Author Archives: J. Allan Wolf

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About J. Allan Wolf

J. Allan Wolf is a writer, a physician (OK, retired), a nerdy ham radio operator, and a bad guitarist. (The groupie thing just hasn't worked out very well.) Read his two books, Spacebraid and Other Tales of a Dystopian Universe (very science fiction-y) and Zendoscopy (very, very funny but also serious in places and explicit -- don't read it if you're a prude). If you buy my books (print or e-book format at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and elsewhere) I won't have to go without lunches or clean underwear. So, thanks in advance.

On Reading Leading to Writing

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When I was a kid growing up in the 1950s, my parents would take my kid brother and me out at least one Saturday evening each month to some local restaurant for dinner: Rothbard’s Delicatessen, Yet-D-Far for Chinese, Bob’s Big Boy for burgers…. It was great, but even greater was what we’d usually do after dinner.

“Can we go to a newsstand?” the kid and I would ask. The answer was almost always yes, and so we’d head off to one of several newsstands in the area that carried a wide variety of magazines, comic books, and paperbacks.

Mom and Dad, Mom especially, were avid readers who didn’t care what the kid and I read as long as we were reading something. (Mom, an artist, had many art books on the shelves at home, and I’d often sit and study the nudes when no one else was around.) So, I’d go browsing for my favorites: Flying, Mad (both the magazine and the paperback collections like The Mad Reader), Famous Monsters of Filmland, and comic books to add to my substantial trove.

In elementary school, we had a biweekly visit of the L.A. Unified School District’s “Bookmobile”, a mobile library from which we could check out books. And I did. The Freddy the Pig books, Miss Pickerel Goes to Mars and other books in that series, and the Winston Science Fiction series. It was the Bookmobile that offered up my first taste of Robert Heinlein: The Red Planet, a book I read and then re-read many times over.

All of this exposure to books and magazines provided the foundation for me to become a lifelong reader, and an eclectic one at that. And beyond just reading, it fostered imagination and a fantasy life that started to be expressed through writing. I also found that my own particular portal into self-understanding came best through putting words on paper. When I could look at what I was thinking, I could better understand what I was thinking.

Over the years, I’ve written many letters to the editor – some published and some not – a number of published articles and essays, and two books. My first book, Spacebraid and Other Tales of a Dystopian Universe, was a collection of stories written from pure imagination. There is not much of me in those stories except for a few small particulars.

It is a different story with Zendoscopy, as many readers have easily discerned. Where they have gone wrong, however, is in the assumption that all the episodes in the book actually occurred. In fact, most are riffs on a kernel event or are complete fabrications. What is so interesting to me is that so many people have found what they think is truth in the stories and, perhaps displacing their own identification with them upon me, think that Zendoscopy is somewhat of an autobiography. In three words, it’s a mistake. The book is an example of “writing what you know”, and I’m glad that it seems more real than it is. Nevertheless, I frankly admit that there is far more of me in it than in most of my other writing.

I’m currently at work on a not-quite-a-sequel to Zendoscopy. As yet untitled, it does pick up on the lives of several of the characters in Zendoscopy, but it’s a completely different story and it’s much more separated from “me” than is Zendoscopy. I’m about a hundred pages into it as I write this blog entry, and it’s going to be some time before it’s finished. I hope that when it is, it’ll be as well received as has been Zendoscopy, but I write for the love of writing and not for the money (fortunately). So, whatever happens, happens.

I’ve digressed a bit from how I developed my love of reading, but it was that love that also stimulated me to write. My only regret about it all is that I long ago gave away my collection of comic books. If I’d kept it until now, it’d be worth a small fortune.

A Science Lesson

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Readers of this blog have often noted my despair over the deficiencies in our educational system and, specifically, the degree of people’s scientific ignorance. Think: James Inhof. In light of this, I offer the following science lesson, which I hope in some small way will help raise the level of scientific literacy in our rapidly sinking nation.

 Electricity Simplified

A Science Lecture by Yerffej N. Flow, Ph.D.

    Our topic is electricity. Electricity makes our modern world run. Everyone should understand it but only few do. When you finish reading this, you will know all there is to know about electricity and will be able to count yourself among a privileged few, the electrically connected cognoscenti.

Prehistoric folks did not have electricity. Well, they did but they didn’t know what to do with it. It is well documented in cave paintings how a caveman of great repute named Hrrrrrmph Toog, upon being struck by lightning, became the world’s first 4 million watt fluorescent lighting fixture. Unfortunately, he was unable to comment upon his distinctive achievement afterward.

There are lots of modern theories about electricity. One says that electricity is 98.7% cream of mushroom soup, but we’ll choose the easiest one because it’s…easy. It says that electricity is made up of something called charge. Charge is carried on little particles called electrons and protons, which are stored in cat fur and received by you from MasterCard in the form of a monthly bill with 18.5% interest. Electrons carry negative charge and protons carry positive charge. It could be the other way around, but I forget.

Quiz Question #1 (multiple choice):

Electrons are:

  1. Oblong
  2. Protons
  3. Really, really tiny

Electric charge doesn’t generally do us much good unless it’s moving. When it isn’t, it’s called static electricity. When it is, it’s called electric current. Current flows through “conductors”. It’s blocked by “insulators”. Wire is a conductor. Wood is an insulator. Rubber is a contraceptive.

Quiz Question #2 (true or false): A large number of electrons flowing through a conductor will electrocute him.

Remember the last time you were at a football game? Remember stuffing your way through some dark, bowelly tunnel to get into the stadium? Remember how you got all sweaty? Aha! You’ve just learned the principle of the toaster oven. Or a light bulb. Those cute, cuddly little electrons (people), all sqwoooshed together in the heating element or lighting filament (bowelly tunnel), create heat that makes the wire glow. Your toaster oven toasts, your light bulb lights, all so you can munch golden brown nuts ‘n berry bread toast and read USA Today bathed in the warm glow of a merry hundred watter instead of eating cold gruel in the dark. The wonders of science, revealed!

As you can see, electricity is actually quite simple. And important. It is a little-known fact that all modern electrical devices, from radios to the space shuttle, are just combinations of toaster ovens and light bulbs. The trick is in knowing the proportions.

Next time, we’ll discuss microwave ovens, fertility and alien abduction. Class dismissed.

Note: Yerffej N. Flow received his Ph.D. with negative honors from the Oxford (shoe) University in 2011. He prefers to be called “Doctor”, but not by sick people.

© J. Allan Wolf, 2015

Another in an Occasional Series of Diatribes

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By now, you’ve all gotten used to my periodic diatribes against Republican arrogance, ignorance, and economic elitism, so it won’t surprise you that here’s another one.

One of the most fundamental flaws in our legislative process is the ability to put any sort of rider on a bill, relevance to the primary bill being a non-issue. And so it has been that the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, to which any more moderate leaning Republicans kowtow, has blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security by insisting on a provision invalidating President Obama’s recent actions on immigration. Never mind that that action was taken because Congress has consistently failed to address immigration. The Republicans have no plan (and even appear overtly hostile toward immigrants), and the Democrats are wimps who seem to stand for nothing and certainly aren’t actively, vocally supporting the President. The Republicans have thus shown themselves to care more about immigration than the overall security of the United States against all forms of threat, including terrorism.

With that position, Republicans are batting a thousand on general irrationality and the willingness to put the nation at risk. Here are some other areas where the Republicans are actively seeking to destroy the country:

  • Health insurance: No plan of their own but hostile to the Affordable Care Act. If they succeed in getting it overturned, millions will end up uninsured again.
  • Minimum wage: They’re opposed, fully invested in keeping the economic underclass down
  • Abortion: Almost universally opposed and would be happy to see women dying in back alley abortions as they strive to legislate against responsible pregnancy termination and choice.
  • Gay marriage: Oh, yeah, they think it’s a religious abomination and want to impose their views on you, too.
  • The environment: Absolute opposition to environmental protection, instead favoring ecologic devastation by big business. Maybe they think the Rapture will save them, and damn everyone else.
  • Hostility toward, and general disbelief in, science: The earth is 6000 years old? Evolution is just a “theory”? The scientifically ignorant don’t understand the actual meaning of the word “theory” as applied to scientific fact. Worse, some of their ignorance seems downright willful.
  • Separation of church and state: Republicans have become an American Taliban, eager to impose their own notion of the U.S. as a Christian nation and ignoring the Founding Fathers’ firm stance against precisely what these historical dopes are promoting.
  • Global climate change: Idiots like Senator James Inhof, totally ignorant of science and the considered opinion of every reputable climate scientist on Earth, fail completely to understand and/or accept the reality that is observable to anyone who isn’t a moron. Overall, the planet is warming, oceans are rising, and disaster is becoming a looming certainty.

I could go on, but the essence of current day Republican philosophy is its absolute reliance upon a stratified class system, with a permanently disadvantaged underclass, a contracted middle class, and a small but dominant upper class that can’t see beyond the end of its own economic nose. The Koch brothers et al. have essentially bought Congress, and we are now living in a corporate nation with rapidly eroding social mobility and freedom. Environmental destruction is already occurring and, under incompetent and self-interested leadership, appears headed for much worse in the relatively near future. Voter suppression, continuation of policies that prevent social advancement, and the use of religion and unbridled chauvinism to justify all manner of bigotry and in-your-bedroom legislation are destroying the ideals we, as a country, have in the past and (at least many of us) continue to espouse.

If we don’t wake up to the reality of the situation soon and militate for change, it’s going to be too late. When totalitarian repression becomes too great, people revolt, and I fear the day this could happen in what is supposed to be the land of the free and home of the brave.

Book Review: Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King

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As far back as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed stories of the supernatural. This, in spite of my firmly established identity as a secular humanist/freethinker/atheist – take your choice of terms, although I think one can parse them quite well and all apply to me. But that’s the subject of some other blog entry I’ll do one of these days. The point now is that I love to read stories of the supernatural.

I should digress for a moment and distinguish “supernatural” from “horror”. In my youth, we often saw considerable overlap between the two. These days, “horror” tends to equate with mass murder, gore, and torture. Frankly, current horror fiction of this type interests me not at all. I don’t mind a bit of it creeping into stories of the supernatural, but chainsaw massacres simply don’t interest me very much.

All of this brings me to the sorts of supernatural stories I like. When I was a kid, I loved an anthology called Ghosts, Ghosts, Ghosts, written for a youth audience and chock full of, well, ghosts. When my daughters were young, I made an annual event of reading one of the stories in the book to them every Halloween: “The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall”, by John Kendrick Bangs. The girls loved the story, which of course had a creepy ghost, but no horror in the vein of, say, Nightmare on Elm Street.

My love of supernatural stories has remained ardent over the years, and when Stephen King’s novel, The Shining, appeared, I devoured it. Later, I hated Stanley Kubrick’s movie, with Jack Nicholson’s hammy performance. Somehow, the movie simply couldn’t compare to the mental images conjured in me by the book.

As King, himself has said, it became almost imperative for him to write a sequel to The Shining, one that told the story of Danny Torrance, the son who possessed the powers described as “the shining”. But the need for King to write the sequel arose from far more than just the need to tell Danny’s story.

As those who’ve read (or seen) The Shining know, Danny and his mother survived the explosion and fire that destroyed the Overlook Hotel. Doctor Sleep picks up the story with Danny, now going by Dan, as a grown man, still haunted by the ghosts of the Overlook and deeply alcoholic. As King writes the story, one cannot help but get the impression that Dan is a clear reflection of his own alcoholism, and that writing in extensive detail about it offered him a powerful emotional catharsis. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. As the writer of a fictional work, Zendoscopy, myself, I know that certain aspects of my own character and history (the latter used only as the kernel for some of the tales in the book that take off into large scale fictional riffs) are projected into Sherman, the book’s protagonist. I have every reason to believe that King has done the same with Dan. The descriptions of his alcohol abuse cut simply too close to the bone to be other than based upon actual experience.

The story, itself, concerns not only Dan’s entry into recovery, but his involvement with a young adolescent girl, Abra, also possessing the shining. She reaches out to Dan for help when she becomes aware that a group of vampire-like (but different) monsters calling themselves the “True Knot” have captured and murdered a young boy in order to steal his “steam”, an essence the members of the group require to maintain their immortality. The leader of the True Knot becomes aware of Abra’s existence, and becomes fanatically dedicated to capturing her to harvest her “steam”. There is an additional reason that the True Knot needs Abra, but to reveal this here would be to spoil the reader’s fun, so I’ll refrain. Once the basic setup is created, the remainder of the book is devoted to how Dan and a few allies come to Abra’s aid and face the True Knot.

Is Doctor Sleep as good a story and novel as The Shining. I’d rather suggest that it’s a different animal. In The Shining, Dan’s father goes mad in a haunted hotel where he’s been hired as the winter caretaker. There is no haunting in Dr Sleep, and the evil is material rather than strictly supernatural. Somewhat paradoxically, there is much more reliance upon the shining in Doctor Sleep than in The Shining. The sequel also reveals a significant coincidence with respect to a certain family relationship which initially suggested to me that King had “jumped the shark”. With continued reading, however, the coincidence is somewhat explained in terms that allowed me to accept it, but it still seemed somewhat contrived.

All in all, Doctor Sleep is an enjoyable read. Suspend your disbelief, recognize King’s skillful writing style, and have fun. Doctor Sleep won’t change your life, but will entertain you.

Recommendation: A pretty good read, but it won’t change your life.

Denial Is Not Just A River in Africa

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It’s February, and the weather in Southern California, where I live, is delightful. Temperatures in the 70s, light breezes, and little to no rain so far in what should be our wettest month. It’s a terrible state of affairs.

All reputable scientists agree that we are living in a world with rapidly changing climate, and that a major, if not the major contributor to the change is the burning of fossil fuels, with release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Other contributors, such as the loss of forests due to logging and other development, and the effect of paved cities with heat retaining structures, also play a role, albeit a lesser one. Of course, it also must be acknowledged that climate change can and does occur as a natural event but, all evidence indicates, it’s not the major factor in what we are currently witnessing.

It is unfortunate that the term “global warming” has often been used as a synonym for climate change. Even though it is demonstrably true that the planetary warming is occurring, it does not mean that every place on Earth is warming at the same rate, or that extremes of temperature, both hot and cold, are not part of the process. That is why the term “climate change” is more accurate. 2014 was the hottest year on record for the world as a whole, but not, for example in the Midwestern U.S., which suffered a monstrously cold winter.

Unfortunately, we in the U.S. live in a country plagued by large scale public ignorance about science, and an unwillingness to see the handwriting on the wall. Somehow, ignoramuses like Senator James Inhof (R., Oklahoma), still insist that climate change is a “hoax”. Even otherwise intelligent people (some of whom I know and with whom I’ve argued the issue) refuse to accept the science. And then, there are those who either think their God will take care of the matter or that the Rapture is coming anyway, so there’s no need to do anything about the fact that things are going to get much worse unless we start addressing the problem now.

How much worse? Consider what’s in store for us, our children, and our grandchildren:

  • Increasingly violent storm activity: This is already evident both in this country and around the world.
  • Continued melting of polar ice resulting in rising sea levels: This will cause not only the disappearance of certain islands and inundation of coastal areas, but will force massive migration to escape flooding. This will cause increased national and international tensions. Violence is likely.
  • Major threats to U.S. national security: A recent article in Rolling Stone magazine by Jeff Goodell describes the current high level of concern by U.S. military officials over the failure to address climate change. Loss of coastal bases (e.g., the Norfolk navy yard) will cost the U.S billions as it tries to build new bases. Loss of our major base on Diego Garcia, an island in the southern Indian Ocean, will markedly reduce our southern Asian presence and influence.
  • Threat to U.S. economic interests: With Arctic ice melting rapidly, a “Northwest Passage” above Canada is rapidly becoming a reality. Failure to develop ships with reinforced hulls (including dedicated icebreakers) is already compromising our ability to be a presence in the area, one rich in natural resources and where Russia and China will certainly increase their presence in years to come.
  • Loss of water: Increasing drought resulting from climate change will decrease potable water supplies. This will be exacerbated by pollution secondary to overpopulation and poverty-related poor sanitation, and by unrestrained corporate pollution. The end result will be a massive shortage of both water, itself, and potable water specifically. This will result in an increase in the prevalence of both infectious diseases and cancer, not to mention violence in “water wars”.

Congress, under the influence of ignorant, self-interested leaders abetted by the short term influx of corporate money, is not even beginning to face up to the coming realities. The Republican Party seems to have become a de facto subsidiary of Koch Industries, and Democrats aren’t taking responsibility either. This is all depressing and inducive of a sense of foreboding. I’d like to be optimistic, to think that Congress will come to its senses and enact measures to reduce the impact of a process already begun but still able to be moderated. Unfortunately, I see no signs of it happening right now.

About all we can do is continue to try and get the word out, to support and elect only those people to Congress who “get it”. But it remains that until – unless – the public demands action, it simply isn’t going to happen, and woe to our descendants, who will live in a world beyond rescue.

Adieu, Jon

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Earlier this week, Jon Stewart announced that he will be leaving The Daily Show later this year. For my wife and me, it’s going to be like losing a treasured family member, albeit one we’ve never personally met.

Stewart’s ability to speak truth to power, to take issue with guests espousing points of views with which he disagrees, to express outrage when warranted, and to be wildly funny as he skewers political and social absurdity, well, all of these things have endeared him to my household, and we will miss him sorely when he no longer visits us four nights a week.

Perhaps Stewart’s greatest strength is his ability to attack on a factual basis rather than the opinion foundation upon which idiots like the Fox News staff operates. True, he does do a wicked imitation of Mitch McConnell as a turtle but, well, McConnell does look like a turtle, and when Stewart goes into turtle mode, it’s to assail the senator’s positions even while imitating his image. I’m not in favor of ad hominem attacks, but Stewart somehow manages to hold people like McConnell up to ridicule less because of what they look like than for what they seem to stand for. And sometimes he does it by mimicking them in much the way that a political cartoonist might with pen and ink.

It’s of course been well noted that Stewart’s positions veer left, and that at least 70% of his viewing audience is liberal. But many conservatives watch him, as well, and it is hard to know how they can continue to support morons like Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert after Stewart repeatedly points out that, just as the fabled emperor, these guys and others, perhaps slightly less stupid but no less deserving of exposure, have no clothes.

It may be true that no one is irreplaceable, but at least we’ll have John Oliver on HBO, a worthy candidate for the title of court jester, although he could stand to learn the key lesson that judicious use of profanity is far more effective than the wholesale spewing of it. Regardless, we’re glad he’s there. And will anyone actually be chosen to succeed Stewart on Comedy Central? We hope so, but his act is going to be more than hard to follow.

Jonny, we hardly knew ye.

Book Review: The Circle, by Dave Eggers

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How much do you value your privacy? Not just in public. I mean your private privacy: what you do in your own home, your medical records, your phone conversations. How much of yourself do you share on social networks? Would you be willing to see everything you write in Facebook on billboard next to the San Diego Freeway? Do you care about any of this? Regardless of the degree of your concern, you should probably read The Circle by Dave Eggers. It’s 1984 projected into the cyber-corporate age, and it’s terrifying.

Mae Holland is an attractive young woman, bright but with low self-esteem who, dying on the vine in a going-nowhere job, accepts the help of her best friend, Annie, and is hired to work for a rapidly developing internet services company called “The Circle”. Almost immediately upon her arrival, she proves herself extraordinarily adept and susceptible to the company philosophy and, as we quickly learn, the ultimate goals of The Circle. These goals extend far beyond being a mere internet products and services provider, the company seeking to insinuate itself into just about every aspect of people’s lives.

As Mae drinks glass after glass of the company Kool-Aid, she assumes a greater and greater role in supporting the company mission and even in setting priorities and goals. All of this leads to greater and greater progress toward a terrifying, many tentacled expansion of the company’s reach.

In the past, I’ve read only very few books that sucked me in so completely that I couldn’t stop reading. Uncharacteristically for me, then, toward the end of The Circle I found myself unable to tear away from the description of rapid acceleration toward an ultimately defining crisis. As the book sped toward its climax, I found my heart pounding over the shocking expression of what can happen when all personal boundaries fall, and when there is no escape.

If you are someone who posts personal information on social media, who needs to feel connected all the time, then The Circle should be required reading for you. If, as I am, you’re concerned over increasing invasions of our privacy, then you will find that The Circle only reaffirms your worries over where we’re headed.

If Edward Snowden pried open a door, The Circle blows through it full bore. It may be fiction, but it’s absolutely frightening.

A Successful Reading and Signing

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Last Sunday, I participated as one of three authors in a book reading and signing at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena. It was a terrific experience, and I’m only sorry if you couldn’t be there. (Hey, I sure announced it enough in the blog and on Facebook!)

It began with my arrival at about 3:30 PM, accompanied by my wife, who supports me with such forbearance in so many ways. Vroman’s had set up a space with rows of chairs for attendees – lots of attendees. At the front of the area was a podium, and to its left (audience right) were three tables, one for each of the authors. On each table were stacked copies of our respective books, ready for signing. In a word, it was classy.

I was greeted by a very nice woman who was both welcoming and helpful, and who laid out the event’s agenda. Each of us would have 15-20 minutes to read and/or speak about our book, and this would be followed by a Q&A which we’d do as a panel. Following this, the actual signing.

One of the other authors had pretty much stacked the audience with his friends and supporters, and he rather forcefully insisted on speaking last. The other author, a young woman who’d written a diet and weight loss book, and I, decided not to argue about it. She had never done a signing and did not want to speak first, so I took the lead-off position.

The reading went well, with lots of folks in the audience finding the excerpts from Zendoscopy funny and, in a few cases that I’m aware of, affecting. Next came the weight-loss author. Clearly, she was a hit. Slender, tall, and undeniably attractive, it really didn’t matter that her book was really just another self-help tome making dubious medical claims leavened with a bit of common sense advice. She clearly had an immediate impact upon the overweight women in the crowd. Then came the author who’d insisted on going last. He did an overly long and ill-defined reading from his book, but none of that mattered since he’d packed the audience with many people already primed to buy his work.

The Q&A went well, with lots of questions ranging from the thoughtful to the predictably anxious from aspiring writers (“How do you get your ideas?”). The Vroman’s staffer told us that it was the best Q&A she’d experienced, and she’d therefore allowed it to go on longer than usual for these events.

Finally came the signing. I’ve found signings to be fascinating, this one being particularly so because it followed a reading. There were those who told me that they’d enjoyed the reading and bought the book, those who said they’d enjoyed the reading and didn’t buy the book (but who might have bought one of the other books), and those who were only there to mingle with the authors and nothing else.

Did I sell many books? No, actually. Only a few. But it was fun and I got my first experience with a reading. I’m now looking at trying to do it again at other local bookstores, and the generally positive feedback has encouraged me to continue working on Zendoscopy‘s sequel. Don’t ask – it’s as yet untitled.

As always, many of the entries in seductivepeach.com are targeted to those who are hoping to succeed at writing. I hope this entry has provided a bit of insight into one aspect of marketing one’s work, and that you’ll keep coming back to follow my own adventure’s course in months to come.

Finally, I want to thank those friends and supporters who did turn out to support me at the event. Believe me, it meant a lot to see you in the audience. And here’s my plug and appreciation for one special attendee, Nancy Young, author of Strum. Nancy, I never expected to see you there, but I’m so grateful that you came!

An “Awesome” Posting

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This Sunday, 1/25, I’ll be doing a reading and signing for Zendoscopy at the premier bookstore in Pasadena, Vroman’s (695 E. Colorado Blvd.). If you can come, please do. I’d love to see you there. Time: 4 PM.

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I’m always interested (and generally appalled) by the use of certain words that have become trendy. I’ve written here before about this, taking to task such words as “basically” and “awesome”. The latest word that’s driving me nuts is “incredible”. It seems that everything, no matter how expected, mundane, or trivial, is getting described these days as “incredible”. To wit:

  • This bagel with cream cheese is incredible! Uh huh.
  • Your new T-shirt is incredible! Yes, it does slip on over your head.
  • I saw The Interview last night. It was incredible! Really?

Since when has everything become so unbelievable? Since when has it become so easy to inspire such a level of awe over the routine? Or, more likely, since when has paucity of language skills and general laziness been so openly displayed? I guess I don’t know what to say. I guess it’s just incredible.

In a recent posting about the terrible slaughter by terrorists in Paris, I ended with the statement that, “Nous sommes tous Charlie.” In some respects, I regret doing this because, just as with “incredible”, Je suis and nous sommes Charlie have become overused to the point of abuse as well as parodied, all of it to the point of meaninglessness.

In the sense that I used it, I meant that all of us were attacked, not just the satirical magazine and its staff. But those always eager to misinterpret things have come out ranting about how despicable Charlie Hebdo, the magazine is, and criticizing those who used the phrase, obviously in its more expansive sense. Idiots abound in this world, and those too stupid to understand that the attack was one on all freedom of expression, a terrorist act by those who would impose ignorant, religiously based tyranny upon us all It was, after all, Voltaire who in the 1700s said that he might disagree with what is said but not with the right to say it. Apparently, there are many in the world who still have not accepted this approach.

And although they are not committing atrocities, there are many in our own country who would censor what may be said, who seek to have books removed from libraries that they deem offensive, who would dictate how we all should live. Lest you doubt this, simply listen to Republicans these days, especially those on the far right who, in misunderstanding the foundations of the country, insist that it was founded as a Christian nation and who would rip the First Amendment to shreds given the chance.

There’s trouble in River City, my friends. If saner heads don’t speak up, don’t stand up and vote, we’ll get what we (don’t?) deserve. And if that happens, I can assure you it won’t be good. It will be real, and it won’t be “incredible” when your front door gets bashed in. But, now that I think about it, it will be “awesome”.

Consignment Fun

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In my nearly constant quest to find markets for my writing, I look for independent bookstores that might be willing to take my work on consignment. Remember that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to get any four-walled bookstore to carry your book if you’re self-published. The only viable route, then, is consignment. The general rule is that consigners – that’s you and I – will receive 60% of the sale price of whatever is sold, but there’s no guarantee of this. One bookseller I tried to deal with tried to reverse the usual arrangement and pay me 40%. I walked. I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.

Let’s face it. The deck is stacked against self-published writers. Even if you get a store to take a few of your books on consignment, there’s no guarantee that they’ll place the books anywhere where potential buyers will see them. This happened to me at a prominent bookstore in Hollywood, where they took five copies of Zendoscopy and, for want of a better way to describe it, interred them on a shelf in a creepy back corner of the store where no one would want to wander. Meanwhile, they had shelves and tables with books – many “remaindered” — on prominent display across the front of the store and visible through front windows. And for this, they charged me $100 up front just for their benevolence. You can do the math: there was no way I’d make a penny on the sales even if the five books sold, which they of course didn’t.

Now, you may ask why I went for the deal at that bookstore in the first place. The answer is simple. I did it in the attempt to gain some recognition. In retrospect, it was a mistake.

Recently, I did better. The established bookstore in Pasadena, Vroman’s, agreed to take five books on consignment (for a fee, of course), but they placed them on a rack in the front of the store, with other books by local, self-published authors. Beyond that (and also for a fee but, hey, worth the gamble) they’ve given me a date for a reading and signing, along with two other authors who’ll also be there under the same arrangement. The event, about a week away, will be on Sunday, 25 January at the bookstore. Time: 4 PM. If you’re free and live in Southern California, please come. I could use a few groupies, or at least shills, to show up in my corner!

The fact remains, though, that one event won’t make me a well known, best selling author. It’s a struggle. Every self-published author I know has dealt with the problem, which arises from a “Catch-22” situation, namely, the “agent problem”. In order to get published by a mainstream publisher, you need an agent. But to get an agent, you need to have been published by a mainstream publisher. In other words, in order to arrive, you have to have arrived. The only other ways to find success are to have connections or to be the beneficiary of blind luck. Read the reviews of Zendoscopy on Amazon.com. They’re terrific but they’ve gotten me nowhere because in order for anyone to see them, they’d have to know about the book in the first place. That’s another Catch-22.

Zendoscopy was also reviewed by Kirkus Reviews, and that review was favorable. In fact, the book was one of the 10% or so whose review made it into their main publication. Where? Buried in the Indie section toward the back of the magazine, where few would be likely to notice it. So, even in the face of a small triumph, there was ultimate defeat. But don’t get me wrong. I know that the marketplace owes me nothing. My point, if I have one, is that if you’re going to write and self-publish, do it because you’re driven to put words on a page and not because you think you’re going to get rich at it. The odds are overwhelmingly against you. Write if you must – I do – but even if what you write is pure fantasy, your expectations shouldn’t be.

I hope to see you at Vroman’s next Sunday.