our laws are lagging behind our cultural and technological advances this entire area is in the phantom zone. The idea that news should be a solely for-profit enterprise is certainly not a new one (far from it) but it does make you wonder what the future holds. He's not wrong. When Murdoch says that others are profiting (through their ads) from his content (which should be profiting his advertisers), he's not wrong. But the search engines are not wrong either. Collating information and presenting it in its original format and with correct attribution (and linkback) to the originators has been how the internet has operated since it's inception. That's the nature of grey areas, I suppose. So what now? I'm all for forcing people to pay for news about Michelle Obama touching the queen. Or Bill O'Reilly freaking out on some hapless intern because he doesn't understand what Sting is about to do. But not for actual news. Is "Your time is up, please deposit another $.75 to hear about the impending biochemical terrorist attack?" what's really next? Rupert seems to think it is...

"People reading news for free on the web, that's got to change..." ~ Rupert Murdoch (qtd. in Wired Magazine)

The press may be free, but the news never has been. Newspapers charge per copy as well as renting your viewing time to their advertisers (much the same way websites do), and television news programs have sponsors out the yin-yang. But access was free. Access to news has never been curtailed in this nation or restricted to those who can pay. The funny thing about this is that even if Mr. Murdoch has his way and the Wall Street Journal and Fox News stop appearing on the Google and Yahoo homepages, it won't restrict the free flow of information one iota. Information is and shall remaind free for all who seek it. Murdoch doesn't own the news (though if wishing made it so...) news is about the presentation of the "Facts as we know them". All Fox and the WSJ can lay actual claim to is the way in which they present the news. The only thing Murdoch actually can corner is the news the way his minions write it and the opinions of his staff. My personal feelings about Mr. Murdoch's journalistic ethics aside, what he's planning to charge us for access to isn't the news. Without Fox and the WSJ the internet won't starve for facts... it will simply lack content from the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Who really loses out in that equation, I ask you?