Monsters

I just finished watching Monsters and it seriously impressed me.   You should know by now that I believe that breaking down the artificial walls between genres is one of the great strengths of independent media and this film does it to a greater extent than anything else I can think of.

Horror, science fiction, romance, adventure, political commentary… yeah, it’s in there.  Honestly, it is difficult for me to even describe what exactly Monsters is, except very, very moving.

The story is simple.  I high-concepted it as The Year Of Living Dangerously meets Cloverfield.  Six years before the film begins a US spacecraft carrying samples of alien life crash lands in Mexico.  Life from the wreck survives and contaminates the area, causing the US to quarantine a large swath of Mexico.  Things live there that are not native to Earth and not friendly to humans.

A photographer is at the edge of the infected zone.  The daughter of the owner of the magazine that the photographer works for is vacationing in the area and is injured when one of the creatures breaks out of the zone and the US military responds with an airstrike. The magazine mogul gives the photographer orders to get his daughter out of there, by whatever means necessary.

That’s the setup.  A man and a woman, thrown together by fate, in a dangerous situation. The story plays out from there, sometimes predictable, sometimes very original.

Be advised, this is a very slow film by Hollywood standards.  There are a lot of long shots in which the focus is mood rather than action.  It is very much a cinematographer’s film.  It is also a guerrilla photographer’s film, shot on location, on the fly, with extras picked up on the scene.  The total budget wouldn’t cover the salary of Gwyneth Paltrow’s nail tech for Iron Man 3. 

It’s real.  It’s everything that I love about independent media, people telling the story that comes bubbling up from inside them, screw marketing, screw focus groups, to hell with what the distributor’s accountants think and just make a goddamned movie!

It’s available on Netflix, so I strongly urge you to sit down, relax, give yourself time to adjust to the pace of the film, and get lost in the story.  Seriously, if you don’t cry at the end, you don’t have a soul.

How’s Your Neighborhood?

This morning I had an unpleasant experience.

I am going to be deliberately vague because I don’t want to single out the person involved.  Suffice to say that I have contacted the person privately and received a response that satisfied me.  So if you haven’t corresponded with me regarding this, I’m not talking about you.

With that being said, I have been working on building my network of indie writers and I visit a lot of indie writer’s websites.  This morning I was following links, going to a friend of a friend of a friend in that semi-random way that the internet encourages, and I ended up on the page of a writer and illustrator.  This person had a lot of content, both text and images, and some of the images were large and high-definition.

Anyway, I clicked from one link to another, and I thought I was going back to the person’s home page, when suddenly a popup window informed me that it was installing a new toolbar in my browser and setting my home page to a particular search engine and doing other stuff to my computer that I did not want done.

Well, as it happens I keep my malware/virus protection fairly up to date, and I was able to correct what had been done.  It took me some sweat, though, and frustration, and spending time running a virus scan when I’d rather be browsing the internet.  It was annoying.

Now, this person did not write the hijacker that tried to insinuate itself into my machine.  That was the web-hosting company.  However,  this person did sign up for a “free” web page without fully understanding how the company paid for its largess.

The point to this is that I think it’s important for us, as self-promoters, to be aware of what the companies that host our content are up to.  Personally, I use WordPress, Twitter, and FaceBook.  I am fairly confident about giving out links to my content.  (Yes, I realize that FaceBook is run by the elder ones and will steal your soul, but everybody does it.)

The response, by the way, that I received from the person whose site prompted this post, was illuminating.  The person used the toolbar and search engine that the site was trying to install, and didn’t realize that it was aggressive in pushing it on other people.  Now, it may be a very great site, but it’s not one that I chose to use, so I won’t be going back to domains under that company.  Which means that the author and illustrator won’t be getting my business, nor will I be linking to that site.

Ladies And Gentlemen, Boys And Girls Of All Ages!

Okay folks, if you live in or near St. Louis, MO, or you can make the trip to St. Louis, MO over the summer, I urge you to get tickets for Circus Flora’s Summer 2013 show, “A Trip To The Moon”. 

It will be running from May 30 to June 23, and tickets are available through the website (via Metrotix) or by phone.

Why?  Because this is a chance to see a live circus performance in the old tradition.  Circus Flora presents their shows as an episodic review, a single narrative told in various acts.  It is a style which has been passed down virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is a style which is unfortunately dying.

This is a locally owed and operated troupe of performers who are  schooled in the skills and traditions of travelling performers, a piece of living history preserved in the 21st Century.  The work in an intimate venue, playing directly to the audience.  There are no cameras, no video tricks, just flesh and blood, artists and audience sharing the wonder of their art.

Really, I can’t say enough about them.  I blogged about the troupe last year, but I had just started my blog then and I didn’t have much of a readership.  Now, I have more followers, and by gum I am going to use my influence in the blogosphere to promote something I genuinely believe in.

Go to the show.  It is worth buying a ticket.  It is worth making a road trip.  In fact, if you are from out of the area and you want help planning a trip, message me.  I’ll help you with maps, help you find a decent hotel if you want to stay overnight.  This isn’t something that you can see just anywhere.

You buy cheap, you get cheap.

I used to work for a locksmith company that prided itself on being the cheapest in town.  My boss would routinely call other companies and ask for quotes, and then price his own service calls less than the competition.

I realized something important about business while I was working for him.

“If you buy cheap, you get cheap” applies to customers.   People who want the lowest price are a terrible customer base.   Why? Because it’s a terrible basis for a relationship.  Customers who want to save money, first and foremost aren’t loyal to you as a vendor, they are loyal to your prices.  Someone else offers them a lower service call, or a lower hourly rate, or a steeper discount on parts, and poof, they’re gone.

There are a lot of philosophies regarding pricing of e-books.  One writer, who I admire quite a bit, believes strongly in offering his work for free.  I think I understand his reasoning, I just don’t happen to agree with it.  (I do, however, appreciate the benefit for me personally–free books!)

What I would caution against is what I would term reactive pricing.  I price Catskinner’s Book at $2.99 for an e-book and $9.99 for a trade paperback.  I think that is reasonable.

I have run a number of promotions where I gave away the e-book. I have given away a number of paperbacks.  However, I still believe that the book is worth what I have priced it at.  In my mind, I wasn’t lowering the value of the book by promoting it via KDP free download days, I was giving away something of value as an advertising expense.

That distinction may not seem significant to many, but it is to me.  I don’t want to compete with other authors on price.  I don’t think that’s productive.  I want to build a readership that has a relationship with me as a writer.  I believe that my novel isn’t perfect, but is worth at least the price of a Banana-Pepper Jack-Half-Decaf-Frappuccino at Starbucks.  I want readers who feel the same way.

To be honest, I will probably launch Cannibal Hearts at $4.99.  Right now it looks like it’s going to be longer, and I honestly believe that I have gotten better as a writer.   I’m not going to release the book until I feel that it’s worth five bucks.

Am I limiting my readership?  I certainly hope so.  I want to limit my readership to people who enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoy telling them.  Will I be doing free promotions for my next book?  Sure, that’s part of the business.  I’ll enroll Cannibal Hearts in KDP, I’ll be offering it on StoryCartel.  Heck, if someone writes me and tells me that she or he really wants to read my book and can’t afford it, I’ll probably comp them a copy.  It’s not all about money.

It is about value, though. I am an honest tradesman, and I believe in offering a fair product for a fair price.  I’m not going to keep raising my prices, even if demand increases, above what I feel is reasonable.  For a self-published e-book, I can’t see going above the $4.99 price.

I can’t control how many people want my work or how much they want it.  I can, however, control the value that I put into it.  If I offer my work for less than I feel it is worth, then I am doing a disservice to it.  I can’t be true to my art and not believe that it is worth paying for.  Nor can I be true to my art and accept more than I think it is worth.

My own thoughts.

Concerning A Conversation In A Wine Cellar With A Most Bloody Poet

“Mr. Hand, I presume?  Oh, do not seek to prevaricate, who else but my patron–a thousand pardons, potential patron, for deciding the issue is to be the substance of our encounter–would I chance upon in this most desolate hour, long past the wonted span of even the most enthusiastic impresario of the vine?”

“Ah, it is not your identity, but rather the appellation by which I hail you that you would seek to dispute? Such is my habit, for I am in all things related to my art the staunchest formalist. Assignations such as ours are without fail occasioned by false names given by all concerned, just as masquerades give rise to false faces and days of obligation to false piety.  I have, good sir, bestowed up you an anonym.”

“Should we enter into an agreement regarding my art, it shall be known solely as ‘The Case Of Mr. Hand’.  I shall not belittle your cunning by speaking of the ways in which such nomenclature is to your advantage should malign happenstance degrade this tragedy into a farce, and render my high verse doggerel.”

“For you see, Mr. Hand, I am no ordinary tradesman of the gibbet and garrote.  I style myself an artist–nay it is the gods who have styled me thus, I do no more than bow to the nature they have sown within me!  It is my conceit that the arts of death are the highest form of poetry, for it is those arts wherein my genius lies.”

“I have honed to the point of madness my intellect, yet in one direction only.  I can say without fear of contradiction that no living man is as well versed in the myriad ways in which a person may be brought to destruction as I.  I stand before you a plague, a pestilence of infinite parts.  Modesty, in league with prudence, forbids me to enumerate those who have met their end at the crescendo of one of my works.  Suffice to say that my audience would strain the capacity of the theater above us.”

“And now, with no further prologue, let us lift the curtain on the first act of our melodrama. This act, Mr. Hand, is your monologue.  A simple thug or ordinary villain, perhaps, would ask for no more than payment and a name, but I am an artist.  To inspire my genius I require your passion.”

“Tell me–and tell me in exhaustive detail, neglect not the slightest brushstroke from your canvas of calamity–tell me why the one whom has inspired you to seek me out must die.”

The Woman Who Played Scrabble With God

When my mother was a little girl
She won the war against the Nazis
By rinsing out and smashing cans
That got melted down and made into tanks

Her father was an important man
Although I never knew exactly how
I remember him primarily as the owner
Of two refridgerators
One of which held only Dr. Pepper in glass bottles

My mother’s mother was a witch
And that’s all I am going to say

My mother’s magic
Was of a differant and more perilous order than witchcraft
She could speak with the tongues of men and angels
She could read Latin
She knew everything:
The names of Russian astronauts
The sleeping habits of dinosaurs
All manner of minutia
About the lives of fascinating people
That I would never meet
Because they’re dead

My mother taught me
That fear is a gift
And that to be afraid of someone is more important than to love

I still don’t know if that is true
But she was right about everything else

An Excerpt From Cannibal Hearts

This is a section of new stuff.  It takes place just after the characters have lost one of their friends, (the traumatic death scene that I had been stuck on for so long.)  James and Godiva are in a hotel suite that Agony provided for them so they wouldn’t have to go home.  Godiva has invited two other ambimorphs, Nancy Dew and Suzie Lightning to join them for the evening.

I am trying to get across the non-human nature of my characters by showing how the ambimorphs grieve. I’m not sure how it comes across–too creepy? Not creepy enough?  Any feedback?

The water shut off in the other room. They hadn’t closed the door, so I stuck my head in.

The girls were in the jacuzzi, the water still and thick with suds. The three of them were close together, arm and arm in arm, Godiva in the middle, hair, blond black and red, all plastered together.

It should have been sexy, but it wasn’t. They were too still, breathing in a glacial unison. Godiva opened her eyes, and the green was dark, almost black. For a moment she just looked at me, as if she couldn’t remember who I was, if the knowledge couldn’t quite penetrate whatever dark warm place her mind had been.

“You can join us,” she said, tonelessly. She’d taken her teeth out, and the tendrils in her mouth that she ordinarily kept tucked away reached out of her mouth, gently tasting the air.

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I’m good.” Nancy and Suzie hadn’t moved at all, not even opened their eyes. They just clung to her side like leeches. “Do you need anything?”

Nancy spoke then, opening just her mouth and not her eyes. “Can you bring the rum?” He voice sounded eerily like Godiva’s.

“Sure,” I said. I went to fetch the bottle. When I got back they had all closed their eyes again, faces as smooth as manikins. A hand came out of the water and I passed the bottle to it without looking to see whose it was.

I understood it. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. She had been hurt, wounded way deep inside, and she needed to grieve in her own way, to seek the comfort of her own kind. They were lost in some sort of biochemical communion, the sybiotes in their bodies reaching out to each other, their conscious minds retreating into a cocoon woven from long chains of alien neurotransmitters.

A communion that, despite what had been done to me, I was too human to enter into. Her offer had, no doubt, been genuine, but there was no room for me in there. Unlike Godiva, I had no kind. Sui generis, that was Catskinner’s phrase. One of a kind.

Or maybe not. There was Agony, but somehow I couldn’t imagine going to her for comfort.

Instead I went back to the big comfy couch and my bottle of scotch. Maybe there was something good on TV.