who's that lady? *sexy* lady.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough for one day, I got a piece in the Travel section of the LA Times about Cape May, NJ, and the birdwatching and Victorian architecture mecca that it is.

Me tired now.  Me go to bed.

huddle up

The job itself is not ideal.  The pay is not great.  The work is not editorial, which was sort of my entire reason for moving here in the first place.  But it is in a bookstore, in fact, the bookstore where I’ve been volunteering for some six months.  So there is some sense of payoff for sweat stains and backaches.  And the bookstore is actually pretty cool, with lots of literary events and concerts (even Bjork).  And it’s a non-profit operation with its sights set on eradicating homeless and HIV/AIDS, so there’s that feel-goodness.  It undoubtedly carries more cache than slinging books at Barnes & Noble or Borders.  And it will help me scratch that nagging itch of “gotta get a job gotta get a job gotta get a job gotta get a job gotta get a job gotta get a job gotta get a job,” which will, in turn, allow me to focus on longer term writing projects such as another book (Deuced 2: Electric Boogaloo?).

the paper chase

And, really, most of my writing life has been spent daily (or nightly) toiling in the salt mines and then cranking out prose in my free time.  A Bukowskian existence of sorts (but without the scarring acne).  It wasn’t until The Los Angeles Times came a’callin’ that I ever smithed words for a well-beyond-livable income.

a fish tale

Which brings me back to birthdays.  September 2007.  The big 3-0 looming large.  A true milestone.  One christened by t-shirts and coffee mugs and knowing looks and nudging elbows and taking stock of one’s life.  I was eying my fourth decade of life saddled with a sizable (though slowly diminishing) credit card debt and a full-time job closed captioning pornography by candlelight (well, at night, anyway).  Not a horrible life, but not a wildly satisfying one, either.  Then, suddenly, my stock shot up.  Just four days before I turned 30, I landed the aforementioned sweet LA Times gig.  A daily newspaper.  A 130-some year old paper.  A fat paycheck.  Debts receded.  Savings ballooned (when you’re starting around zero, ballooning isn’t hard to do).  I was in an office with a bunch of creative people.  Things felt right.  But before I turned 31, I would be out on my ass, thanks to corporate restructuring, executive lunacy, a changing market and a complete lack of foresight.

who's got a tiger by the tail?

Which brings me to September 2008.  Jobless, heartbroken, humiliated (I understand it was just business,  but the whole affair left me with career blue balls), a 31-year-old me pulled up stakes and headed east to New York City, land of plenty, publishing capital of the world, desperate to parlay my brief tenure at LAT into another sweet editorial gig.  Thanks to the sweetness of my recently departed gig, I had money in the bank and a fat (phat?) unemployment claim, so, while I didn’t land any editorial gigs (sweet or otherwise) thanks to an imploding national/global economy and the continuing downward spiral of the publishing industry, I was able to explore this amazing city, as well as the surrounding majesty of the East Coast (D.C., Balto, Montauk, Mystic, Vermont, Hudson Valley, Chesapeake Bay, Cape May, hey, hey, hey) without fretting too much (though, admittedly, I did find time for some frets).  But man cannot live by unemployment claim (or sporadic freelance gigs) alone.

out to sea

Which brings me to September 2009.  After some six months volunteering and taking the occasional lumps at the aforementioned bookstore, I had made a good name for myself (or at least my name was finally known in the bookstore [in truth, that part didn't take six months]) and was tipped off about an employment opportunity with the store.  The first one slipped through my grasp (a part-time gig),  but then an email alerted me to a second, this one  full-time (though, technically, temporary [a three-month prove-your-worth period, which could very well lead to ongoing goings-on]).  I went for it.  I got it.  In this depressed/recessed/shy economy which has seen people living in cars and tents and eating dirt and each other (last two things being totally fabricated), it isn’t so much to ask of me to take a pay cut (even from my unemployment checks) and roll up my sleeves and get some goddam work done.

hi-ho, hi-ho

Besides, there’s always September 2010, when I will turn 33, the age of a crucified Jesus H. Christ.

do you want it? you gotta want it!

But the book’s retention of value got me thinking about my own foray into self-publishing.  I looked up “Deuced”s ISBN number on Amazon and then entered it into the book store’s pre-screening software.  (The computer tells you whether to keep a book, send it to a different used book retailer who will sell it at a lower price but give us a cut of the loot, or not keep it all; the last option meaning the book in question went into the “TG” box, which meant either “to go” or “total garbage,” depending on your level of cynicism.)

I held my breath as the computer processed the number.  Was I a keeper?  Processing, processing, processing (the book store computers are a bit aged).  Then, finally, a response: “Keep it!” (emphasis not in the original).

The decision no doubt came from the fact my Canadian publisher insists that everyone make good money off each sale, which means they keep prices high so there’s plenty to go around.  Oh, Canada, your brutal Socialism gives everyone but the consumer a good deal.  My existential horror (paperback) novel bears a bloated list price of $26.50.

At my 10 year high school reunion a few years ago, I was hawking my freshly minted tome (a box of which sat in my friend’s car [I was on a book tour, with readings at the St. Paul Literacy Council and a futon shop]) and told an old classmate the price and he said, “That doesn’t sound like a independent novel.”  I guess he’s not familiar with the economics of mass production.

But truth be told, it does seem like more of a $10 book.  I think that’s a nice price.  Hell, maybe even $5.  Something nice and simple and in bill denomination.  Amazon, in its infinite wisdom, now offers my book on its Kindle for a mere $7.99.  I just wonder what I get off of a Kindle sale.  I have this sneaking suspicion it’s zero.

Anybody have a Kindle?  I hated the idea of them, then started to maybe warm up to the possiblity, then I saw the screen looks like a fucking Gameboy.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

EXPERIENCED, CONCEPTUALIZED WRITTEN AND (BADLY) BLOGGED

by

Per

slick

Well, I did. Here were the rules, but to summarize, the winner was going to be selected on the basis of how much this guy, Brandon Scott Gorrell, “enjoyed” the story. So already we’re playing pretty fast and loose. But still, it was only $7 to enter, and it seemed like a fun, sort of grassroots-y kind of contest, a contest I had found out about by reading up on Tao Lin, a writer whom I discovered at a reading at the charity bookstore at which I would eventually volunteer and be crucified.

don't do me like that

I like Lin’s work, at least his poetry specifically, and his blog, to which I already linked. He has a really weird sense of humor mixed in with social dysfunction and depression and technology and self-promotion. He’s sorta shameless in focusing on his career as much as his writing, but, hey, that’s the modern writer, right? All Twittered out with Gmail chats and Facebookings. Lin even sold a MySpace page for, like, $8100. Sold “shares” in his next book, made, like, $12,000. Gotta respect the entrepreneurialism. This Brandon Scott Gorrell has a book or two coming out from Lin’s publishing company, Muumuu House and it’s pretty clear he and Lin are thick as thieves, with Gorrell’s writing a pretty good facsimile of Lin’s.

the mentor/protege relationship

So now, taking into account the curious business sense and grandstanding of the Muumuu House crew and the close relationship between Gorrell and Lin, one could’ve potentially seen how this was all going to turn out, especially with the rules’ ambiguous “I will pick the story I enjoy the most” criteria (although, really, isn’t that how every writing contest is decided? i guess this one was tricky because it was just one person doing the deciding) as well as Gorrell’s declaration *somewhere* that he was going to let Muumuu House employees enter. Lin even said he would probably enter, probably use a pseudonym.

putting the pieces together

Well, you can see where this is going, and so, yes, in fact, Lin did enter and win, though apparently it was more that he “gave” a story to his girlfriend and then she entered the story under her name. Since it wasn’t under Lin’s name, the argument goes that Gorrell didn’t know that it was Lin and so it’s not like the whole thing was totally fixed. And, besides, Gorrell insisted that he had been upfront and totally explained the rules, the rules that allowed and encouraged these kinds of shenanigans. Anyway, the whole thing ignited a shitstorm on the comments section Gorrell’s blog (which was probably the whole idea, I suppose).

"i'm gonna live forever, baby, remember my name!"

The shit goes on and on, but for the most part, the people who were most angry were people who hadn’t entered the contest, but had just heard about how the contest had turned out. Which does sound like absolute bullshit. But I guess Gorrell laid out the rules, so, really, I guess he’s washed his hands of any wrongdoing, other than being just too fucking cute and clever in the retarded chic that seems to be consuming the younger generation. Really, I am around 10+ years older than most of the other contestants, so I was probably barking up the wrong tree to begin with. All I know is, I may be a little retarded, but, folks, I keep it classy. This shit was not classy.

i believe the children are our future

Anyway, Megan Boyle and Michael Inscoe, a couple other losers from the contest have put up a site to collect any other contest losers who want to display their work (and maybe tug a little promotion for themselves after getting jerked around by Gorrell/Lin/Muumuu). So there you can find “The King,” a story I had originally published in Mr. Judas anyway. The version I submitted to the contest has an abbreviated ending.

self... esteem... shrinking...