Running After My Hat

An E-Publishing Experiment (2): Short Holiday Reading for Under a Buck

December 1, 2013 by John 7 Comments

Moving right along…

So I’ve had a short story for sale for a week so far, as described in this post. (The book itself can be found on Amazon.com; that’s the Amazon US link, although it’s also available at the company’s UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, [etc.] sites.) At 99 cents apiece (less Amazon’s cut), I’ve sold about a dozen copies of that story to date (one was “refunded,” for reasons unknown — probably a double download).

As I mentioned at the time, I haven’t really done anything to promote it, other than to announce its availability on Facebook and Twitter. I did a follow-up on Facebook, a day or two later, and — for what it’s worth — sold more copies via the follow-up than from the original announcement. I made a point of not urging anyone to spread the word, buy copies for friends and family, and so on; I just announced the story’s availability, to see what happened next.

From this small chunk of data, so far at least, I (not very earth-shakingly) conclude:

People who see the announcement are more likely to respond to it. Thus, the timing of the announcement is critical: almost no one can read every single posting in his or her Facebook and/or Twitter feeds. Follow-up can greatly announcements improve the odds of likely purchasers even knowing about the sale in the first place.
Since Facebook and Twitter (and RAMH itself, for that matter) are self-selected population samples — only people who “know” me in one way or another — presumably all of those dozen sales so far came not via word-of-mouth, but in direct response to the announcement.

I don’t know how to encourage word-of-mouth sales without constantly nudging the people who’ve bought it so far — remember, people I “know” — and risking wearing out my welcome, so to speak. Especially now, at this time of year, people (even generous friends) simply don’t want, let alone need, to be badgered repeatedly to buy something.

So, let’s move on to phase 2, applying some of these lessons (and leaving some of the mysteries unresolved for now).

You can find my next 99-cent offering here, at Amazon’s US site: “How It Was: Christmas.” If you’ve been reading RAMH for a while, you’ve seen this (both the overall series, and this specific volume) referenced before. One of my very first posts here described the series’ genesis, and what to expect from the individual booklets.

Of all four books, this one is most likely to “sell,” I think — especially at this time of year. I’ve done a couple of things to open it up a little further:

I’ve enrolled the title in Amazon’s ~~“Kindle Select”~~ “KDP Select” program. This will provide me some promotional opportunities downstream. Chief among these: I will be able to RAISE the sale price, with the intention of immediately offering it for sale at a deep discount back to the 99-cents level.
The book will also be available for free “library” lending to Amazon Prime customers. I won’t get a direct royalty from these so-called borrowings, but I will get a small bit from some kind of Amazon’s global library promotions.
I’ll do more than one follow-up announcement on Facebook, and also make a point of following up a couple of times on Twitter. (As ever, I don’t want to wear out my welcome. If anyone sees me approaching that limit, I hope you’ll let me know!)
A bigger risk, maybe: I’m offering the book free of all digital-rights-management constraints. This means that someone who BUYS a copy can simply turn around and give the book file to anyone else. Of everything I’ve written, maybe, this Christmas booklet is “most likely to succeed,” at some point (perhaps years in the future). To the extent that more and more people read (and of course like) it, future sales of both other How It Was books and everything else I might e-publish might get a boost.

Again, let’s just see how things play out. And I’ll report back on this phase, too, at some point.

Thanks as always for reading anything at all which I’ve written… and of course, thanks extra if you’ve paid for it, and/or encouraged someone else to do so. ;)

“After the Ecstasy, the Laundry”

November 29, 2013 by John Leave a Comment

[Video: “Behind the scenes” look at the making of a pop-up “art book,” Everyday Wonders, which was created to advertise the features of a new Samsung smartphone. (The advertisement itself is here.)]

From whiskey river:

Pastoral

There are so many messages I can’t interpret.
The hundred maples at the edge of my street shout orange, orange,
orange, in silent voices. And may say more if I could decipher.

How I want to understand the many calls of the birds migrating through
on their long journey. And what is the message of the shaggy
wave-curled sea quarreling around the black rocks out at the far point?

Perhaps words themselves wander off into other fields, like sheep lost
in the depths of the hills beyond the local hills so the shepherd has to
go climbing up and down, his legs aching, his breath heavy
in his chest until he spies them off there under

that far evergreen, and wrestles them down and brings them home.

(Patricia Fargnoli [source])

…and:

Anyone can see that if grasping and aversion were with us all day and night without ceasing, who could ever stand them? Under that condition, living things would either die or become insane. Instead, we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness, and ease. In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us. We have periods of rest making us refreshed, alive, well. Why don’t we feel thankful for this everyday Nirvana?

We already know how to let go — we do it every night when we go to sleep, and that letting go, like a good night’s sleep, is delicious. Opening in this way, we can live in the reality of our wholeness. A little letting go brings us a little peace, a greater letting go brings us a greater peace. Entering the gateless gate, we begin to treasure the moments of wholeness. We begin to trust the natural rhythm of the world, just as we trust our own sleep and how our own breath breathes itself.

(Jack Kornfield [source])

…and:

Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter’s deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world’s oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.

(Shauna Niequist [source])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: B.B. King, “To Know You Is to Love You”

November 27, 2013 by John Leave a Comment

I had this clever (well, okay: lame) idea to devote this Mid-Week Music Break to a playlist about gratitude of one kind or another, for one experience or another. But after riffling through the stacks (so to speak) for a good long while, wow, I was not coming up with a lot of winners.

Well, not unless you count hymns which (if we are to believe hundreds of old elementary- and Sunday-school music performances) were sung by 17th-century Massachusetts Pilgrims as they hastened and chastened to the Thanksgiving table… even though the hymns weren’t written for another two hundred-plus years.

Then I landed on a number by B.B. King, called “Thank You for Loving the Blues.” It’s not bad in its own right — a mix of talking voiceover and King’s characteristic, spectacularly flourishing guitar. (As I understand it, King wrote the poem he’s reciting.) But what really called to me was another piece from the same 1973 album — this one, the funky, epic eight-minute title track.

“To Know You Is to Love You” was written by Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright for the latter’s debut album, Syreeta. When B.B. King went to Philadelphia to record with with the band known as MFSB — who’d backed up the O’Jays, the Stylistics, Billy Paul, and other vocalists associated with the so-called “Philly Sound” — Stevie Wonder joined him and sat in at the keyboard. In an appreciation written a few years later, Rolling Stone writer Bob Palmer said:

The title tune alone is worth the price of admission. Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright composed it. Stevie plays electric piano, B.B. turns in a powerful vocal performance that is ably supported by his crackling guitar, and the incomparable Sigma Sound [Studios] rhythm section—the musicians who back Billy Paul, the O’Jays, the Intruders, and the Stylistics—contributes a hefty punch.

“Hefty punch” — I’ll say, especially in the horns. (Depending on whether you expect them or not, their sound may either get you up dancing or knock you back on your heels.) But then Palmer added:

The tempo and the minor mode have a superficial resemblance to “The Thrill Is Gone” [a King signature number, also on the album], but structurally “To Know You Is to Love You” isn’t a blues.

I don’t know enough about music to understand what “structurally” means in that context. But I do know that this powerful number both solidly resembles and radically departs from B.B. King’s sound as I’d come to expect. The instrumental breaks are above all pure (whether they’re powered by King’s guitar or by the horns), and I’ve got to say that both the rhythm on the chorus and the lyrics — at least as King interprets them — leave little doubt what the singer means by “knowing” the object of his affection. (Biblical, indeed. And yes, there was probably some gratitude in the relationship… eventually, once things calmed down a little.)

[Below, click Play button to begin To Know You Is to Love You. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 8:35 long.]

[audio:toknowyouistoloveyou_bbking.mp3|titles=’To Know You Is to Love You’|artists=B.B. King]

[Lyrics]

(For an excellent review of both the album as a whole and this particular song, check this post over at Derek Anderson’s blog — “the music blog where music matters.”)

An E-Publishing Experiment: Short Fiction for Under a Buck

November 23, 2013 by John 1 Comment

I am not even close to the first person to wonder: is it possible — let alone worthwhile — to sell short short stories piecemeal, directly to readers, without going through the intermediary of a magazine or publisher?

Answering the first part of that question comes (relatively) easily, as it happens. Pursuing the answer to the second, however, can be messier. More… fraught.

So, the experiment:

I’ve uploaded a short story to Amazon, where it will sell as an e-“book” for 99¢ (US) and the equivalent price in other currencies. If I could have, I’d have priced it even lower; for now, though, that represents the lowest price which Amazon even allows for an e-book. Still, I have no plans to lower the price later. Let’s just see how it goes.

What do you need to know about the story?

The cover appears at the top right of this post; the title, obviously, is “Atmospheres.”
Genre? Fiction, of course. Maybe literary fiction (although that does carry an unseemly whiff of self-congratulation, doesn’t it?). Some might consider it to be a fantasy. A, well… let’s say a light contemporary fantasy. Don’t expect any pixies or elves, however, nor dragons, trolls, wizards, and the rest of that lot.
Excerpt: here’s how it begins…

Nathan DeKuyper had often dreamed of flying — not in some engined or lighter-than-air contraption, but personally, on his own. Springing-into-the-air flying. Aerodynamically-stretched-out-extremities flying, like Superman, requiring no wings of his own nor flapping of arms. Propelled in three dimensions by mere intent, by wanting to be there instead of here. Gliding, climbing, barrel rolling, power diving, treetop skimming, with the wind threatening to strip his glasses from his head, his eyes tearing, his hearing aid clattering dangerously, his clothes snapping and ballooning about him. No one would see him, or if they saw him they’d look away, rub their eyes, look up again… but he’d be gone by then, already dismissed as an illusion, all but forgotten.

Of course he had dreamed of flying. Hadn’t everyone? But — well, of course — he’d never actually flown.

Until the day he did.

How short is it? (Regular readers of my prose here and elsewhere may especially need reassurance on this score.) Only about 7,000 words: easily consumed at a sitting, I think (hope).
As an e-book sold through Amazon, it’s in Kindle-readable format. However — this is important — you do not need a Kindle to read it. Once you purchase it, you should be able to read it with Amazon’s Kindle software, available both as a regular Web browser plug-in and as a smartphone/tablet app.
Oh, duh: where to get it. Of course. You can get it here.

As I said, let’s just see how it goes. I’ll mention the whole thing on Facebook and Twitter, maybe even more than once, but have no “promotional” plans beyond that — word-of-mouth will carry it, or it won’t. And yes, I’ll report back on the whole thing. Sometime, haha.

Reimagining the World

November 22, 2013 by John 8 Comments

[Image: “Imagination,” one of a series posted on Flickr by Inara Pey. (Click image for full-size original.) The images in this set are all digital creations — scenes from the Second Life alternate-universe “game”/virtual world. See Pey’s blog post about it for more information. Image used under a Creative Commons license.]

From whiskey river:

Imagination can so easily be trapped by the wish to escape painful facts and unbearable conclusions. The New Age idea that one can wish oneself out of any circumstance, disease, or bad fortune is not only sadly disrespectful toward suffering, it is also, in the end, dangerous if escape replaces awareness.

At the same time, the act of seeing changes those who see. This is perhaps most clear with self-perception. By my perceptions of who I am or what I feel, not only do I re-create my idea of who I am but I also change myself. Perception is not simply a reflection of reality but a powerful element of reality. Anyone who meditates has had this experience: Observing the activities of the mind changes the mind until, bit by bit, observation creates great changes in the soul. And the effect is the same when the act of perception is collective. A change in public perception will change the public. This is why acts of imagination are so important.

Like artistic and literary movements, social movements are driven by imagination. I am not speaking here only of the songs and poems and paintings that have always been part of movements for political and social change, but of the movements themselves, their political ideas and forms of protest. Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope for the future emerges.

(Susan Griffin [source])

…and:

Love brings something inside you to life. Perhaps it is just the full dimensionality of your own capacity to feel that returns. In this state you think no impediment can be large enough to interrupt your passion. The feeling spills beyond the object of your love to color the whole world. The mood is not unlike the mood of revolutionaries in the first blush of victory, at the dawn of hope. Anything seems possible.

(Susan Griffin [source])

…and:

Uley, Glos

The moonlight is suddenly large:
a brightness on the fields that only shows
when this house dims
and something clearer rises
through the parish I know by heart, bricks and glass, the dead
immersed in stone,
subtle erasures, siftings of blood and bone,
as if this was the story of a place
that I could tell without impediment:
first thought, then form, a drift of native souls
scattered across the land like seed or snow,
ordered and lost; a sieve of consciousness
the making of this commonplace domain:
respected borders, marriages and births,
the giving up and taking on of names.

(John Burnside [source])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: Carrie Rodriguez, “Lake Harriet”

November 20, 2013 by John 2 Comments

Carrie Rodriguez has had what may be viewed as a “simple” path to career success. She grew up in Austin at the feet of her father, folk songwriter/musician David Rodriguez. Her bio continues:

After sitting in on a sound check with her dad’s old Houston pal Lyle Lovett, she detoured from a degree as a classical violinist at Oberlin Conservatory and set herself on course to become a fiddler at the Berklee College of Music. There, her teacher, Matt Glaser, and her fellow students, including roommate Casey Driessen, helped her “find my groove and let go of that wall I had put up as a classical player.”

Another turning point came when Rodriguez met veteran songwriter Chip Taylor (“Wild Thing,” “Angel of the Morning”), who soon had Rodriguez touring and recording, and encouraged her to sing and write.

She recorded four albums with Taylor before going solo in 2006. And since then, I gather, she has not needed to look back. Her sixth album, Give Me All You Got, was released early this year.

In truth, I don’t know how “straightforward” or “simple” this career path has been. I also don’t think it matters, at least to a music outsider: all that counts is the music. If you’re good enough to listen to twice, let alone three or four times, that’s good enough for me.

“Lake Harriet” appears on that sixth album. In this live performance, Rodriguez and her backup musicians flirt with the lyrics and melody — turning the number into less a plain love song than a subtle tease, complete with fingersnaps. I love it.

[Lyrics]

By the way, in case you’re wondering: yes, there really is a Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. Wikipedia reports all the usual straightforward facts, then adds this little twist:

On the walking path near where Queen Avenue T’s into the perimeter drive around the lake, there is an “elf house” carved into the base of an ash tree. For several years, one could leave a letter for the elf supposedly living there and find a letter in reply sometime in the next few days. During the winter season, the elf door is shut and a plank appears stating he has “moved to his castle in the east.” It reopens around springtime.

(Of course that’s the ~~elk~~ elf house in the photo at right; click for a larger view, including more of the surroundings for scale.)

Leavings

November 15, 2013 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: one of the photos in photographer Amy Regalia’s 2007 exhibit, Leavings.
For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.

(Marilynne Robinson [source])

…and:

Early Morning in Your Room

It’s morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-like
Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.
The gray light as you pour gleaming water —
It seems you’ve traveled years to get here.

Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve
It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery
Had its way, poverty, no money at least.
Or maybe it was confusion. But that’s over.

Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books:
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka’s Letter
to His Father, are all here. You can dance
With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling

With only one eye. Even the blind man
Can see. That’s what they say. If you had
A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton
Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

(Robert Bly [source])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: The Chiffons, “One Fine Day”

November 13, 2013 by John 1 Comment

One Fine Day Over the weekend I dedicated a few hours to straightening up my office. As I worked, I listened to the oldies I’ve bothered so far to assemble into a single playlist on “the cloud” — there’s about 450 of them, and putting the list into play-once/shuffle mode pretty much assures I won’t hear any repeats for most sustained activity. (Because nothing’s worse than boredom, right?)

Almost always, when I listen to music I wear headphones; this time, though, I wanted to give the new computer’s speakers a rare workout. The office is a room over our garage, and when the subwoofer kicks in you can really feel the floor shuddering beneath your feet…

I’ve always liked “One Fine Day,” despite the decidedly gender-unlightened lyrics; even without them, the music just sings giddy optimism. But on a “Clean up your room!” soundtrack rippling through a wooden floor, it really kicks — especially that jackhammer piano.

[Below, click Play button to begin One Fine Day. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:12 long.]

[audio:onefineday_thechiffons.mp3|titles=’One Fine Day’|artists=The Chiffons]

The piano, as it happens, was played by Carole King herself. After she’d written the music for then-husband Gerry Goffin’s lyrics, they recorded her at the piano with singer Little Eva (who’d had a hit with “The Locomotion,” and who also — cough, cough — coincidentally was the King-Goffin household’s babysitter). They weren’t crazy with her vocal, though, so they stripped it from the recording… and kept the instrumental when they turned it over to The Chiffons.

(Why to The Chiffons? Apparently, some whimsical genius with the record label wanted to follow up their previous hit — “He’s So Fine,” with that crazy doo-lang doo-lang hook — with another song which had “fine” in the title. Always good to know that caprice in pop-culture decision-making isn’t limited to publishing! :))

Book Review: The Blue Jar, by Marta Pelrine-Bacon

November 11, 2013 by John 5 Comments

[Note: please be sure to read the disclosure at the foot of this review.]

Marta Pelrine-Bacon is a fan of the old Twin Peaks TV series; she has actually named one of her several online abodes Searching for Agent Dale Cooper (the FBI agent in the series, played by Kyle Maclachlan). In the promotional copy for her debut novel, The Blue Jar, her publisher says:

Fans of the quirky and off-beat will love this atmospheric, psychological tale of revenge and obsession with its unexpected twists and turns. Lake Belle, reminiscent of Twin Peaks set in the deep American South, provides the atmospheric setting for this thrilling psycho-drama with its underlying theme of weird justice. Is it magic? Or is something else at work?

All of which pretty much lays it out there for anyone else familiar with the program — or its reputation, for that matter: expect the off-center.

So, how off-center is it? Let’s see…

[Read more…]

Whist. Peace. Easy: No Fear, No Regret (But Maybe an Apology or Two)

November 8, 2013 by John 1 Comment

[Image: “Wangerooge Island / noise,” by user hom26 on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons license.]

From whiskey river:

Zwijgen

I slept before a wall of books and they
calmed everything in the room, even
their contents, even me, woken
by the cold and thrill, and still
they said, like the Dutch verb for falling
silent that English has no accommodation for
in the attics and rafters of its intimacies.

(Saskia Hamilton [source])

…and:

People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in the world. I have a much different view. The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.

(Marilynne Robinson [source])

…and:

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

(Mary Oliver [source])

[Read more…]