Steffan Piper's Blog, page 6

Losing Reviews ...

"Losing Reviews ..."

Yeah, I know, it sounds like a title for some romantic comedy being released in the spring with Meg Ryan falling in love her aging editor, Harrison Ford, or some such nonsense, but thankfully, it's not.

It's actually a debacle taking place with one of Amazon's algorithms deleting suspicious reviews across the board that somehow find themselves caught in this invisible and undefinable trap. Some others have written about it here.

Some people have even petitioned Amazon and received back the following response, which is interesting to say the least:



Reviews written by friends and family may be considered as promotional content.
Please take a look at our review guidelines under 'General Review-Creation
Guidelines' for Promotional content at the following URL:

http://amzn.to/SxENaz

I'm sorry I cannot be more specific. Our system uses filters to evaluate each
review to see if there is any relationships.

I hope this information has been helpful.

So, that's where Amazon stands. Okay. Got it. 
This morning I woke up to find one of my beloved reviews, my little happy children that congregate together and play nicely on my Amazon page -- missing. I wanted to call out an Amber Alert, pick up the phone, fly into a panic ... but I knew better. I had to let it go. But I was saddened and hurt by this, not only for the loss, but for not knowing which one. I had no way to contact the person and alert them or even find out what happened.
For the record, none of my friends or family have ever written a review for me, as I actually forbid it. It violates my own ethical workings, and I'm not the kind of person who self-promotes, or begs for reviews. I barely tell people in my day-to-day life that I'm a writer, doing so online is even harder.
I want to say something here, something meaningful, at least to me. 
I really cherish my reviews. They've honestly paid a lot of my bills, sent me and my family on holiday, brought guitars to my house via UPS, put clothes on my sons back, set the minds of other readers, cautious about buying my book, at ease, made people laugh, made me laugh when they were dead wrong or flat-out silly, and likely propelled it to the book it is now, where it's offered in public schools alongside Catcher in The Rye. Yes. All true.I'm incredibly thankful for my reviews and always saddened a little to see one slip away, to quote one of my heroes, David Bowie. I find it a bit unfair to the reader who has taken the time and energy after reading the book to sit down and compose their thoughts and leave something behind worthwhile. Some people think little about reviews, but I have a lot of really nice ones that are very well written, even the ones that didn't like my book -- thus, yes, I am protective of my reviews.

To highlight this, one of the people who reviewed Greyhound, was an incredibly nice lady that I had never met before, Ellen Mizell. She had read Greyhound and was absolutely floored by it, fell in love, then said so in her Amazon Vine review. We had contact over email, as she had reached out to me and I, later, responded. We communicated back and forth, mostly about my memories from 1981, riding the Greyhound bus as a kid and her own stories. She was a really wonderful person to get to know, lived a wonderful life, and was cherished by her whole family. She was a writer herself, and was in the process of seeking a publisher. Thankfully, her review is still up and can be read. It's very touching. She recently passed away and I still think of her often and go back to her review every few months to hear her voice.
It's my opinion, that her review set the tone of the reviews to follow, as it's seen and read by most of the other people who will review the book or buy it. I found her positive review of my book to be worth its weight in gold, and literally moreso. Amazon Reviews are important. Damn important.
Losing one is troubling. Some people have lost a lot of them. I wish it wasn't so, but it is.

5 points to consider going forward ...

It's embarrassing today as I've seen five or six people on Facebook and other social media sites, break down and lose it regarding socialism and Obama. Most people don't have a clear understanding about socialism, or what it actually is -- and it becomes evidently clear the moment the complaints start issuing forth in regards to Obama. 

Point blank: Systems collapse because of those at the top taking out public monies and putting it into private pockets.

Here are five points to consider today, going forward:

1. Austerity does not work. Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany and overseeing those bailouts in Europe) and most in Europe have already come around to that reality and wouldn't self-impose that. Ever. No joke. But on others -- sure.

2. Trickle down government never trickles down. That's a bloody Ponzi scheme. Stop buying into it. The bottom never gets their due. Ever.

3. The GOP has ill-served its Red States. The Red States are the greatest "takers" when it comes to Government and public assistance. They also have some of the most broken schools and Universities. No jobs, no tech, no economy and crumbling infrastructure. They would be wise to become more progressive and stop isolating themselves from the rest of the world.

4. Americans are some of the hardest working people on the planet. On the effing planet! No joke. Our GDP is through the roof. People who demonize the working class in this country -- have it back-asswards and need to wake up and turn off Rupert Murdock's Fox News. The working class is not a benefit to corporate interest. We are only a commodity that is expendable. Absorb that fact. Borders and boundaries? In the global economy -- there are none. Square that with your Nationalistic pride and patriotism. Countries are just markets to them. That's all.

5. Did you know that in England, Rupert Murdock, and his whole organization, is under investigation for domestic espionage? Yeah, the guy that owns and self-directs Fox News. Fox News the establishment that is seemingly blaming everyone else for exactly what their doing domestically. It's an absolute disgrace. Civil liberties? Don't make me laugh.

Five points to consider going forward. The alternative is people proposing ridiculousness like this:




And last thought regarding Socialism ...


Socialism? Really, people? Socialism has always failed historically because Governments, politicians and corporate interests -- always have always treated those systems like a Ponzi scheme and creamed the money off the top causing them to collapse. Millions of middle and lower class people paying 40 to 60%, or more, of their income to the government creates huge surpluses that those in power haven't been able to keep their mitts off. Historical fact. Greed. No one has been able to control it yet. That's an illusion.
Public money going into private pockets. 
Just like in Russia during the Czars. Those systems were about the rich taking advantage of the working class and destroying them. People who cry about socialism need to educate themselves about socialism. Mitt Romney grew up in one of the largest Socialist enclaves in the United States? Did you hear about that during the election? No. Because Religion wasn't made an issue, because someone showed respect. Did Fox News report on that? No. Because the truth is inconvenient. Fox News just had their followers believing Obama to be a Muslim.
They branded Obama as a Marxist as well, ever read up about Marxism? I have. How about this: Mitt Romney, and people like him, are the end result and the actual written goal of Marxism. 'The new international Class'. He fits those definitions as if Marx was looking directly at him. Fox News report on that? No. It's inconvenient. But yeah, let's just brand the Black guy in every single derogatory label we can throw out.
The Republican party doesn't give a toss about the common man, the working class, the people that actually make this country work. Their interests have been, and will continue to be Corporations, Big Business and Defense. All they want you to do is build it and be quiet. I know 5 people in the 344 of all my 'Facebook Friends' that would've benefitted under Romney. 5 people that make over $2 Million per annum. If you make under that -- you would've been on your own.

Fugue State ... Once a Marine ...

Steffan Piper, Saudi Arabia, 1991
When I tell people that I was once in the Marine Corps, or that I'm a Marine, I get a lot of double-takes and surprised faces smiling back at me in disbelief. Usually, it's the women who are most taken aback as usually to them, I'm just something to snack on, a piece of candy. Something good, at least while I'm still young. They don't see the deeper layers of me like that because, simply put, I don't put on a uniform anymore. It's typically not until I'm lying naked somewhere do I get asked: “What are those tattoos you have? They look like military insignia.” It's always difficult to explain. Even as a married man, now out to pasture on the back forty, women still hover like I'm a magnet. I don't understand it, but that's likely something that's a residual from the Marine Corps as well.

Yours truly
People who have known me for many years, when learning about this part of my life, are often the most surprised. Maybe it's the way I come across, or the way I speak, or deal with people. It's hard to say. But whatever it is – I know what it is not. I don't fit the stereotype that the world has been subjected to when it comes to other Marines. Hollywood has done a beautiful job in outlining some of the most striking examples of stereotypes that are so well seated in the public mind that most just can't envision much else.
A drill instructor from boot camp who barks orders all the time, a gravel-voiced, chisel faced, career Marine, like Clint Eastwood, who stays fit all the way into the grave and exudes military bearing even while asleep. Some have the image of a dirty hippy sleeping under the bridge dressed in military surplus gear, still suffering from the cause and effect relationship of Vietnam, or some other far away place. It's either one or the other. To the casual observer, there really is no gray area.


My experience, and likely millions of other men and women, wasn't like that. While there's always a few people that could fit those roles that you see illustrated in films like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Heartbreak Ridge, ninety-nine percent of military service just isn't like that at all.

Is it about friendship? Yes.
Is it about being broken down and being built back up into a man? Yes.
Is it about learning a job that's specific to a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS)? Yes it is.

Do those skills often transfer to the civilian world? Some do, like what it is to actually be a Marine. But others do not, like being able to shoot a rifle as good as a seasoned hunter or Olympic participant. I haven't hunted a day in my life and I'm unlikely to involve myself in the Olympics. I also don't sleep in a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere, while keeping quietly alert. I don't march anywhere any more or shout out cadence during my morning jogs. At least not out loud.
In writing Fugue State, the first thing I knew I wanted to steer away from were those stereotypes. I wanted to tell the everyman's journey through the Marine Corps, even if what I was experiencing, was singular in and of itself to me. I had always felt, deep down, that I wasn't the only one who felt the way I did, or saw what I saw. I felt it necessary to try to speak to others that have gone through, come out, and have yet to see or read their story of military service, which is the biggest complaint regarding most of the movies. Fugue State is the story of how things fall apart in highly structured environments. The story is about the personal and human attrition of the group, like running wolves that struggle and eat at each other over time. About how we deal with isolation, loss of who we are, and how we find ourselves in the world, especially when it's a world we don't recognize at all. The version of you we find, is often one that we never thought we'd ever meet.


The second thing, was that I wanted to put down what had happened to me as accurately as I could without having to embellish and drift off into fantasy. I live with a lot of these memories and frequently revisit them when I sleep and while I'm wide awake. Some days I know better than to nap in the middle of the day as I can feel them a few inches away, just out of reach. These things never go away. I've had so many lucid dreams over the years about Saudi and the Marine Corps, that I've awoken confused and unsure of my surroundings. At the front of the book, there's a few lines about the reality of the story and it's always the same.
The bulk of what you are about to read is true. Certain names, places, andcharacterizations of certain people have been adjusted for the sake of fictionand telling a compelling story. Any unintended likeness is coincidental.
This paragraph was at the beginning of my other book Greyhound as well, and it's there for a reason. I do my best to relate to the reader the world I'm walking through, where I've been, people I've dealt with. Some might say it's a cop out and it's too close to being journalism, but I feel that telling personal stories like this requires staying away from stereotypes, climactic or cliff-hanging endings, over-wrought love stories and bad dialogue that just never gets spoken in anyone's day to day.
When people ask me, “How long did you serve?” I usually never answer the question. One, I'm not comfortable with any answer I might give, and the truth of the matter, is that I never felt like I got out. A lot of people who serve feel this way. Post Traumatic Stress or not. Combat or not. Twenty years of service or not. “How did it end?” is the only real question.

8th & I Marine Barracks, Washington D.C.
Strangely, I never fully felt like a Marine until years after I had gotten out, and was working at the Veterans Administration in the late 90s with a group of Vietnam veterans who recognized my pain and helped me.

At the time, I was working at the Los Angeles VA in the Brentwood Mail-out Pharmacy as well as helping other vets with their paperwork that was necessary for filing for their benefits. Most of them just couldn't face the daunting task of writing down their own story for the review board. A lot of them just couldn't do it and avoided it at all costs. Asking for anything was demoralizing and dehumanizing. Talking about it was hard enough. I was just someone who listened, went to a lot of counseling groups with them and did what I could while trying to get my own self sorted. Keep in mind, in those days -- everyone got rejected for benefits. Everyone. I helped Korean and Vietnam war vets that had been denied scores of times over the years who had served admirably, discharged honorably and fought in serious campaigns. They actually thanked me for what I was doing for them, and even then, I wasn’t fully aware of my problem, but they saw it clearly. Vets band together for a reason. The only thing that brings people back is having and sharing a sense of community and sincerity in how we love each other.
As a society, we don’t fully consider how much the weight of war tears down the souls of the men and women who fight in them. We’d rather just think that in the absence of battle, there will be none. But it’s delusional, as evidenced—some battles never cease. Most of us, despite having a DD214 to prove it, never really get out. Being sent back out into the world and never needing to be heard from again is strange proposition. But as the saying goes, which now makes more sense ... 'Once a Marine, Always a Marine.'
Wives never understand nor can they. They seem to live to treat you like Missile Command, hitting all the buttons during a panic situation. Disastrous. Relationships, for years on end, become the hardest things to master. It's a journey that's possible, but usually the hardest. Divorces are common. Suicide is somewhere in a dark corner, waiting to pull you down when your not being careful. In-laws become like hemlock, battery acid upon your soul, and seem to have a hate against you like no other. They only ever get to know the shadow of you, the rest never matters enough. They then spend years sharpening their hatred like a knife, or an instrument they'll someday use against you hoping to cause pain. Never being accepted by the world is one thing, not being accepted under your own roof is entirely another.
On top of it, these are just the normal days we all hope to get through and there are many of them. Some, just can't bear it and fold. I've known and lost several friends in that scenario and it hurts every time.

Eagle's Nest Cafe -- Eagle River, Alaska
Writing this book has left a hole in me where it slept in my chest for years, as the last book did, but the point of it was to hope, on some level, that it may help someone out there realize that they, too, are not alone in the pain or confusion they’re going through or live with.

The world still looks dangerous to me everywhere I go, all these years later. We all have irrational and rational fears; they just differ in magnitude. War, or combat, is a magnifier unlike any other. The more I change, the more things stay the same. We just work to make it to tomorrow.

Semper Fi.
***
Steffan Piper is the author of several novels including Greyhound,  Yellow Fever  and  Fugue State . He was once kicked out of Nome, Alaska due to a minor misunderstanding. He has a blog, a Facebook page, a favorite film and lives on the outskirts of Los Angeles with his family in Palm Desert, CA.

Not to touch the Earth ... Spending time with the Doors ...

A few weeks ago, I decided to pull my face away from my desk and take a break from writing. My wife had arranged to drive in to the Los Angeles County Fair. Never having been, it seemed like a good time to go. After hastily grabbing gear and packing up the car, we all got up early Saturday morning and barreled in toward the Fair Grounds located in Pomona to make a long day of it.
First point to make is that anyone that knows anything about Los Angeles, knows that Pomonaisn’t really in Los Angeles. While it is in Los Angeles County, so is a certain portion of the Moon. The only thing that ever grew legs and got the hell out of Pomona was Tom Waits, and his struggle was as arduous and fraught with failure as man crawling from the primordial ooze. Pomona is really the arm-pit of Los Angeles Countyand having the County Fair their just struck me as a bad omen. This was a point I kept making during the entire drive in.
My wife quietly sat listening as I pushed hard on the gas pedal and let me talk as she usually does. She’s said many times that I definitely deserve my own radio show on NPR or I could double as a living audiobook. I never shut up, and I’m always pulling out some strange forgotten tale.
Most of my conversation, non-Pomona, was centered around my current book which is set in Alaskain 1993. Still no title. I decided to bring up a subject which she really doesn’t like talking about: Dr. Zhivago, The Doors and Jim Morrison. The night before I had re-watched Doctor Zhivago for about the hundredth and seventy-fifth time and I was headlong in admitting the following five truths:
1. As I’ve aged, I look upon Dr. Zhivago with a different set of eyes than I did when I was much younger.
2. I used to see the film as a fever-pitch romance, where the main character Yuri Andreavich Zhivago would go to the ends of the earth to be with his one true love.
3. However, I had realized everything I thought about the film was short-sighted.
4. Yuri was a coward who abandoned his family during the time of war, while his wife was pregnant, just to be with another woman so he could indulge in personal escapism. This is pointed out several times in the film by Obi-Wan Kenobi.
5. Every time he had his so-called love of his life in his arms, Lara, he quietly stepped aside and let Komarovsky (Rod Steiger) run off with her to carry on with his sordid and ensemened May-December relationship. Just gross. So lame.

My wife has little patience for womanizers who try to romance their way through life, charming the pink panties off girls like continuous, pounding waves against a beach. She gets irate anytime she hears me playing the Doors, and will turn the radio off the moment she hears Morrison’s voice. She forbids me from watching Zhivago if she’s home as she says "even the theme song is sickening to hear even from across the house."
While messing with the cruise control, sipping coffee and glancing at the windmills slip past next to the freeway, we spoke about Jim Morrison for about thirty minutes. I did my best to extol his virtues with his contribution to poetry and rejection of commercialism. She wasn’t having any of it. She said he only wanted to abuse himself, live in selfish excess and likely had little respect for Pamela Courson, his long-time girlfriend, who had apparently later been driven to suicide by his own passing. Both he and Zhivago were “asshole men” and “intolerable scoundrels.”
I told her about 1993 and how I had come home to Alaska from the Marine Corps and the Persian Gulf War and was trying to adjust back to real life and was making a real fucking hash of it. It was during this period that I had listened to a lot of the Doors music and had found a certain piece of my own identity in Morrison and his poetry. The endless feelings of isolation, loneliness and world weary cynicism. To me, he read like some long lost family member who was writing me letters that had taken twenty years to reach me.
One story I recounted, in particular, was about a band called Wild Child. A Doors cover band that I had seen perform at the Summer Solstice street party in downtown Anchorage. The show was hosted by a local strip club / saloon called Chilkoot Charlie’s, which was more of a commercialized, low-end, tourist trap, shit-hole than it was an Alaskan bar or whatever it was supposed to be. It was the place where shitbirds like Komarovsky from Zhivago might’ve dragged Lara to for another abusive session of ungratifying sex. I avoided the place like the plague. At the time I was working as a bartender, but never once thought about applying. I actually worked at a place called The Gaslight on the other side of town.

Out on the street in the middle of the day, listening to Wild Child, I was immediately blown away and hypnotized as not only did they sound exactly like the Doors, but the lead-singer looked like a young, fit, vital and vibrant version of Morrison, sans beard. It was uncanny. His singing was impressive to boot.
Like an idiot who had imbibed on too much beer and was likely a little stoney that day, to use the parlance of our time, I danced to the music in the street like everyone else enjoying themselves, but in between songs screamed out requests, also like everyone else. Unfortunately, my voice was a little louder than most, and I kept screaming out the same damn thing:
“Play Rock Is Dead! Play Rock Is Dead”
I did this over and over until the front man, Dave Brock, saw me and told me take it easy. I talked about writing this story somehow into the book and what an integral part of the book the Doors were to my story and that period of my life. Greyhound focused on Hall and Oates, and Fugue State centers on U2. It only makes sense that I root this book in something equally powerful.
During the early 1990’s, the Doors were enjoying a resurgence within the culture due to Oliver Stone’s film which immortalized Morrison forever in the public eye and reignited his passion like the phoenix he was. The band was definitely his holy tree. Dave Brock and his band Wild Child seem to come along at just the right time. I had mentioned to the missus that I had seen them a few years later, once after I had moved to Los Angeles in Santa Monica, and then couldn’t resist seeing them perform again, around 1997-1998 at the Whiskey on Sunset. My life had gone full circle. My experience with the Doors was meaningful and complete.
Through the years, I had talked excitedly about Dave Brock, Wild Child and having seen the live show. I likely spread the word to a few hundred people. Most of them always went to see them out of curiosity and were never disappointed. The interesting part of the equation is understanding that where Jim Morrison walked away from what he had built, Dave Brock picked it up while walking across some of the same ground and really made it his own. Brock would spend the next twenty years rebuilding something equivalent to the pyramids of Giza, partly by himself and partly with his friends who had an equal interest. Let’s be clear, most people that engage in cover-bands are base hanger-ons, but Dave Brock and Wild Child are on an entirely different level.Cover bands often create a certain amount of eye-rolling, but here, you'll find none of that.
When we got the fairgrounds, we spent the day on the rides, eating some really good food and after a few moments of panic, from yours truly, regarding taking the chair lift across the park, which I shouldn’t have, I decided to have a beer and buy a straw fedora for my head which was slowly roasting in the afternoon heat. The best and most surprising aspect of the fair, was that strangely, even for a Saturday, hardly anyone was there. The early afternoon and pre-dinner-time rush was negligible and getting on the rides was no sweat -- and eating wasn’t like trying to cash a check in England. No queues. It was quite nice. If you’ve never been, I recommend going. It puts most County Fairs to shame. For a temporary set up, I was surprised.

It wasn’t until around 7:15pm when I was standing under the Ferris Wheel drinking a yard glass of ice cold Modelo beer that I heard something vaguely familiar off in the distance. At first, I thought I was just a bit buzzed and hallucinating. As I cocked my head to the West, I realized I wasn’t.
About 100 yards off, behind some carnival games, obscured, I could hear live music. I could hear the Doors. I knew right away that it had to be Wild Child. I thought the Universe was surely trying to intimidate me or play chess with me once again. I swore out loud, something I rarely do and my wife looked over at me and frowned.
“Lemme guess, you’re going to go listen to that music, aren’t you?” She asked, kind of defeated, but giving in at the same time. Marriage is like that, by the way.
“Yeah, give me twenty minutes or so. Okay?” I asked.
Next thing you know, I was standing in the back row, and sure enough Dave Brock was up on stage – and honestly – it looked as if he hadn’t aged a single day since the last time I had seen him. It was both uncanny, and shocking. They were in the middle of Five to One and then led into Whiskey Bar. It was rousing and everyone was having an incredibly good time. The crowd was packed thick, mesmerized and everyone had an ear to ear smile. There’s just something indescribable about hearing the Doors music live. This was really the best way to do that in this modern age.
Awhile later, they had an intermission and broke for bit. The crowd dispersed and I happened to see Dave Brock standing over in the back by a table that was selling CD’s with his wife and kid. I had read every article regarding him and Wild Child that had crossed my daily reading through the years, and every one of them described Brock as a very down to earth family man with little to no pretense and genuinely warm and a very sincere guy. I had to take a chance and have a chat.
If you’re someone who reads my blog posts, you’ll know of the few times I’ve had the opportunity of conversing with a few celebrities or ‘persons of public interest.’ I wandered over, bought a CD and introduced myself. He was very casual and even seemed happy to see me. I told him the whole story about Alaska – and he recollected that concert clearly and told me a few stories of his own about Alaska and we both laughed about some of the silliness regarding Chilkoot Charlie’s. It was honestly surreal. Nervous, I swore a few times -- and immediately realized I probably shouldn’t have, as I could sense I was coming off like a nervous ass. It was too much, but I often blow it at the most important moments as it is. I’m used to me by now, so I just went with it.


After a long chat, he shook my hand and broke away. He had to get back up on stage and the whole time, he spoke to me as if I was a long lost friend or someone who mattered. I thought my Doors experience was complete and it actually was. I was now a fan of Dave Brock and my understanding of the Doors, the music and hearing this music had progressed into something else. My only regret was not asking for a photo together. He did sign the CD I bought, but I wasn’t thinking clearly and dropped the ball.

A few days later, driving across the desert floor, listening to Wild Child, the misses was upset and said:
 “I don’t want to hear the Doors, Steffan! Turn it off.”
“It’s actually not the Doors. It’s Wild Child, and it’s quite different. Dave Brock, the lead singer, is actually a really good guy and has a wife and kid. So maybe know you can actually redefine how you feel about this music if you give it a chance.”
“It’s the same music. It sounds the same.”
“No, it’s not. It sounds better. Just being honest. Quietly, we both listened to his live version of ‘Not To Touch The Earth.’ Maybe I'd finally made some headway.


Dave Brock is currently touring the East Coast of the United States and Europe with the original members of the Doors: Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore. Manzarek and most of the press has stated that of all the singers that have been in the band since Jim Morrison's death, Dave Brock far outstrips them all with just sheer talent and serious commitment. If you can go see them -- do so.

Steffan Piper is the author of several novels including Greyhound, Yellow Fever and Fugue State. He was once kicked out of Nome, Alaska due to a minor misunderstanding. He has a blog, a Facebook page, a favorite film and lives in Palm Desert, CA. Currently hiring for an experienced get-away driver.
And for the record ... Pomona isn't really that bad of a place to hang out.

Fugue State promo video with YOU! ...

Okay, my lovelies …
Here it is. I'm in the process of making a promotional video for my new book Fugue State. If you want to be in it, then do this:
Send me / File host 15 seconds of video footage (acceptable formats will be mentioned in a few days) of you reading your favourite book. If you have a copy of one of my previous books, please include that as well. If you want one of my books expressly for this purpose and reading, contact me. I'll send copies out. If you have a kindle, just show the cover, with your face in the footage. Using Greyhound or Yellow Fever or any of the Poetry books are acceptable and much desired.Please include 15 seconds of you dancing around as if you're listening to loud rock music. Air guitar / Chuck Berry crawl / Bono – Jim Morrison snake dance acceptable / bopping – all of it is perfectly acceptable. Please have these as interior shots only please, like your frontroom, etc. Maybe where you read.Also include a close up of your face next to the book(s) with your best Rock N Roll face.If you're an author, include a close up of you doing the previous, with a Rock N Roll face with your book – I'll do my best to include as many as possible. Yes, babies, advertising at Papa's expense. Woot.Say the following phrase into the camera: “Reading has made me who I am. The inner worlds of all our dreams happen on the page. We work it out in books. Reading is Rock and Roll.”Submit your name, spelled out as you would like to see it in text and the title of the book and author in your video.
That may sound like a lot, but it's not. Trust me. You'll dig it. If I can get out ARC's of Fugue State out for this later, I will. The deadline will be November 1st.
Let's get to it then. Shall we?

My favourite dreams of you still wash ashore ...

Probably how most of my readers see me without even realizing it. I'm currently floating on a sea of memories from 1993 through 1995 and trying to reel them in and tie them together for another book.

I'm breaking my own rules and actually working on two at once. Sometimes though, intense focus is required to get through it all.

Hope your summer has been treating you well.

Steffan

King's College Guest Speaker Scam ...

Today, I checked my inbox to discover this little beauty of a scam and spam below. I was perplexed as I'm not the kind of person typically asked to go address large groups of people (sober) or speak on a subject which is not my field of study.

Read it and weep:

Respected Steffan Piper,

 I am Prof. Harry Stewart from King’s College Campus Here in London
UK. We want you to be our guest Speaker at this Year King’s college
Seminar which will take place here in UK. We are writing to invite and
confirm your booking to be our guest Speaker at this year’s event.

King’s College Campus.

The Venue as follows:
VENUE: King’s College campus in Strand
London, United Kingdom
POST CODE:WC2R 2LS
Expected audience: 850 people
Duration of speech per speaker: 1 Hour
Name of Organization: King’s College Campus.
Topic: ”Mystery of Life and Death”
Date: 31st August 2012

 We came across your profile on http://www.pw.org// and we say it’s up
to standard and we will be very glad to have such an outstanding
personality in our midst for these overwhelming gathering.
Arrangements to welcome you here will be discussed as soon as you
honor our invitation. If you have any more publicity material, please
do not hesitate to contact us.

 A formal Letter of invitation and Contract agreement would be sent to
you as soon as you honor our Invitation. We are taking care of your
travel and Hotel Accommodation expenses including your Speaking Fee.
If you will be available for our event, include your speaking fees in
your email so it can be included in your CONTRACT AGREEMENT.

Stay Blessed
Prof. Harry Stewart
King’s College Campus.

Tel: + 44 702 408 2535

I've adjusted none of the text in the letter above, and if any of you reading this wish to take my place on the lecture, please feel free to place that call. Just know beforehand that it's a scam. In the end, they'll need your bank account info so they can wire you money via electronic transfer / moneygram / western union. It's a ruse as they'll be able then to reverse what ever they sent, plus whatever you have in the account.

Have fun in London ... at your own expense ...


...

10 Things I must do to maintain my writing ...

Own a large supply of blue sharpies. I've honestly tried everything else from pencils, to black ball point pens and nothing else has the same effect on my mind. I must hand write everything as it is a direct conduit to my brain, and I must use blue sharpies. I buy boxes of them whenever I can. They litter my house, but several of them, specific ones, I allow no one to touch.
Purchase large quantities of yellow legal pads. Just seeing them stacked up under my desk is a constant reminder of what I'm supposed to be doing. There's no way to avoid it when I'm in my office and they stick out like a slap in the face. Once I've started writing, I carry the current tablet with me everywhere. It never leaves me. I once carried the totality of a novel with me on a flight where my luggage was lost, but later found. I cannot be separated from it and will not be by anything.
Make as many writing prompts / notes onto sticky-backed index cards as my brain will release. I read and re-read them constantly going over the small details of how the story occurred, what was said, who was there, what I need to write and what I likely will have to skip and where I was at, within, emotionally.
Make a list of the most important films and movies that I was watching during the period of which I am writing. My writing always contains an historical narrative, thus I try to stay true to whatever the stimulus I had back then. These things are key in breaking loose the small gems from the rocks as I slash through the dense mid-sections of the story.
Make a list of the music I listened to back then and overdose on it entirely until I'm almost in a trance and can envision the bulk of my memories lucidly. It effects everything around me, my mood (yes, it takes a toll), my speech at times, my sleep, my dreams and even the things I eat or drink. The music is equally important to me as an inner fuel as it pushes me deeper. That may sound absurd, flighty and new age, but it is what it is.
I must write every day – even if it's just a single word. I must write it on paper, by hand and on the tablet. Some days I can fill a whole tablet, some days I have to force myself with tears, and fear and open eyes to write a single line. Some of those days, years gone, need to be written about, but there is much in me that would rather shy away and not write certain things. Those things that we keep buried, that hurt and would hurt later to re-read, think about again, dig up from subterranean places where there is no oil, no gold, no jewels – nothing but thick, fortified darkness, must be dredged. These things we know that could hurt us, must be written.
Tea. I must drink tea. I must drink lots of tea. Loose leaf. Cheap bag tea, Asian tea, Indian tea, Arab tea, English tea. All of it. I have a large supply in my pantry and I must drink all of it. Why? I have no explanation, but it is one of the few things that soothe me, calms me, makes me feel like I belong somewhere. Too far from it, I fall apart. I become like a leaf in the wind far from my few simple vices.
Read. I must read, but I must be very careful what I read. I've have seen what some types of material does to me and some of it definitely brings out the worst in me. It better be good and it better resonate. A good book must be an axe, like Kafka has so eloquently stated. Toothpicks and cheap, damp firewood will not be tolerated. Bastards who are only out for coin will be shot quickly with a harsh stare.
Sleep well. Sleep badly. Sleep in my car on the side of the road. Sleep on my couch in my office. Sleep on the floor in my son's room. Sleep under the night sky in fall in my back yard. All of this is concentrated thinking and critical. The mind must rest and it must rest a great deal. Without sleep, the work becomes an exercise in pushing vapours around on a page.
Find new things to love and be loved by. Live new experiences. Meet real people that would both enjoy my company, and despise it. It is absolutely necessary. Writing is an experience to be undertaken while I am living my life and enjoying the days that slip by. Writing often occurs in a vacuum with some, but while it does, it doesn't live long. Whatever life is written about, an equal amount must be experienced. Writing is a cycle, just like everything else.

...

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us ...

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." -- Kafka


Some books must be an axe, but sadly, many are not. I would wager in fact, that the majority of books are actually more icefor the frozen sea inside the reader instead.
As someone fascinated by Charles Dickens, and was so long before the current resurgence that we're currently in due to his 200thbirthday, books like Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield andHard Timeswere like the axes against my frozen soul. For the last decade, I have read Oliver Twist every winter, taking time to read some of the essays, prefaces and criticism by Dickens and others during the process. There was a lot of meat and cold steel in those pages that made me come to terms with my own struggles of who I am as a person, and what I was to be.
However, in my opinion, a lot of readers would rather not lookinside and break apart that construct of the complex fantasy that protects them. More fantasy is often the medicine they self-prescribe. I'm not speaking of the kind of fantasy written by the likes of H.G. Wells, R.A. Salvatore, Connie Willis and the like. No. I meant readers will purposefully steer themselves away from specific material that they know will bother them. Effect them. Penetrate deep down. Break upon the frozen sea inside of them, like an axe. They know this almost at a genetic level. Hence the difficulty of Literary Fiction. It's a set-up to knock down bowling pins and the reader knows it.
On the obverse side of the same coin, not to be flip, but I also spent years trying to freeze whatever it was within me, and I purposely tossed huge bricks inward to help the process. When I was 12, I discovered an author by the name of Carlos Castaneda. I started reading him casually, semi-interested in his journeyman's travels into Sonora, Mexico as an Anthropologist. By the time I was 15, I had read most of the Castaneda books three or four times, back to back. Some say the first three are the most important. Some say the first four, while others say the first seven are gospel. It's a personal choice, really. Journey to Ixtlan, though, is likely most critical.


What Carlos Castaneda did though, at least with my ever-growing perception, was the idea of letting go of self-image and stepping away from the development of self-image in a committed fashion, as well as stepping away from what we think the definition of the world and this life actually is. His world-view and stand-point was similar to that of some ancient Hopi Natives, or the Yaqui Natives that he wrote about, who gazed into crystals seemingly to discover that this world was merely a veil, disguising a much larger, expansive one. 


The young mind typically eats that stuff up. No surprise there. While everyone else was sprinting to the grocery store for Stephen King, I was on my way to the library, or some god forsaken place that sold “new-age” books. Heady stuff for a kid -- but I was never a kid. Not really. At least, I didn't feel that way, if I was. I did my best to break this free, like loose chunks of ice, in my novel Greyhound , but while most readers loved and adored it, some had a hard time accepting that children are that complex.
Note: The Yaqui Natives did this 'seeing' without the use of crystals, just for the record, and it was a practiced ability with a great significance to them, according to Castaneda. I had to include this before someone cried foul.
There's an interesting scene at the beginning of the film Blade Runner, where the character Holden is interviewing a fugitive Replicant named Leon, and when asked about the psychological test in process, Holden issues forth this immortal line:
“It's a test designed to provoke an emotional response.”


To me, that's what I believe Kafka was alluding to. As much as he was trying to break worthwhile ground with his readers, he knew that a lot of people would ultimately reject his messageand the message of other equally important classics. Hence, the reason why they're likely referred to as 'the classics'.
When you read a book, you may not like it. The real point is to what degree? Did you hate it, despise it, loathe it? If so, then you have a winner on your hands, because it made you think and feel. Not all books are supposed to have happy endings or feel-good story-lines or even deliver perfect closure.
Why?
Because that doesn't happen in real life. Real life is dark and messy and full of heartbreak and loss. Dealing with those issues is the real story. Learning how to cope and thrive in any otherwise uncompromising environment, is likely to be the most valuable lessons you can glean from the pages of any good book, in any genre.
I'm often perplexed when I read negative reviews and I read things like:
“God, I hated all those characters in that book. They made me feel icky and sad. 1 Star!”
Those things honestly perplex me, as it's clear that some people are smart enough to read, but still need assistance in thinking critically and getting off the surface of their own visible earth. It made the person feel and feel strongly, and yet the book failed? No, sorry. Look again. Inward this time.
But here's the whopper to the whole thing … as I go through my everyday life, and do my repetitive tasks and drink my morning coffee in a daze, I know that it's unlikely that I will probably come face to face that day with someone like Bill Sykes, Fagin, young David Copperfield or Miss Havisham.
Estella? Sure, all day long. Beauty is everywhere.
But people that make you feel intensely? The entire spectrum of emotion? They're like books – we do our best to avoid them. Most of us 'loathe confrontation' or 'don't waste time with low-class people' or 'don't care to waste time with people like that when I can go make $25 an hour at work.' The reasons are endless, but the truth is as obvious and plain as the money in our pocket.
Next time you're buying books, please think of me. Are you going to grab your easy-to-read, bare-chested Romance, or would you be willing to pick up something a tad more challenging – like an axe – and hack inward?
You might be surprised at what you discover. People are like huge blocks of marble, and it's only when you hack away at it, do you discover the real them, the real art, the real beauty on the inside – not the shallow glossy surface that we're first presented with.

Summertime ...

Fox launching into the pool on a hot day.