‘Searching for Sugar Man’ – Go Now!

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I usually don’t do back-to-back blogs anymore but I have to do this one:

Go see ‘Searching for Sugar Man.’ If it’s not playing where you are yet, find out when it will – here’s the site with trailer. If you have to drive to get to the theater, go. If you don’t think it’s worth it, blame me but go first – I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Rodriguez

‘Searching for Sugar Man’ is about Rodriguez, an inner-city Detroit singer who made two albums around 1970-71 that sold ‘six copies’ in the words of his record company president. Six copies in America, that is, which was all that mattered to the suits. And then disappeared, amid rumors that he’d killed himself on stage one night.

In the ensuing years, Rodriguez’ two records got passed around, often as bootlegged cassettes, in South Africa and eventually became the heartbeat of the anti-apartheid movement, to the point that, in the 90’s,  fans from the new South Africa were shocked to discover that he was unknown in America. A journalist from there decided to find out how the man died – and got a whole lot more than he bargained for, in the most delightful and uplifting way imaginable. Several times in this film, crucial players say, “I thought that was the end – but the best was yet to come” and it’s true, over and over.

I went with Smitty and a friend of her’s from work. When the film ended, we were pretty much speechless. Anyone who knows us could predict that wouldn’t last long – we were chattering about nothing else the rest of the night. This documentary possesses a couple of gifts we almost never get from anything anymore.

I don’t want to give too much away. I will just say this – we go to movies all the time and tell ourselves we were surprised but 99 times out of 100, that’s not really true. Maybe the story took a left when we expected a right, maybe it changed up on us a bit and we’re thrown off our expectations but that’s not the same as really being thrown, really seeing something with new eyes.

This documentary took me totally by surprise at least twice. And I’d seen the trailer and read everything I could find before it opened (which, by the way, I don’t recommend – the most wonderful way to discover it, I think, is just to go and let it take you through its story in its own way).

Anyhow, I was moved not just by what the filmmakers found but by the qualities of the artist and his music and his response to his own art and its power. This movie is highly recommended for anyone who loves any kind of art and absolutely essential for anyone who’s ever set out to make art, because it deals heavily (not heavy-handedly, mind you) with two really big issues:

1) that an artist can never predict the effect of his or her work and

2) that the art is part of who you are, whether anyone else knows about it or not, whether anyone hears it or appreciates it, whether you get paid big bucks or none at all. The point of art is doing it and doing your best and then you hope it will find a home. Sometimes it does right away, sometimes it never does and sometimes the miracle comes out of the sky long after you’ve given up – and doesn’t change a thing. And that’s the right answer too.

And if that in particular sounds intriguing to you, then you must see this film.

 

And Now for Something Completely Different…

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I’m sickish again.

I feel kinda like this…

Nothing terminal, I assume. It started with laryngitis and that’s getting better though I’m still a little croaky, I’m running a little temperature and a bit achy and woozy. My ex used to insist that ‘woozy’ wasn’t a word but I have since seen it in several certified works of literature so what does she know?

Anyway, I’m really enjoying it because I get to lounge around at Smitty’s nice apartment and make snarky comments and she can’t do anything about it because as soon as she narrows her eyes at me,  I whimper and get all sickly and pathetic-sounding. Meanwhile, the chicken soup from the Polish place across the street is really good.

Later, we’ll watch a movie or I’ll take a nap and tonight we’re going to see a documentary I’m looking forward to, ‘Searching for Sugarman’ – if you haven’t heard of this, here’s an article about it in HuffPost. By the way, isn’t it interesting that AOL paid Arianna Huffington all that money to use HuffPost to save AOL, yet nowadays, you can’t name anything else that AOL has? HuffPost has totally consumed AOL instead of the other way round.

So anyway, I felt I should put something up on the blog; maybe a piece about non-linear stream of consciousness and…oh, I guess I did…

What Lies Beneath

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Work on the ‘Mindbenders’ sequel is proceeding. I’m almost at the end of a good draft; the next several should proceed much more quickly (fingers crossed).

I’m not an orderly storyteller. Stories come out of my subconscious in episodes and scenes. I usually start with a flash, a place or outrageous image and I have to find out what it means, how it works. My first few attempts at a scene are usually diversions, brainless heartless or gutless substitutes the conscious mind substitutes for the original vision . It usually takes a bunch of writing to get past that, to find my way back to some approximation of that sweet first flash.

But it’s only after months of wrestling with a story as a whole – I generally don’t get to the end until I’ve flogged the beginning and middle to death – that I start picking up the larger, deeper, wider meaning underneath.

Usually, I’ll be twenty or thirty pages from the end of a draft and I’ll write something (again, I try to let the words hit the page before I’ve thought them through) that just explodes in my head. And then I have to do another draft just to weave that theme throughout the story, to make sure it’s everywhere  without hitting anyone over the head.

Seeing the theme in your story is like switching from a close-up of a face to an overhead shot of a neighborhood: everything suddenly appears in a much wider context. And if I’ve done it right, all kinds of details that I thought I put in on a whim turn out to have a distinct purpose. The whole story resonates on a deeper level.

This is another reason you can’t write too quickly. Early drafts of a story inevitably focus on plot and character mechanics. I once laughed at a post by F. Paul Wilson, who detailed the stages he went through  writing what he considered his plot-driven stories; they were entirely the same as the stages of what I consider my character-driven ones. But theme doesn’t emerge until you’ve been working long enough for the whole story to simmer under the surface for a while.

So, as I’ve said before, if you’re writing six books a year, you’re not doing your readers or your characters any favors.

 

Help Me Find More Readers!

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Can I ask a favor? I’ve just been informed that there are certain thresholds for ‘Like’s’ and tags and reviews on Amazon and if you’re over those thresholds, Amazon may (no guarantees) review you and kick you into a more visible category which results in more sales. $$$$!!!!!

So: Can those of you who haven’t already done so, go to the Mindbenders paperback page (it has to be the paperback, link here ) and do the following:

– Hit the ‘Like’ button on top near the number of reviews and then
– Go way down past the reviews and ‘Customers Also Bought’ until you see the Tags and Click all the Tags.
– And if you haven’t done a review and you liked the book, please give it even a short review. I need about twenty more reviews and many buttons clicked but this group could put me into the right category and then it’s up to Amazon.

Tell you what? If you all do this and the book starts selling like crazy, we all go to Peter Lugar’s on me! (Just try and collect!) And if I sell a million copies, I’ll never ask you to do anything ever again! I promise! Except to pass the Worcestershire sauce…

 

Take Me Out…

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Us (We are NOT dressed alike!)

Smitty and I went to a ballgame – Brooklyn Cyclones vs the Staten Island Yankees, at the Cyclones home field on Coney Island.

It was a great date. Smitty said she thought the seats were kind of high up and I guess she might have been right, since I couldn’t actually touch any of the players without leaning forward a few rows. But you could see the movement on the pitches and feel the violence when a player swung through a pitch.

This is low minor leagues -short season A ball – and the Cyclones looked younger and less seasoned than the Yankees in general. The Cyclones made two errors and their starter was wild; the difference in the game was one inning where he walked the bases full (there was a single in there somewhere) and inevitably paid for it.

A violent swing (all photographs by CO Moed)

Yankees won, 4-2 and if you’re a Mets fan, there’s something so familiar there, it only makes it so much sweeter when the worm turns (I have real hopes for next season -really!)

But in the meanwhile, we got the Weiner Race (won by – Ketchup!), a boy of 5 or 6 trying to throw a ball through the dot over the ‘i’ in the Dime Savings Bank sign (good try but no), the little girl around the same age who smoked Sandy the Seagull (the mascot, not one of the players) in a race from first to third. She politely handed her sandals to King Henry, the Cyclones’ master of ceremonies and Court Jester (I say he reminds me of Stubby Kaye; Smitty said no, Stubby Kaye was hot – I’m gaining fifty pounds tomorrow) before starting the race; seeing her determination rounding second (and seeing Sandy collapse on the grass after the race, clutching his heart) was priceless. And there was a great fireworks display after – I get the impression that’s every Friday night, in case you’re thinking about going.

We walked Coney just a little after the game. I find the place spooky but Smitty virtually grew up there and has lots of memories so we’ll go back and I’m really looking forward to that.

The trip home was really the icing on the cake. A coven of college kids – maybe six of them – got onto our subway car at Coney Island (end of the line or, in our case, beginning) and rode most of the way through Brooklyn, juggling in a moving car! There were two very good jugglers and the others in the group just kept throwing the couple of extra balls (don’t ask me why there were extra balls but there were) at each other so it was very funny chaos at the far end of the car.

It was typical New York late night – the couple across from us around 70ish, checking their cellphones and reading in synch and, according to Smitty, dressed alike (if one person’s wearing blue and shorts and a hat and the other person’s wearing gray and Capri’s (not that I know Capri’s from long pants) and no hat, I don’t see how that can be dressed alike but don’t tell Smitty that, she’ll explain it to you and believe me).

And the two Asian kids who carried a whole pizza onto the train, ate a couple slices and left carrying the rest after two stops (this is Brooklyn, a pizzeria on every corner – if you’re willing to go two stops on the train for pizza, it must be good).

I love baseball for itself but it is amazing how it seems to collect slices of life for embroidery, especially at the minor league level where everything is still human-sized (including the prices). It’s a magical game, not least for all the riotous, vivid  life it seems to attract.

 

 

 

 

The Road That Takes You

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Smitty told me the other night: the world is 3% sociopaths who run roughshod over the rest of us – everyone else just wants to be heard. This might not be an exact quote. Anyway, the thought speaks to me in general but it rings even more strongly in my writing life.

An independent author has to be writer, publisher, publicist, art director, proofreader, auditor, you name it. Sometimes, you can (or had better) find help with some of these tasks but in the end, the responsibility is yours.

And when the book is published, you don’t have the advertising and promotion departments a publisher would be able to bring to bear. Of course, those departments barely get involved with most author’s books anyway (and sometimes, you wish they wouldn’t) but at least with traditional publishing, it’s not all on your shoulders .

The counterbalance, the advantage an indie can bring to bear, is your own enthusiasm for your own work and, more importantly, the power of the fan. When you approach a reader who likes what you do, not as some publishing monolith but as another human voice that longs to be heard, it’s a whole different connection.

People have been very kind to me in the thirteen months since ‘Mindbenders’ was published. They tell their friends, some buy ebook and then paperback copies, some have given them as gifts, some have written reviews and turned me on to websites that would promote the book (for free!). It’s the power of the spontaneous need to help people we relate to. When readers understand they are your publicist, your ally and your army, there’s a pleasure that’s greater than just recommending a book you see advertised on TV every five minutes.

And this new relationship with readers and reviewers has also forced me into a kind of growth I never anticipated when I got into indie publishing: the freedom and the craziness of letting go. When you have a publicity budget and a coordinated campaign, you tell yourself you’re going to make things happen. You’re working with people with a professional need to take credit for your success – their future careers depend on it.

In my indie publishing world, I never know what’s coming. I never know which road leads to the swamp and which to the mountaintop. I don’t know if there is a road to the mountaintop. I have to keep making decisions and trying new things without knowing the consequences and while realizing that the payoff might take a while. Not-so-strangely, that experience is working its way into the subtext of my next book, ‘Mindbenders: The Big Dream.’

As George Harrison pointed out, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there. I’m on the road. I’ll go where it takes me. I’m learning that the road itself is part of the journey. And so, of course, is the company. Thank you for being part of it.

 

A Good Story Isn’t a Pancake

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You have to feel a story. It has to come from some impulse way down deep inside.

One popular strain of advice for independent writers these days is: write a lot of books really fast.

Then when a reader discovers you and likes one of your books, there are six more and she’ll buy the other five (Hey! They’re only $2.99!) and you make some real money (for writers, ‘real money’ means more than one latte with shots at Starbucks).

And if you can write a whole bunch of quality books really fast (you picked out the tricky word there right away, didn’t you?), this is obviously very sensible advice.

What it fails to take into account is that readers are already getting used to the $2.99 price – they will soon be assuming this is the appropriate price for a novel-sized work of fiction by an author they’ve never heard of – so the reader may not jump so fast to buy the others sight unseen.

Illustrations by Howard Pyle, who created some very memorable characters

Particularly once word gets around that many of these series are hastily and sometimes badly written, poorly edited (or not edited at all) and rushed online to maximize the writer’s Return on Investment (ROI for those of us who were too romantic or pig-headed to get an MBA like everyone else).

There are some writers who can maintain their level of quality and turn out six books a year – but even if the writing’s okay, I doubt the stories are going to surprise anyone. For a story to find its own path, you have to let it simmer, you have to worry over it and fuss and stew. Your stomach has to get bad. This takes time.

We live in a world where everything, including our own labor and dignity, has been devalued to commodity status. Most people’s daily work lives are insanely demanding and brutal – there’s so little time and interest paid to what we are as human beings.

We turn to popular art – books, television, movies, music – to find something with the human touch, something that reminds us that life isn’t all about the pricetag. Writers who write with the pricetag in mind are bypassing the greatest gift they can offer their readers.

 

Read for Free Now – Buy (maybe) Later!

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Mindbenders is FREE (once again) today on Amazon!

Those of you who’ve been curious or even interested but haven’t yet read this ‘intriguing’ ‘gripping’ ‘thought-provoking’ thriller(quotes from reader reviews – hey, how come nobody’s used ‘harrowing’ yet; you can’t read a professional review of a cookbook without finding the word ‘harrowing’ in it!), here’s your chance! It’s okay with me! Download and read to your heart’s content – and if you like the story, buy a copy (for a measly $2.99!) tomorrow. If you don’t like it, ignore it , throw it in the trash (the file, not your reader) or give it to a friend too slow-moving or out of the loop to have downloaded it for FREE today!

If you don’t have Kindle software, by the way, it can be downloaded (for PC’s, Mac’s, smartphones, what-have-you) from the link on the right-hand menu of this page. For FREE! (Didn’t think I was going to miss that, did you?)

This offer will never be repeated (for at least a couple of weeks…or so). Unless things change, which they always do. What was my point? Oh yes, FREE – FREE – FREE!!! (So much for the search algorithms)

 

New One-Star ‘Mindbenders’ Review!

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They always say no one will believe you’re real if you only have sterling reviews – so now everyone will believe me!

1.0 out of 5 stars Slow Paced…, July 10, 2012
I have received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

I went into this book with high expectations that dropped quickly, unfortunately. It started out somewhat interestingly with a murder, but didn’t get any better in my opinion. The characters were interesting and complex; however, the storyline was a bit too slow-paced for my taste. I was bored and basically had to force myself to make it through the fifth chapter. If you like slower paced books with a few twists then you will like this book. If you like faster paced books with a bit more action and thrills then please steer clear of this book as you will not be happy and may fall asleep. This is just the opinion of a housewife and mother who LOVES to read. So, please view several reviews before you make your decision on whether or not to purchase this book. Thanks & happy reading! ~Amanda,(Wanda’s Amazing Amazon Reviewers)~

 

Moses and Me

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Of course, we didn’t have paper or quills, but nice likeness otherwise…

Weird guy, Moses. Reminds me of Lincoln. Brooders, both of ‘em. No, not brothers, brooders. Sat around brooding all night. Don’t let them get near the mead or you’ll pay for it.

Moses would sit around the campfire some nights and just whine like a little girl. It wasn’t befitting, if you ask me, for somebody God elected. One vote’s all you need if it’s the right one.

They don’t appreciate me, they don’t want to be free. Sure they want to be free, I said, they just don’t understand how hard it is, they’ve got a slave’s idea of freedom, all dancing and singing and running around with the other guy’s wife or sister or daughter or whatever. That’s sick, he said—not exactly in those words. We’ll put a stop to that pretty quick, he said and he did. You ask me, there were originally like maybe six commandments. Once he didn’t like something, he did something about it. And it always seemed to me the handwriting on the last few commandments wasn’t the same as the rest but it’s been a long time since I checked.

You had to be very careful with your campfires with him, too. I remember one time I was going to pick this bush for the campfire and he says, “Not that one!” And proceeds to talk to it like it’s an old friend. “Can I take this one?” I said and he just waved like sure, whatever. Very quirky guy. Not always easy to work with. This, they don’t tell you in history.

And then he comes down from the mountain with the commandments and after that, you’d think he was so special. Wouldn’t get a haircut, got like three or four of the same robes made so he always looked like Moses. Like we had anybody else to take fashion sense from—Abraham was no pillar of hot fashion, let me tell you. Jacob, maybe. Joseph got his coat from him, so he inherited, y’know? It’s not the same.

But Moses’ moods got worse toward the end. One night, he said to me, “I could have been Pharoah” and of course, I knew what was coming. “You led a whole nation; God talks to you,” I tried but no use. “I want a pyramid,” he said. It was getting late and we were both tired. This was just after God killed Aaron’s sons so things were tense. “I want a pyramid of my own.” And then, there’s a bolt of lightning strikes a tree right near by and he waves his hand and yells, “Okay, can’t a guy talk?” He didn’t have an easy time of it.

So I promised him a pyramid that night but I never came through on it. When God says “Cross the river,” you cross the river. You’ve got to know where your bread is buttered—or milk n’ honeyed, in this case.