Check it out!
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
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Showing posts with label Nonfiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nonfiction. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
My Review of The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre up at Kenyon Review!!!
My new thing is to reference a rock band into every review I write. This comes pretty naturally for me since I tend to think in rock band anyway. Bon Jovi manages to squirm its way into my review of The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre. I don't have control of these things.
Check it out!
Yours in laying down the law,
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Check it out!
Yours in laying down the law,
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Saturday, June 8, 2019
My Review of The Ministry of Truth by Dorian Lynskey up at Book and Film Globe!!!
I've loved George Orwell since I was assigned 1984 in a community college English class in 1987. It was the second novel assigned in the class, between Tess of the D'Urbervilles and A Clockwork Orange, and I was completely high on just how revolutionary this work was. Of course, the book has taken on a whole new level of relevance in 2019, and having just re-read it and found it as together and complete as any novel you can name, I highly recommend jumping back in to 1984 if it's been a while--or if you've never read it.
I think Dorian Lynskey would agree. He just published The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984, and I reviewed it for Book and Film Globe. Do take a peek.
Yours in laying down the law,
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
I think Dorian Lynskey would agree. He just published The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984, and I reviewed it for Book and Film Globe. Do take a peek.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Saturday, April 21, 2018
My Review of The Selfishness of Others by Kristen Dombek up at JMWW!
I started getting interested in narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) in the early 2000s. The term seemed fresh and new to me at the time. The books I read on NPD opened my eyes to a certain type of person to avoid, and I've done what I could to avoid them.
Unfortunately, in 2018, the term no longer seems to apply only to my life anymore. I'm sorry for this, but on the upside is it's led to a great deal of compelling writing on NPD. As an example I offer Kristen Dombek's The Selfishness of Others, which I reviewed for JMWW.
Take a look, and here's hoping you don't see your reflection!
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Saturday, March 31, 2018
My Review of Surfing with Sartre by Aaron James up at Colorado Review!!!
I took philosophy as a minor in college, and I struggled with the esoteric nature of some of the books. I thought I was going to learn how philosophical principles applied to my life. Instead, I spent most of my time trying to figure out where these famous philosophers stood on anything.
Aaron James, philosophy professor and author of Surfing with Sartre, seems to get it. His latest book of nonfiction explores how people might apply the loose rules of surfing to cultivate a more meaningful life for themselves both in and out of the water. I loved the book, and I wrote a review of it that just popped up at Colorado Review. Give the review a read, and consider giving James' book a shot too.
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Saturday, August 29, 2015
The Bastard Who Last Cut My Hair
After 37 editors rejected this piece, Ian MacAllen was gracious enough to say yes, and now one of my favorite nonfiction pieces THE BASTARD WHO LAST CUT MY HAIR has a home forever at English Kills Review.
Read.
Enjoy.
Have a sandwich.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie.
Read.
Enjoy.
Have a sandwich.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Amazon Blinks!!!
Have to take a victory lap after The Nervous Breakdown published this piece of mine last week about Amazon treating Badge unfairly with ship times, and Amazon changed the ship time! Because of the piece!
Read the essay that shook the foundation of a publishing giant!
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Read the essay that shook the foundation of a publishing giant!
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Strike it Rich, Or Not: The Business of Self-Publishing in 2014
You’ve written a book, and you’re wondering which mode of publishing—self- or traditional—is most likely to lead to a career in writing. Good. You should be wondering. It’s a new century, and new ways exist to get your book to buyers that can be at least as rewarding as the traditional publishing model.
Despite all recent innovation, the easiest road to the land of a book publishing career still passes through the traditional publishing house. Here’s the way it works: either you or your agent finds an editor at a publishing house who wants to publish your book, and the house (usually) writes you a check for it. That check is called an advance, and it isn’t free; you get it up front against future royalties of your book. You don’t receive any more money from the publisher until your book sells so many copies—when it “earns out” your advance—and then you start to bank your dollar or whatever in royalties for each book sold.
While not without its drawbacks, this is the easiest path to financial success for the writer because you collect money months or years before your book comes out. Think about that. You get paid before anyone in the book-buying market even knows you’ve written a book, much less decides they want it. It’s now in your publisher’s best interest to do a great job editing, proofreading, designing a cover, printing and marketing your book, or it might not see that advance money again. The risk is all theirs.
Moreover, your publishing company could do a great job publishing and marketing your book and, for whatever reason, people still don’t buy it. In that instance, the company absorbs the loss while you keep the advance money. Finally, if your book sells well, you still have a chance to earn royalties well beyond the advance. These backend royalties are how many of the writers in the world make their living. Welcome to the big leagues.
And if I were writing this piece twenty years ago, that would pretty much be the end of the story. But in 2014, an argument can be made that self-publishing your book is a legitimate business model as well. What’s changed?
The biggest advent to the business of self-publishing is the proliferation of ebooks and ebook devices. Writers now have a way to get their books distributed to millions of readers all by themselves. The self-publisher of a couple decades ago falls to her knees and weeps at the mention of entities like Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords. From the time your book is finished, you can have it available to a large buying audience in less than 24 hours. For free. Unprecedented.
Second only to ebooks, the advent in the last decade or so of print-on-demand publishing has also changed the game for the self-publisher. As late as the mid-1990s, if a self-publisher wanted to create an affordable edition of his work, he had to call a book printer, who usually had to print a thousand copies or more to bring the book’s price-per-unit to a reasonable level. This meant the self-publisher had to pay at least $3,000 to the printer before anyone could buy a single book. Then he had to find a place to store them, which often amounted to a home stuffed with boxes of books. A common scenario involved the self-publisher never being able to sell all of them. Can you imagine being forced to choose between space in your garage or several hundred copies of your book? Some gave their extras away to libraries for tax write-offs. Others, after years of futility, drove them to the dump.
With print-on-demand technology, you can publish an actual book, and the old issues of high cost and storage space need never darken your (garage) door. Print-on-demand companies like Lightning Source and Createspace charge as little as $25 to have your book in their database, where it’s ready to be printed and distributed. Then they charge a reasonable fee per book (about $3-10, depending on many variables) to print them. In other words, self-publishers don’t have to buy 1,000 copies of their title to have a few copies on hand, or to have it available to customers at places like Amazon and Powells.com. You can buy just one copy if you want. Print-on-demand companies are happy to oblige.
Because of all this new technology, self-publishing is at least in the ballgame now. And there’s one more issue I haven’t yet mentioned.
Take, for example, the case of Hugh Howey. Howey self-published his post-apocalyptic novel Wool as an ebook in 2012. Things went very well for Howey and Wool, which sold a half-million copies in electronic form. When Simon and Schuster approached Howey, wanting to purchase the rights to Wool, Howey was all for it—until he heard the company wanted his ebook rights too. “I had made seven figures [selling Wool as an ebook] … so it was easy to walk away,” he said. Eventually, he sold just the book-book rights to Simon and Schuster, and I saw Wool prominently displayed at my local bookstore this past Christmas season.
Or the case of Jenny McGuire. McGuire self-published her new adult romance Beautiful Disaster in 2011, which went to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The book was later sold to Atria Books, with the movie rights sold to Warner Bros.
Or the case of Amanda Hocking. Hocking made millions in her first year self-publishing her young adult paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels as ebooks. She then went on to sign a $2.2 million contract with St. Martins Press.
The successfully self-published author who later decides to go the traditional route has more leverage than those writers with nothing but a manuscript and their good looks. She can bag both the writer’s and publisher’s share while self-publishing, then use that success to get a far more favorable deal with a major. Win-win.
To be clear, these mega-success stories represent only the smallest fraction of those who self-publish. The vast majority wind up with less remarkable sales (that’s me), or none at all. Still, no one but the willfully blind could argue this phenomenon doesn’t exist.
Perhaps more relevant than hitting pay dirt, because of ebooks and print-on-demand technology, many writers now make modest livings self-publishing their works. This list includes Meilin Miranda, who self-publishes Victorianesque fantasy and science fiction; Shanna Germain, who has one self-published book that yielded $32k through a Kickstarter campaign; or Aaron Shepherd, whose how-to books about self-publishing are staples of the genre. I didn’t have to go to the edges of the earth to find these folks. They’re friends, or friends of friends, or people I’ve run across when searching for practical help with self-publishing. My guess is none of them will be sailing to Bora Bora anytime soon on their self-publishing earnings, but each manages at least to sustain themselves through the model. How many more of them are out there? Hundreds? Thousands?
While the get-rich stories get more attention, what the ascendance of self-publishing technology in 2014 really means for the aspiring writer is she can realistically hope for a new, freer path to a writing career. If you can write a book people want to read and market it well, you may not hit pay-dirt, but you just might get a life.
Ready to self-pub? Take my one-day seminar in early November at The Attic.
Despite all recent innovation, the easiest road to the land of a book publishing career still passes through the traditional publishing house. Here’s the way it works: either you or your agent finds an editor at a publishing house who wants to publish your book, and the house (usually) writes you a check for it. That check is called an advance, and it isn’t free; you get it up front against future royalties of your book. You don’t receive any more money from the publisher until your book sells so many copies—when it “earns out” your advance—and then you start to bank your dollar or whatever in royalties for each book sold.
While not without its drawbacks, this is the easiest path to financial success for the writer because you collect money months or years before your book comes out. Think about that. You get paid before anyone in the book-buying market even knows you’ve written a book, much less decides they want it. It’s now in your publisher’s best interest to do a great job editing, proofreading, designing a cover, printing and marketing your book, or it might not see that advance money again. The risk is all theirs.
Moreover, your publishing company could do a great job publishing and marketing your book and, for whatever reason, people still don’t buy it. In that instance, the company absorbs the loss while you keep the advance money. Finally, if your book sells well, you still have a chance to earn royalties well beyond the advance. These backend royalties are how many of the writers in the world make their living. Welcome to the big leagues.
And if I were writing this piece twenty years ago, that would pretty much be the end of the story. But in 2014, an argument can be made that self-publishing your book is a legitimate business model as well. What’s changed?
The biggest advent to the business of self-publishing is the proliferation of ebooks and ebook devices. Writers now have a way to get their books distributed to millions of readers all by themselves. The self-publisher of a couple decades ago falls to her knees and weeps at the mention of entities like Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords. From the time your book is finished, you can have it available to a large buying audience in less than 24 hours. For free. Unprecedented.
Second only to ebooks, the advent in the last decade or so of print-on-demand publishing has also changed the game for the self-publisher. As late as the mid-1990s, if a self-publisher wanted to create an affordable edition of his work, he had to call a book printer, who usually had to print a thousand copies or more to bring the book’s price-per-unit to a reasonable level. This meant the self-publisher had to pay at least $3,000 to the printer before anyone could buy a single book. Then he had to find a place to store them, which often amounted to a home stuffed with boxes of books. A common scenario involved the self-publisher never being able to sell all of them. Can you imagine being forced to choose between space in your garage or several hundred copies of your book? Some gave their extras away to libraries for tax write-offs. Others, after years of futility, drove them to the dump.
With print-on-demand technology, you can publish an actual book, and the old issues of high cost and storage space need never darken your (garage) door. Print-on-demand companies like Lightning Source and Createspace charge as little as $25 to have your book in their database, where it’s ready to be printed and distributed. Then they charge a reasonable fee per book (about $3-10, depending on many variables) to print them. In other words, self-publishers don’t have to buy 1,000 copies of their title to have a few copies on hand, or to have it available to customers at places like Amazon and Powells.com. You can buy just one copy if you want. Print-on-demand companies are happy to oblige.
Because of all this new technology, self-publishing is at least in the ballgame now. And there’s one more issue I haven’t yet mentioned.
Take, for example, the case of Hugh Howey. Howey self-published his post-apocalyptic novel Wool as an ebook in 2012. Things went very well for Howey and Wool, which sold a half-million copies in electronic form. When Simon and Schuster approached Howey, wanting to purchase the rights to Wool, Howey was all for it—until he heard the company wanted his ebook rights too. “I had made seven figures [selling Wool as an ebook] … so it was easy to walk away,” he said. Eventually, he sold just the book-book rights to Simon and Schuster, and I saw Wool prominently displayed at my local bookstore this past Christmas season.
Or the case of Jenny McGuire. McGuire self-published her new adult romance Beautiful Disaster in 2011, which went to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The book was later sold to Atria Books, with the movie rights sold to Warner Bros.
Or the case of Amanda Hocking. Hocking made millions in her first year self-publishing her young adult paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels as ebooks. She then went on to sign a $2.2 million contract with St. Martins Press.
The successfully self-published author who later decides to go the traditional route has more leverage than those writers with nothing but a manuscript and their good looks. She can bag both the writer’s and publisher’s share while self-publishing, then use that success to get a far more favorable deal with a major. Win-win.
To be clear, these mega-success stories represent only the smallest fraction of those who self-publish. The vast majority wind up with less remarkable sales (that’s me), or none at all. Still, no one but the willfully blind could argue this phenomenon doesn’t exist.
Perhaps more relevant than hitting pay dirt, because of ebooks and print-on-demand technology, many writers now make modest livings self-publishing their works. This list includes Meilin Miranda, who self-publishes Victorianesque fantasy and science fiction; Shanna Germain, who has one self-published book that yielded $32k through a Kickstarter campaign; or Aaron Shepherd, whose how-to books about self-publishing are staples of the genre. I didn’t have to go to the edges of the earth to find these folks. They’re friends, or friends of friends, or people I’ve run across when searching for practical help with self-publishing. My guess is none of them will be sailing to Bora Bora anytime soon on their self-publishing earnings, but each manages at least to sustain themselves through the model. How many more of them are out there? Hundreds? Thousands?
While the get-rich stories get more attention, what the ascendance of self-publishing technology in 2014 really means for the aspiring writer is she can realistically hope for a new, freer path to a writing career. If you can write a book people want to read and market it well, you may not hit pay-dirt, but you just might get a life.
Ready to self-pub? Take my one-day seminar in early November at The Attic.
Monday, May 12, 2014
New Piece on Writing up at HTMLGIANT!!!
Helloo,
One of my favorite pieces on writing ever just popped up on HTMLGIANT. It's about the futility of a writer trying to get away with hiding behind a narrator. Anyone who enjoyed my pieces on fiction v. memoir a couple of years ago at The Writer will get something out of this.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
One of my favorite pieces on writing ever just popped up on HTMLGIANT. It's about the futility of a writer trying to get away with hiding behind a narrator. Anyone who enjoyed my pieces on fiction v. memoir a couple of years ago at The Writer will get something out of this.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
New Piece on Writing up at BLEED
So I'm at the AWP Conference this past February, at a panel on digital technology and book
promotion, when this woman gets up and starts giving away the farm on how to promote your book online. Facebook, Titter, Scribd, Bitly (Bitly?), she covered everything, and gave step-by-step details on how to make it work for you. I went to ten or so panels during the three-day conference and took nary a note until this one, and I think I wrote every word she said. When she finished, she said her name was Debra Di Blasi, her publishing company was Jaded Ibis Productions, and also, "If you have questions, go ahead and contact me. I'm notorious for giving up too much time to strangers online."
While incorporating one of her marketing techniques, I contacted her, and sure enough she ushered me, the complete stranger, through my issue. You know how you remember folks who help you when they absolutely don't have to? Yeah, me too.
So I sent a piece to Jaded Ibis for publication, to their blog actually, which is called BLEED, and it popped up this morning. This is a short one about how I learned the most important writing lesson of my life while working at an actuarial firm in San Francisco. What's an actuarial firm? Read to find out.
Thanks to Elizabeth Earley for saying yes to this one.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
While incorporating one of her marketing techniques, I contacted her, and sure enough she ushered me, the complete stranger, through my issue. You know how you remember folks who help you when they absolutely don't have to? Yeah, me too.
So I sent a piece to Jaded Ibis for publication, to their blog actually, which is called BLEED, and it popped up this morning. This is a short one about how I learned the most important writing lesson of my life while working at an actuarial firm in San Francisco. What's an actuarial firm? Read to find out.
Thanks to Elizabeth Earley for saying yes to this one.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
What I'm working on...
...besides getting ready for my one-day self-publishing seminar at the Attic at the end of this month, where there is still room for you.
-Novel Four, which is about tribute bands;
-A short story about Alex Trebek and Arizona musicians that I think is finally done;
-An essay about my high school friend Randy and I going to see Stevie Ray Vaughan four times;
-An essay about Morrissey and chewing tobacco;
-An essay about why no one wants their novel called a rock novel;
-Ghost Notes the screenplay;
-A short story about Wrigley Field that is not even close;
-Badge review submissions.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
-Novel Four, which is about tribute bands;
-A short story about Alex Trebek and Arizona musicians that I think is finally done;
-An essay about my high school friend Randy and I going to see Stevie Ray Vaughan four times;
-An essay about Morrissey and chewing tobacco;
-An essay about why no one wants their novel called a rock novel;
-Ghost Notes the screenplay;
-A short story about Wrigley Field that is not even close;
-Badge review submissions.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
New Piece on Self-Publishing at Nick Belardes's Site!!!
It's a foregone conclusion you're signing up for my self-publishing seminar at the Attic at the end of this month, but I am also publishing essays on writing and self-publishing in April. The first popped up today at fab writer Nick Belardes's site, so after you sign up for the class, go here.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
New Essay On Self-Publishing up at Word Riot!
An essay of mine on self-publishing just went live a Word Riot. Read along as I start to get cocky about this whole thing.
Also, Badge's book trailer went live last week.
Moreover, you now can buy Badge from my website during its presale.
Finally, if you do buy Badge during its presale, I'll email you the mp3 of Badge's theme song "Calypso" as a bonus!
That's what I've got.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Also, Badge's book trailer went live last week.
Moreover, you now can buy Badge from my website during its presale.
Finally, if you do buy Badge during its presale, I'll email you the mp3 of Badge's theme song "Calypso" as a bonus!
That's what I've got.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
My Life in Golf
Golf, I will love you forever, I will never play you again.
My relationship with this bitch goddess of a pastime started when I was 16. I desperately wanted a job that didn't require my attendance on Friday and Saturday nights--when all the partying was happening--and I got a job at the Indian Bluff Public Golf Course in Milan, Illinois, where my grandpa golfed every day. I washed carts, filled soda machines and generally did what was asked of me, as much as any teenager does what's asked of him.
The people who worked at the course didn't take a shining to me. I'm not sure why. My wardrobe of Van Halen T-shirt and cut-off shorts--not to mention the earring I got shortly after being hired--probably didn't impress anyone. This hurt a little, but I was too concerned with what was going on on Friday and Saturday nights--girls, beer, playing music in my cover band--to care too much about it.
One of the fringe benefits of working at Indian Bluff was that I got to golf as much as I wanted for free (golf cart included). If my namesake meant anything, I would become quite a golfer. My grandpa, Art Edwards Sr., was good enough to once flirt with playing professionally. My dad, Art Jr., was a big hitter. I marveled at his long drives, even if they weren't always straight down the fairway. I'd golfed a little before I'd gotten the job at Indian Bluff, enough to know I needed practice. Now I had a free pass to golf every day. It was my chance to get good.
And I had one marked advantage in this game, according to my grandpa. I was left-handed, which meant if I golfed right-handed, my strong hand could sit at the top of the club, allowing for more torque during my swings. It was about time being left-handed--which my dad had tried to "cure" me of at one point--proved an advantage.
I enjoyed taking my whacks that summer, walking the course. I liked trying to figure out which club would yield the best result. I'd often duff or “worm-burn” shots off the tee, only to lambaste the next one from the fairway. My chipping was a nightmare, often resulting in two or three jerky strokes to get the ball onto the green. On my first hole of my first round at Indian Bluff, I sank an eight-foot putt, which led me to believe putting was the best aspect of my game. I estimate one out of every three of my shots went the way it was supposed to go. The others veered in some random or unbecoming direction. I averaged 110 per round.
Any golfer will tell you 110 per round is not something you want, and everyone tried to help. Once, during a particularly bad round with Art Sr. and Jr., it was discovered that my wrong, lower, right hand took over during my swings. When golfing right-handed, the right hand is supposed to “just sort of come along for the ride,” my dad said. My hands were doing each other's jobs. So much for my left-handedness helping me.
That fall, when Indian Bluff closed for the year, I told my boss I wouldn't back the next spring. No one begged me to stay.
I didn't give golf much of a thought for years. I graduated from high school, went to junior college, played rock music, moved to Arizona, got involved in the Tempe music scene, graduated from A.S.U., got married, and became a founding member of a band that signed a two-album deal with Mercury Records. 1996 found the single from our first album on the radio and the band touring the country. In 1997, waiting for our second record to come out, the band had a lot of time on its hands. Our drummer, P.H., was quite a golfer, and someone came up with the idea that we should all golf together. This was, after all, the Hootie decade.
We golfed a few times as a foursome that summer. I don't know how we got Brian, our guitar player, to go along with it, but he dutifully showed up in trucker's cap and soul-concealing sunglasses. Roger, our lead singer, seemed uncomfortable with the whole concept of golf, but he played anyway. P.H. put his golf shoes on in the parking lot. Hearing his spikes crunch the pavement, I realized too late my sandals probably weren't the best choice for the day.
We were all pretty bad, except for P.H., whose hits were all elegance, an old-money swing bred in Chicago's suburbs, his fairway shots yielding the correct amount of arc, his pitches landing with a thump on the green. Roger seemed befuddled by the game, taking swings that sometimes yielded nothing but his ball trickling to the left or right. Brian cracked his first Miller High Life by the second hole.
I was stoked to get another shot at the links. It'd been ten years since I'd quit Indian Bluff, and I felt like being married and somewhat settled might translate into a quieter, less neurotic game.
It was not to be so. I still had a weirdly excited swing that yielded worm-burns or worse from the tee. I remember once hooking a drive so drastically it threatened cars driving by on Dobson Road. My pitching was atrocious, despite following to the letter P.H.'s instructions about a more open stance. And I couldn't back up my earlier bravado on the putting green. One time in the fairway, I missed the ball entirely, causing an embarrassed silence amongst my foursome. That summer I once again averaged 110 per round. It was a relief when our second record came out and we had to hit the road. There would be no room for golf bags on the tour bus.
In the wake of this period, I took a more contrarian view of the game. Who cared if I wasn't any good? Golf was evil anyway. What activity better symbolized the gross extravagance of our society? The Phoenix area has 132 golf courses. All that water to keep those fairways green, an environmental travesty. If you're going to suck at something, it might as well be something that's just plain wrong in the first place. I quit the game, losing my clubs in the junk corner of our garage and all but forgetting about them.
My band broke up in 1998, and my wife Kel and I moved to San Francisco, where we both worked day jobs while taking art and writing classes at night. When I finished my degree, we moved 350 miles north to Ashland, Oregon, where I spent my days writing and Kel making and selling her art work. In 2007, business was going well enough that, when an artist friend asked me to go golfing, I said yes.
By this time, golf had intrigued me on a different level. In 1999, while combing the fiction shelves of a used bookstore in Sausalito, I came across the U section, which was dominated by John Updike. I'd been avoiding Updike's work for years, believing--without actually reading any of it--there was something staid and conventional about it. He seemed boring compared to the modernists, who got more lip service in college classes. Still, I knew Updike's fiction had been ubiquitous during the last half-century. That day in Sausalito, I gave in and bought a copy of Rabbit, Run.
It would not be an exaggeration to say the next decade of my reading life was dedicated to reading Updike from end to end. Among the thousands of things Updike wrote well about, he was a master at writing about golf, teasing out the game's beauty with his words. I was somewhere toward the end of my Updike phase when my artist friend asked me to play and, my head full of Updikean tropes, I couldn't wait.
So, did my game change? Was it any different at 36 years old than it had been at 26 or 16? The sad part of this story is that my golf game altered not one lick during any of these decades. I still hit worm-burners off the tee. I was hit-and-miss out of the fairway, and I couldn't find my asshole with a pitching wedge. My friend of course helped, and I did my best to do what he said. Nothing seemed to work. Once, I got so mad I launched my three-iron boomerang style into the distance. It went farther than most of my shots that day.
Still, my frustration didn't come without a consolation prize. During one round, I discovered my problem with golf: It's all in the divot.
When I swing a golf club, I have a natural, instinctual aversion to causing a divot in the grass. For some reason, I'm squeamish about digging out a chunk of earth. It's not some hyper-environmental concern or anything like that. I just don't like the way it feels to dig up the earth with a golf club. This causes me to pull up ever so slightly when I swing, and this adjustment drastically affects the way I hit the ball. All those worm-burners--I was topping the ball because of my aversion to hitting the ground. Repeated swings proved my theory valid. It's an ingrained flaw, and it pretty much means I'll never be a decent golfer. As time has passed, I've learned to accept this. The golf gods aren't my gods, and that's okay. It's going to have to be.
Still, I look on fondly when I drive past courses, watching a golfer ease back his club, head down, nice follow-through. It's like a poem written in a language I'll never understand, but the sound of the words no less beautiful for that reason.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Contribute to the Kickstarter campaign for my third novel Badge.
My relationship with this bitch goddess of a pastime started when I was 16. I desperately wanted a job that didn't require my attendance on Friday and Saturday nights--when all the partying was happening--and I got a job at the Indian Bluff Public Golf Course in Milan, Illinois, where my grandpa golfed every day. I washed carts, filled soda machines and generally did what was asked of me, as much as any teenager does what's asked of him.
The people who worked at the course didn't take a shining to me. I'm not sure why. My wardrobe of Van Halen T-shirt and cut-off shorts--not to mention the earring I got shortly after being hired--probably didn't impress anyone. This hurt a little, but I was too concerned with what was going on on Friday and Saturday nights--girls, beer, playing music in my cover band--to care too much about it.
One of the fringe benefits of working at Indian Bluff was that I got to golf as much as I wanted for free (golf cart included). If my namesake meant anything, I would become quite a golfer. My grandpa, Art Edwards Sr., was good enough to once flirt with playing professionally. My dad, Art Jr., was a big hitter. I marveled at his long drives, even if they weren't always straight down the fairway. I'd golfed a little before I'd gotten the job at Indian Bluff, enough to know I needed practice. Now I had a free pass to golf every day. It was my chance to get good.
And I had one marked advantage in this game, according to my grandpa. I was left-handed, which meant if I golfed right-handed, my strong hand could sit at the top of the club, allowing for more torque during my swings. It was about time being left-handed--which my dad had tried to "cure" me of at one point--proved an advantage.
I enjoyed taking my whacks that summer, walking the course. I liked trying to figure out which club would yield the best result. I'd often duff or “worm-burn” shots off the tee, only to lambaste the next one from the fairway. My chipping was a nightmare, often resulting in two or three jerky strokes to get the ball onto the green. On my first hole of my first round at Indian Bluff, I sank an eight-foot putt, which led me to believe putting was the best aspect of my game. I estimate one out of every three of my shots went the way it was supposed to go. The others veered in some random or unbecoming direction. I averaged 110 per round.
Any golfer will tell you 110 per round is not something you want, and everyone tried to help. Once, during a particularly bad round with Art Sr. and Jr., it was discovered that my wrong, lower, right hand took over during my swings. When golfing right-handed, the right hand is supposed to “just sort of come along for the ride,” my dad said. My hands were doing each other's jobs. So much for my left-handedness helping me.
That fall, when Indian Bluff closed for the year, I told my boss I wouldn't back the next spring. No one begged me to stay.
I didn't give golf much of a thought for years. I graduated from high school, went to junior college, played rock music, moved to Arizona, got involved in the Tempe music scene, graduated from A.S.U., got married, and became a founding member of a band that signed a two-album deal with Mercury Records. 1996 found the single from our first album on the radio and the band touring the country. In 1997, waiting for our second record to come out, the band had a lot of time on its hands. Our drummer, P.H., was quite a golfer, and someone came up with the idea that we should all golf together. This was, after all, the Hootie decade.
We golfed a few times as a foursome that summer. I don't know how we got Brian, our guitar player, to go along with it, but he dutifully showed up in trucker's cap and soul-concealing sunglasses. Roger, our lead singer, seemed uncomfortable with the whole concept of golf, but he played anyway. P.H. put his golf shoes on in the parking lot. Hearing his spikes crunch the pavement, I realized too late my sandals probably weren't the best choice for the day.
We were all pretty bad, except for P.H., whose hits were all elegance, an old-money swing bred in Chicago's suburbs, his fairway shots yielding the correct amount of arc, his pitches landing with a thump on the green. Roger seemed befuddled by the game, taking swings that sometimes yielded nothing but his ball trickling to the left or right. Brian cracked his first Miller High Life by the second hole.
I was stoked to get another shot at the links. It'd been ten years since I'd quit Indian Bluff, and I felt like being married and somewhat settled might translate into a quieter, less neurotic game.
It was not to be so. I still had a weirdly excited swing that yielded worm-burns or worse from the tee. I remember once hooking a drive so drastically it threatened cars driving by on Dobson Road. My pitching was atrocious, despite following to the letter P.H.'s instructions about a more open stance. And I couldn't back up my earlier bravado on the putting green. One time in the fairway, I missed the ball entirely, causing an embarrassed silence amongst my foursome. That summer I once again averaged 110 per round. It was a relief when our second record came out and we had to hit the road. There would be no room for golf bags on the tour bus.
In the wake of this period, I took a more contrarian view of the game. Who cared if I wasn't any good? Golf was evil anyway. What activity better symbolized the gross extravagance of our society? The Phoenix area has 132 golf courses. All that water to keep those fairways green, an environmental travesty. If you're going to suck at something, it might as well be something that's just plain wrong in the first place. I quit the game, losing my clubs in the junk corner of our garage and all but forgetting about them.
My band broke up in 1998, and my wife Kel and I moved to San Francisco, where we both worked day jobs while taking art and writing classes at night. When I finished my degree, we moved 350 miles north to Ashland, Oregon, where I spent my days writing and Kel making and selling her art work. In 2007, business was going well enough that, when an artist friend asked me to go golfing, I said yes.
By this time, golf had intrigued me on a different level. In 1999, while combing the fiction shelves of a used bookstore in Sausalito, I came across the U section, which was dominated by John Updike. I'd been avoiding Updike's work for years, believing--without actually reading any of it--there was something staid and conventional about it. He seemed boring compared to the modernists, who got more lip service in college classes. Still, I knew Updike's fiction had been ubiquitous during the last half-century. That day in Sausalito, I gave in and bought a copy of Rabbit, Run.
It would not be an exaggeration to say the next decade of my reading life was dedicated to reading Updike from end to end. Among the thousands of things Updike wrote well about, he was a master at writing about golf, teasing out the game's beauty with his words. I was somewhere toward the end of my Updike phase when my artist friend asked me to play and, my head full of Updikean tropes, I couldn't wait.
So, did my game change? Was it any different at 36 years old than it had been at 26 or 16? The sad part of this story is that my golf game altered not one lick during any of these decades. I still hit worm-burners off the tee. I was hit-and-miss out of the fairway, and I couldn't find my asshole with a pitching wedge. My friend of course helped, and I did my best to do what he said. Nothing seemed to work. Once, I got so mad I launched my three-iron boomerang style into the distance. It went farther than most of my shots that day.
Still, my frustration didn't come without a consolation prize. During one round, I discovered my problem with golf: It's all in the divot.
When I swing a golf club, I have a natural, instinctual aversion to causing a divot in the grass. For some reason, I'm squeamish about digging out a chunk of earth. It's not some hyper-environmental concern or anything like that. I just don't like the way it feels to dig up the earth with a golf club. This causes me to pull up ever so slightly when I swing, and this adjustment drastically affects the way I hit the ball. All those worm-burners--I was topping the ball because of my aversion to hitting the ground. Repeated swings proved my theory valid. It's an ingrained flaw, and it pretty much means I'll never be a decent golfer. As time has passed, I've learned to accept this. The golf gods aren't my gods, and that's okay. It's going to have to be.
Still, I look on fondly when I drive past courses, watching a golfer ease back his club, head down, nice follow-through. It's like a poem written in a language I'll never understand, but the sound of the words no less beautiful for that reason.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Contribute to the Kickstarter campaign for my third novel Badge.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Badge Kickstarter's Sparkling Start, Plus New Pieces
Getting $2610 in the first week of the Kickstarter campaign to fund the publication of Badge is friggin' awesome. There's still a long way to go, but for one week, consider my expectations exceeded.
Still, do you know what I'm most tickled about? The comments I've gotten about the first chapter of Badge, which I also posted last week. People, feel free to give this thing a look before you donate.
Also this past week, my Weeklings piece "Like this Essay" was picked up by The Good Man Project. This hasn't hurt my ego one bit. Give it a read while I can still fit my head in the room.
Finally, Word Riot was kind enough to run my review of Rob Roberge's latest, The Cost of Living, which takes us well up the sex and drugs road of rock lit. Give it a read as you wait for Badge, who also likes to imbibe.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Contribute to the Kickstarter campaign for my third novel Badge.
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in Tempe in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.
Still, do you know what I'm most tickled about? The comments I've gotten about the first chapter of Badge, which I also posted last week. People, feel free to give this thing a look before you donate.
Also this past week, my Weeklings piece "Like this Essay" was picked up by The Good Man Project. This hasn't hurt my ego one bit. Give it a read while I can still fit my head in the room.
Finally, Word Riot was kind enough to run my review of Rob Roberge's latest, The Cost of Living, which takes us well up the sex and drugs road of rock lit. Give it a read as you wait for Badge, who also likes to imbibe.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Contribute to the Kickstarter campaign for my third novel Badge.
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in Tempe in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
Monday, May 13, 2013
New Stuck the Movie Review/New Piece
First of all, I hope you caught this wonderfully complimentary review of Stuck the Movie. These are the surprises that make it all worth it. Thank you, Michell Hillman.
Second, a new piece of mine is up at The Weeklings, which explores Facebook as increasing the divide between our personas and our real selves. Is your Facebook page you? Are you your Facebook page? What's the difference?
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in Tempe in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.
Second, a new piece of mine is up at The Weeklings, which explores Facebook as increasing the divide between our personas and our real selves. Is your Facebook page you? Are you your Facebook page? What's the difference?
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in Tempe in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
Monday, May 14, 2012
What Fiction Is and Isn't
For a while now I've wanted to write about the nature of fiction. In light of some of the things that have been said about Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, now seems a good time.
When someone writes about anything, he can draw from exactly three places. He can write:
A) facts; for example, "George Washington was the first president of the United States;"
B) things he's experienced or that people have told him; for example, "When I was seven I went to Florida on vacation," "Bob said he fought in the Vietnam war," etc.; or
C) things he makes up; for example, "A man from Mars came to dinner last night."
These three areas aren't just the primary places writers pull from, they're the only places she can pull from. If someone can name another place where a writer can draw from to write, please let me know.
So, let's call these three places a writer's palette. If I'm going to write something, I'm going to draw from them. They're the only choices I have.
If I draw my material entirely from category A, facts, what kind of work would I be creating? Nonfiction for sure, right? Probably history.
How about Category B, things I've experienced or been told about? The material from this category is probably most closely aligned with memoir.
And Category C, things from my imagination? That's where fiction comes from, right?
Wrong, or at least incomplete.
The notion that fiction comes (entirely) from the imagination is inaccurate. Sure, much of fiction comes from made up things, like my Martian friend, but a good dose of fiction comes from the first two categories as well. We can't help but draw from facts, and things we've experienced or heard about, when we write fiction.
Imagine sitting down and trying to write entirely from your imagination. Look at my fictional sentence above: "A man from Mars came to dinner last night." Didn't happen, totally made up, and yet look at the concepts within the sentence. "Man," "Mars," "dinner," "last night." These are all things that come from fact or things I've learned about through experience. Even fictional categories like science fiction and fantasy can't avoid elements from our world. If they did, we wouldn't be able to understand them.
So, the real world is always a big player in any fictional one.
In light of this, why would someone choose to write fiction? This is where the painter's palette metaphor comes in handy. If you write history or memoir, you're limiting the possibilities of things you can use in your writing. For example, you can't say, "A man from Mars came to dinner last night." (Unless of course he did.) In these two genres, there are colors on your palette you simply can't use. You might want to, but you're writing in a category that doesn't allow it. You can see the red there on your palette, but you can only use yellow and blue.
But if you're writing fiction, you can choose any color you want: red or blue or yellow, or combinations of the three. This is the beauty of fiction.
Not only is fiction the most liberating category (for me), I also believe it's where the richest stories come from. I could name a few hundred examples, but I suspect you can fill these in.
So, what does this all have to do with Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie?
I've stated many times that the novel--and the screenplay based on the novel--are fictions, but if you think fiction consists of things that are entirely made up, you might not believe my claim. "Wait, I recognize elements of this person," or "I remember that club," etc. When I call things fictions, I'm not claiming I made them all up. I'm saying I'm drawing from all three of the above categories throughout.
Why would I do that? Why wouldn't I just give you the story of my life in the Tempe music scene in the early 1990s and be done with it? Because I wanted to tell the best story, and frankly, the story of my early 1990s in the Tempe music scene isn't all that compelling. As a writer, I don't want to waste the reader's time. It tends to make them testy.
So, I write fiction because I want to write with the largest palette, which in my opinion creates the best stories.
There are of course other, more nefarious reasons to write fiction. You could want to get back at people by using elements of their personalities in your fictional characters, and portraying these characters in some negative light. This happens, and I suppose there are always going to be people who want to believe it's happening with Stuck. People will think whatever they want to think, and I can't claim perfection, but with Stuck--both the novel and screenplay--I tried simply to tell the best story I knew how to tell at the time, using the categories above. Producer Nico Holthaus and I agreed early on that Stuck the Movie would be the story of a kid trying to get out of Tempe--with the Tempe music scene of the early 1990s as a backdrop--and would not be a dig at anyone or anything.
So read Stuck, or (soon) watch the movie, and if you notice elements of the real world in them, don't assume it's meant to represent or reflect upon those elements in the real world. Like a painter who mixes blue and yellow to make green, it's more complicated than that.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
When someone writes about anything, he can draw from exactly three places. He can write:
A) facts; for example, "George Washington was the first president of the United States;"
B) things he's experienced or that people have told him; for example, "When I was seven I went to Florida on vacation," "Bob said he fought in the Vietnam war," etc.; or
C) things he makes up; for example, "A man from Mars came to dinner last night."
These three areas aren't just the primary places writers pull from, they're the only places she can pull from. If someone can name another place where a writer can draw from to write, please let me know.
So, let's call these three places a writer's palette. If I'm going to write something, I'm going to draw from them. They're the only choices I have.
If I draw my material entirely from category A, facts, what kind of work would I be creating? Nonfiction for sure, right? Probably history.
How about Category B, things I've experienced or been told about? The material from this category is probably most closely aligned with memoir.
And Category C, things from my imagination? That's where fiction comes from, right?
Wrong, or at least incomplete.
The notion that fiction comes (entirely) from the imagination is inaccurate. Sure, much of fiction comes from made up things, like my Martian friend, but a good dose of fiction comes from the first two categories as well. We can't help but draw from facts, and things we've experienced or heard about, when we write fiction.
Imagine sitting down and trying to write entirely from your imagination. Look at my fictional sentence above: "A man from Mars came to dinner last night." Didn't happen, totally made up, and yet look at the concepts within the sentence. "Man," "Mars," "dinner," "last night." These are all things that come from fact or things I've learned about through experience. Even fictional categories like science fiction and fantasy can't avoid elements from our world. If they did, we wouldn't be able to understand them.
So, the real world is always a big player in any fictional one.
In light of this, why would someone choose to write fiction? This is where the painter's palette metaphor comes in handy. If you write history or memoir, you're limiting the possibilities of things you can use in your writing. For example, you can't say, "A man from Mars came to dinner last night." (Unless of course he did.) In these two genres, there are colors on your palette you simply can't use. You might want to, but you're writing in a category that doesn't allow it. You can see the red there on your palette, but you can only use yellow and blue.
But if you're writing fiction, you can choose any color you want: red or blue or yellow, or combinations of the three. This is the beauty of fiction.
Not only is fiction the most liberating category (for me), I also believe it's where the richest stories come from. I could name a few hundred examples, but I suspect you can fill these in.
So, what does this all have to do with Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie?
I've stated many times that the novel--and the screenplay based on the novel--are fictions, but if you think fiction consists of things that are entirely made up, you might not believe my claim. "Wait, I recognize elements of this person," or "I remember that club," etc. When I call things fictions, I'm not claiming I made them all up. I'm saying I'm drawing from all three of the above categories throughout.
Why would I do that? Why wouldn't I just give you the story of my life in the Tempe music scene in the early 1990s and be done with it? Because I wanted to tell the best story, and frankly, the story of my early 1990s in the Tempe music scene isn't all that compelling. As a writer, I don't want to waste the reader's time. It tends to make them testy.
So, I write fiction because I want to write with the largest palette, which in my opinion creates the best stories.
There are of course other, more nefarious reasons to write fiction. You could want to get back at people by using elements of their personalities in your fictional characters, and portraying these characters in some negative light. This happens, and I suppose there are always going to be people who want to believe it's happening with Stuck. People will think whatever they want to think, and I can't claim perfection, but with Stuck--both the novel and screenplay--I tried simply to tell the best story I knew how to tell at the time, using the categories above. Producer Nico Holthaus and I agreed early on that Stuck the Movie would be the story of a kid trying to get out of Tempe--with the Tempe music scene of the early 1990s as a backdrop--and would not be a dig at anyone or anything.
So read Stuck, or (soon) watch the movie, and if you notice elements of the real world in them, don't assume it's meant to represent or reflect upon those elements in the real world. Like a painter who mixes blue and yellow to make green, it's more complicated than that.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
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