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Daniel Clausen's Blog, page 41
August 15, 2017
Micro-Short: The Pen Thief
The Pen Thief
Someone was stealing pens. It was Tom. But Tom had a reason. Rachel loved to chew on the ends when she was nervous. Chew. Chew. Chew. Until her teeth marks were visible. Coworkers used to complain. So, he'd take them home. When confronted about his transgressions by his boss, he explained himself simply: It was a crime of passion.
Someone was stealing pens. It was Tom. But Tom had a reason. Rachel loved to chew on the ends when she was nervous. Chew. Chew. Chew. Until her teeth marks were visible. Coworkers used to complain. So, he'd take them home. When confronted about his transgressions by his boss, he explained himself simply: It was a crime of passion.
August 12, 2017
The Underground Novel - The Meaning of the Hustle - Part 1 - Focus on the Real
The Novel in Short: After graduating from university with a degree in business, Dustin has a problem. He needs to figure out a way to break through the confines the world has built for him. The confines of middling employment opportunities, family expectations, and the small imaginations of others. Luckily, he's not alone. With his monkey sidekick, Dustin braves the hazards of the real world, demonstrating his own unique brand of hippy entrepreneurship.
You can read more than 30 completed chapters right here:
https://www.wattpad.com/story/1024623...
Generally Good Business Advice:
In the (post)modern era, meaning is a hot commodity. You just have to know your consumer.
Generally Good Advice on Meaning:
When choices abound, focus on the Real.
*
Strangely, there seems to be a great market in meaning nowadays. It has something to do with the void left by the arrival of the postmodern.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love the possibilities postmodernism has brought.
Venture capitalism. Crowd funding. Portfolio careers. Social networking. Social marketing. On-demand products...more please. Now it’s more than a decade past 2004, the time this story takes place, and I wonder if we’ve gone too far.
For me, no. Do it dirty or don’t do it at all.
But for many people, the arrival of the postmodern and its many possibilities has created a kind of dull flatness -- at worst, a feeling of being rootless and overwhelmed. Information abounds, yet authority seems further away than ever.
Wisdom seems impossible.
Every choice also seems like a non-choice:
Pizza Hut, Dominoes, or Papa Johns
Crest or Colgate
DC or Marvel
Netflix, HBO, or Youtube
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Linkedin, Pinterest…(Okay, I just got tired of typing.)
Groupons, Coupons, Soupons, or Loupons. (Okay, I made some of those up.)
Choices, upon choices, upon choices. People go crazy.
Information, but no authority....What is Real and what is fake?
Choices, but no real choice.
They lose faith in modern progress and the idea that science has a linear path to the good life for all of us. Instead, we are in a purgatory of frivolous minutiae, doomed to watch charming cat videos on youtube, live in a deluge of (un)reality TV and no-talent celebrities, and receive text messages from our forty-year-old colleagues with heart emojis asking if we like his clever new sweater LOL ❤❤❤.
What is Real? What is permanent?
The world is jagged and random again, like times before the modern. We are all either heading toward eternal riches...or the world will end tomorrow, as if by some divine but man-made providence we are being judged by forces beyond us -- the possibility of becoming untethered to modernity becomes Real and scary.
So, we turn back to the pre-modern. Back to faith, back to cults, back to divine interventions and conspiracy theories. We grasp for authority of any kind to tell us what is Real.
Priests find new roles in the vacuum of meaning created by arbitrary choice and freedom.*
*If this seems like something cribbed from the talks of Roger the homeless philosopher, well then, you’ve caught me.
What is Real? Read on and find out, my precious consumer of meaning.
You can read more than 30 completed chapters right here:
https://www.wattpad.com/story/1024623...
Generally Good Business Advice:
In the (post)modern era, meaning is a hot commodity. You just have to know your consumer.
Generally Good Advice on Meaning:
When choices abound, focus on the Real.
*
Strangely, there seems to be a great market in meaning nowadays. It has something to do with the void left by the arrival of the postmodern.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love the possibilities postmodernism has brought.
Venture capitalism. Crowd funding. Portfolio careers. Social networking. Social marketing. On-demand products...more please. Now it’s more than a decade past 2004, the time this story takes place, and I wonder if we’ve gone too far.
For me, no. Do it dirty or don’t do it at all.
But for many people, the arrival of the postmodern and its many possibilities has created a kind of dull flatness -- at worst, a feeling of being rootless and overwhelmed. Information abounds, yet authority seems further away than ever.
Wisdom seems impossible.
Every choice also seems like a non-choice:
Pizza Hut, Dominoes, or Papa Johns
Crest or Colgate
DC or Marvel
Netflix, HBO, or Youtube
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Linkedin, Pinterest…(Okay, I just got tired of typing.)
Groupons, Coupons, Soupons, or Loupons. (Okay, I made some of those up.)
Choices, upon choices, upon choices. People go crazy.
Information, but no authority....What is Real and what is fake?
Choices, but no real choice.
They lose faith in modern progress and the idea that science has a linear path to the good life for all of us. Instead, we are in a purgatory of frivolous minutiae, doomed to watch charming cat videos on youtube, live in a deluge of (un)reality TV and no-talent celebrities, and receive text messages from our forty-year-old colleagues with heart emojis asking if we like his clever new sweater LOL ❤❤❤.
What is Real? What is permanent?
The world is jagged and random again, like times before the modern. We are all either heading toward eternal riches...or the world will end tomorrow, as if by some divine but man-made providence we are being judged by forces beyond us -- the possibility of becoming untethered to modernity becomes Real and scary.
So, we turn back to the pre-modern. Back to faith, back to cults, back to divine interventions and conspiracy theories. We grasp for authority of any kind to tell us what is Real.
Priests find new roles in the vacuum of meaning created by arbitrary choice and freedom.*
*If this seems like something cribbed from the talks of Roger the homeless philosopher, well then, you’ve caught me.
What is Real? Read on and find out, my precious consumer of meaning.
August 10, 2017
Down by the River
I found this pure moment of bliss yesterday down by the river.
The world just stopped.
All the shouting and the anger just collapsed into something serene. It's moments like that I live for. They make me think I'm gonna be okay as long as I can read and write. The river had a gentle whispering sound to it.
It was June -- yet there was a gentle breeze. A cool, gentle breeze.
I found a used bookstore not too far away. That was both serendipitous and hopeful. It reminded me that sometimes the world isn’t opposed to my way of being.
There was a sadness to yesterday, though. A knowledge that it couldn't last. The sun went lower and lower until it was gone.
I'm older now...and soon, older and older. Life is so short. Life can be awfully bitter. Not down by the river, but other places.
The Dalai Lama's face had been spray painted onto the sides of the walkway that took me down to the river.
I was wearing shorts and a blue jumper. How would I have looked to a Japanese man walking around the neighborhood? I would have looked out of place. A little cold. A little hairy. My glasses would have seemed ill-fit for my head. I would have been reading a book quietly.
I calm, pleasant, foreign stranger. A friend in waiting. Alive and smiling.
Down by the river.
**You can read more short stories and essays absolutely free from “Pure Writerly Moments” here:
https://www.wattpad.com/380816660-pur...
The world just stopped.
All the shouting and the anger just collapsed into something serene. It's moments like that I live for. They make me think I'm gonna be okay as long as I can read and write. The river had a gentle whispering sound to it.
It was June -- yet there was a gentle breeze. A cool, gentle breeze.
I found a used bookstore not too far away. That was both serendipitous and hopeful. It reminded me that sometimes the world isn’t opposed to my way of being.
There was a sadness to yesterday, though. A knowledge that it couldn't last. The sun went lower and lower until it was gone.
I'm older now...and soon, older and older. Life is so short. Life can be awfully bitter. Not down by the river, but other places.
The Dalai Lama's face had been spray painted onto the sides of the walkway that took me down to the river.
I was wearing shorts and a blue jumper. How would I have looked to a Japanese man walking around the neighborhood? I would have looked out of place. A little cold. A little hairy. My glasses would have seemed ill-fit for my head. I would have been reading a book quietly.
I calm, pleasant, foreign stranger. A friend in waiting. Alive and smiling.
Down by the river.
**You can read more short stories and essays absolutely free from “Pure Writerly Moments” here:
https://www.wattpad.com/380816660-pur...
August 7, 2017
Underground Novel - Friend Pruning for Beginners
The Novel in Short: After graduating from university with a degree in business, Dustin has a problem. He needs to figure out a way to break through the confines the world has built for him. The confines of middling employment opportunities, family expectations, and the small imaginations of others. Luckily, he's not alone. With his monkey sidekick, Dustin braves the hazards of the real world, demonstrating his own unique brand of hippy entrepreneurship.
You can read more chapters here: https://www.wattpad.com/384227839-the...
*
A Good Insight on Friendship:
With friends, you have radiators (those who radiate energy) and drains (those who drain energy). Entice the radiators and avoid the drains.
The Good Advice on Pruning Your Friends:
When pruning the drains in your life, be kind, smile, tell them you wish them all the best. Tell them that they will someday become a radiator.
The Good, Good Advice on Pruning Your Friends:
If necessary, tell the drains to fuck off.
The Advice I Shouldn’t Give You, but I’ll Give Anyway:
Even when you give up on people, don’t give up on them completely. That’s bad humanity. And in the end, bad humanity is bad business.
*
Tom looks up at me sort of dazed and confused. If I had to guess, I’d say he was probably born with that look on his face. Then he smiles. “I knew I could count on you, Dustin. You’re always there for me.”
We’re in a diner off Cypress Creek road. One of those places modeled after a 1950s diner with a jukebox and waitresses with old-fashioned hairstyles.
I feel like this is a rerun of something. Not the diner, as in it feels like a rerun of “Happy Days” (all hail the Fonz), but rather that this meeting with Tom is a rerun. Perhaps I’ve done this before. Perhaps I’ve gotten this call before. It’s hard to know. Things kind of run together over time. But yeah, I’ve been here before.
“I was so hungry. Had no money. Knew I could count on you, that there is one person I can count on,” he says and starts scarfing down his philly cheese steak sandwich. “I hear you’ve been killing it. You’re a college graduate and everything. What are you doing right now?”
“Unemployed. Mostly living under a pier with a monkey and a bunch of homeless people.”
“That’s cool. Knew you were killing it. I just lost my job. It’s been tough since high school.”
I want to tell him that hard luck has always found him. He’s been unlucky since that first day of high school when...anyways that’s not what this is about.
“Listen, Tom. You and I, we’ve been growing apart. There is no easy way to say this, but I think I have to break up our friendship.”
“Yeah man, I’m glad I have friends like you I can count on. My parents kicked me out of the house again and I’ve been…”
Oh, I want to sympathize. I really do. I’m freshly kicked out of the house too, but I can’t get distracted. Otherwise, I’ll be meeting Tom in diners around Florida until I’m fifty, bailing him out of jail, or taking messages from his various ex-wives looking for him so that they can collect alimony…
“No, Tom, you’re not listening to me, man. You’re not going to call me again. This is the last time. I’m breaking off our friendship.”
“Whaaaaaattt! Nah, man we’ve been friends since high school. Man, I was there for you when…”
“Yeah, I know. And I’ve been there for you when your dad kicked you out of the house, when your mom kicked you out of the house, when Jamie Spencer wanted to kick your ass for making out with his girl, when Tina Smith broke up with you for giving her crabs, when you got caught cheating on your algebra exam, when you dropped out of your first semester of university and spent three weeks getting high in a closet with weed you got from me on credit…[two dozen other things omitted]...then when you needed a job, I helped you with that…”
“Man, you make it sound like I’m one big mooch…”
“You are one big mooch. If you’d listened to me just a second ago you would’ve heard that I am sleeping under a pier with a bunch of homeless guys and that I’m unemployed. I can’t remember one time you offered to help me out with anything…even when, well, let’s not mention that.”
“But Dustin, that’s because you’re naturally good at everything you do…Honestly, you should write a book. That’s how awesome you are.”
I love flattery. I want more, but I’m not falling for it this time. I look in Tom’s sad eyes. A diner, a public place. Breakups are never easy, but pruning your friends is absolutely necessary sometimes. There are radiators like J.P., people who pick you up... and then there’s Tom.
“I think my girlfriend might be…”
I close my ears, I can’t hear it.
“Tom,” I say, because I’ve rehearsed this and have to get it out before I lose my nerve, “someday, you’re going to be the kind of person who radiates success. People will want to be around you because they know good things will come to you and that you’ll fight through the tough times. They’ll come to you because they’ll be able to see your greatness coming from a mile away. I know you have the potential to be that person.”
I say it, even though I don’t believe it. I say it because I want to leave him with one last gift, a vision of his own possible greatness. But Tom...Tom is a drain. He’ll probably always be a drain.
“Tom, I’m leaving you now. Enjoy your sandwich. I got the check. This is on me. But this is the last time.” I wink at him and get up to leave.
As I’m about to leave the restaurant, he yells to me, “Aw, good one, Dustin. You’re always so smart, man. I’ll call you this weekend. We’ll get stoned together.”
No, you won’t, dude. I got a life to live.
Later, I give his number to J.P. and delete it from my phone. I’ll put up barriers to meeting Tom again. Maybe I’ll even send a harsh message next time he tries to contact me. Something like “Fuck Off” should do it. But I give his contact information to J.P. and tell him to keep tabs on him from time to time when we have a lull in our business schedule. Maybe do a little something for him, but not too much. And nothing that can be traced back to me.
Why?
Because even though pruning your friends is sometimes necessary, it’s not in my nature to give up on people...not completely. Giving up on people completely is bad humanity...and, at the end of the day, bad humanity is bad business.
If the Fonz were writing this book, he’d say the same thing.
You can read more chapters here: https://www.wattpad.com/384227839-the...
*
A Good Insight on Friendship:
With friends, you have radiators (those who radiate energy) and drains (those who drain energy). Entice the radiators and avoid the drains.
The Good Advice on Pruning Your Friends:
When pruning the drains in your life, be kind, smile, tell them you wish them all the best. Tell them that they will someday become a radiator.
The Good, Good Advice on Pruning Your Friends:
If necessary, tell the drains to fuck off.
The Advice I Shouldn’t Give You, but I’ll Give Anyway:
Even when you give up on people, don’t give up on them completely. That’s bad humanity. And in the end, bad humanity is bad business.
*
Tom looks up at me sort of dazed and confused. If I had to guess, I’d say he was probably born with that look on his face. Then he smiles. “I knew I could count on you, Dustin. You’re always there for me.”
We’re in a diner off Cypress Creek road. One of those places modeled after a 1950s diner with a jukebox and waitresses with old-fashioned hairstyles.
I feel like this is a rerun of something. Not the diner, as in it feels like a rerun of “Happy Days” (all hail the Fonz), but rather that this meeting with Tom is a rerun. Perhaps I’ve done this before. Perhaps I’ve gotten this call before. It’s hard to know. Things kind of run together over time. But yeah, I’ve been here before.
“I was so hungry. Had no money. Knew I could count on you, that there is one person I can count on,” he says and starts scarfing down his philly cheese steak sandwich. “I hear you’ve been killing it. You’re a college graduate and everything. What are you doing right now?”
“Unemployed. Mostly living under a pier with a monkey and a bunch of homeless people.”
“That’s cool. Knew you were killing it. I just lost my job. It’s been tough since high school.”
I want to tell him that hard luck has always found him. He’s been unlucky since that first day of high school when...anyways that’s not what this is about.
“Listen, Tom. You and I, we’ve been growing apart. There is no easy way to say this, but I think I have to break up our friendship.”
“Yeah man, I’m glad I have friends like you I can count on. My parents kicked me out of the house again and I’ve been…”
Oh, I want to sympathize. I really do. I’m freshly kicked out of the house too, but I can’t get distracted. Otherwise, I’ll be meeting Tom in diners around Florida until I’m fifty, bailing him out of jail, or taking messages from his various ex-wives looking for him so that they can collect alimony…
“No, Tom, you’re not listening to me, man. You’re not going to call me again. This is the last time. I’m breaking off our friendship.”
“Whaaaaaattt! Nah, man we’ve been friends since high school. Man, I was there for you when…”
“Yeah, I know. And I’ve been there for you when your dad kicked you out of the house, when your mom kicked you out of the house, when Jamie Spencer wanted to kick your ass for making out with his girl, when Tina Smith broke up with you for giving her crabs, when you got caught cheating on your algebra exam, when you dropped out of your first semester of university and spent three weeks getting high in a closet with weed you got from me on credit…[two dozen other things omitted]...then when you needed a job, I helped you with that…”
“Man, you make it sound like I’m one big mooch…”
“You are one big mooch. If you’d listened to me just a second ago you would’ve heard that I am sleeping under a pier with a bunch of homeless guys and that I’m unemployed. I can’t remember one time you offered to help me out with anything…even when, well, let’s not mention that.”
“But Dustin, that’s because you’re naturally good at everything you do…Honestly, you should write a book. That’s how awesome you are.”
I love flattery. I want more, but I’m not falling for it this time. I look in Tom’s sad eyes. A diner, a public place. Breakups are never easy, but pruning your friends is absolutely necessary sometimes. There are radiators like J.P., people who pick you up... and then there’s Tom.
“I think my girlfriend might be…”
I close my ears, I can’t hear it.
“Tom,” I say, because I’ve rehearsed this and have to get it out before I lose my nerve, “someday, you’re going to be the kind of person who radiates success. People will want to be around you because they know good things will come to you and that you’ll fight through the tough times. They’ll come to you because they’ll be able to see your greatness coming from a mile away. I know you have the potential to be that person.”
I say it, even though I don’t believe it. I say it because I want to leave him with one last gift, a vision of his own possible greatness. But Tom...Tom is a drain. He’ll probably always be a drain.
“Tom, I’m leaving you now. Enjoy your sandwich. I got the check. This is on me. But this is the last time.” I wink at him and get up to leave.
As I’m about to leave the restaurant, he yells to me, “Aw, good one, Dustin. You’re always so smart, man. I’ll call you this weekend. We’ll get stoned together.”
No, you won’t, dude. I got a life to live.
Later, I give his number to J.P. and delete it from my phone. I’ll put up barriers to meeting Tom again. Maybe I’ll even send a harsh message next time he tries to contact me. Something like “Fuck Off” should do it. But I give his contact information to J.P. and tell him to keep tabs on him from time to time when we have a lull in our business schedule. Maybe do a little something for him, but not too much. And nothing that can be traced back to me.
Why?
Because even though pruning your friends is sometimes necessary, it’s not in my nature to give up on people...not completely. Giving up on people completely is bad humanity...and, at the end of the day, bad humanity is bad business.
If the Fonz were writing this book, he’d say the same thing.
August 2, 2017
Micro-Author Interview - Gavin L. McAllister (Trials of Stone)
Writer Gavin L. McAllister was kind of enough to participate in this “Micro-Author Interview” series.
Gavin is the author of the science fiction/fantasy epic “Trials of Stone” (Legacy of the Spire # 1), a novel that explores political, military, and religious themes in a society in turmoil.
You can learn more about the book on Goodreads here:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29...
You can purchase a copy of the book on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/Trials-Stone-L...
Q: What does being an indie author mean to you?
I think being an indie author means having the freedom to create without restriction or inhibition. I believe in art for the sake of art so I enjoy the fact that I can write and paint without depending on it to earn a living. This gives me the ability to express, convey and immortalize my experiences and ideals in a meaningful way through my prose. If only one person in the world reads my work, I feel that I've accomplished my purpose for producing art.
Q: What’s your favorite sentence or paragraph from one of your books? What does it mean to you?
Just as the man said, the hall soon ended with a small side room to the left and a deep stairwell directly ahead that descended into what seemed to be a pool of thick, murky darkness. At this point she was required to remove her cloak and shoes. They had to be placed into one of many small apertures that had been carved into the wheat-colored metastone wall. From her current vantage point, she thought it resembled a large piece of honeycomb. She placed her belongings inside an empty compartment and proceeded out of the room, following the man down into the shadows. There was no lighting on the way down, and the man motioned for her to take the railing that had been installed on the right and left walls. As they made their descent, her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and she couldn’t help but notice how worn and smooth the steps were underfoot. She surmised that they had seen regular and heavy traffic since their construction. She didn’t understand why, but she felt comforted every time her foot pressed against each step: almost as if she could always depend on it, and that it would never be anything but stone. It would always support her weight, and it would never give way or collapse. Those were pleasant thoughts, and she was surprised that she had never drawn those associations before. She had lived her entire life surrounded by stone, yet up to this point had never seen possibilities in the abstract.
I really like this paragraph from my novel because it demonstrates the ideals of an entire society through one character. The Pirassi are heavily entrenched in their own customs and traditions. They take great pride in their culture and seek to propagate and perpetuate it at any cost. The symbolism here is comparing the strength and solidarity of the Pirassi people in regards to their culture to that of stone. Stone is hard, durable and has many uses, however, its weakness is that it has no flexibility. The Pirassi people suffer from the same weakness in that they are unable to culturally adapt to changing times which is a major underlying conflict across the course of not only the novel, but the series as a whole.
Q: What advice would you give other indie authors starting out?
The best advice I can give other indie authors who are just now getting their feet wet can be summarized in one word: perseverance. Writing a novel was one of the most difficult projects that I've ever undertaken. It requires a great deal of time, energy, and unlimited patience. Ideas and creativity can't be turned on and off with the flip of a switch unfortunately. I would advise carrying around a small notebook or ledger. I would find that ideas came to me in the most unlikely of places at varying times of the day. I even kept my ledger on my bedside table because I would wake up in the middle of the night and find myself scribbling down an idea from a dream. Organization is paramount. Once you've collected your ideas, be sure to have a process to your writing. Build an outline and organize your ideas before you start working on a draft. Don't lose yourself in the never ending cycle of editing. Your work will never be finished and it will never be good enough. You just have to find a point where you are content with the final product and let go. The final piece of advice that I have is to never get discouraged. Some days my creativity just dried up and I felt like I was wandering through the desert for what seemed like ages. Your ebb and flow of ideas has its own rhythm; don't force it. Manage your expectations and always keep your reasons for writing at the forefront of your mind.
Q: What's children's cartoon best represents your personality?
If I could choose a cartoon that best represents my personality, I'd have to go with Brain from the show "Pinky and the Brain." I'm a planner by nature (although I'd hardly consider my plans to be diabolical) and I have an incredible amount of determination when it comes to something that I want to see come to fruition.
Q: What else do you love to do besides write and read?
Aside from writing and reading, I really enjoy spending time outdoors. I love to camp, kayak, spelunk, climb, hike, fish, swim, wakeboard, and tube.
Q: Has a particular setting, landscape, or cityscape influenced you?
I'm happy to say that my writing (the characters and the world they inhabit) find their origin in all of the people and places I've seen and met in my young adult life. As a committed expatriate, I've visited thirty-eight different countries in my thirty-three years of walking this Earth and it has made a tremendous impact on my ability to create art. I honestly believe that experience is the currency of life and a truly wealthy man dies not with an abundance of things but an abundance of wisdom.
Gavin is the author of the science fiction/fantasy epic “Trials of Stone” (Legacy of the Spire # 1), a novel that explores political, military, and religious themes in a society in turmoil.
You can learn more about the book on Goodreads here:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29...
You can purchase a copy of the book on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/Trials-Stone-L...
Q: What does being an indie author mean to you?
I think being an indie author means having the freedom to create without restriction or inhibition. I believe in art for the sake of art so I enjoy the fact that I can write and paint without depending on it to earn a living. This gives me the ability to express, convey and immortalize my experiences and ideals in a meaningful way through my prose. If only one person in the world reads my work, I feel that I've accomplished my purpose for producing art.
Q: What’s your favorite sentence or paragraph from one of your books? What does it mean to you?
Just as the man said, the hall soon ended with a small side room to the left and a deep stairwell directly ahead that descended into what seemed to be a pool of thick, murky darkness. At this point she was required to remove her cloak and shoes. They had to be placed into one of many small apertures that had been carved into the wheat-colored metastone wall. From her current vantage point, she thought it resembled a large piece of honeycomb. She placed her belongings inside an empty compartment and proceeded out of the room, following the man down into the shadows. There was no lighting on the way down, and the man motioned for her to take the railing that had been installed on the right and left walls. As they made their descent, her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and she couldn’t help but notice how worn and smooth the steps were underfoot. She surmised that they had seen regular and heavy traffic since their construction. She didn’t understand why, but she felt comforted every time her foot pressed against each step: almost as if she could always depend on it, and that it would never be anything but stone. It would always support her weight, and it would never give way or collapse. Those were pleasant thoughts, and she was surprised that she had never drawn those associations before. She had lived her entire life surrounded by stone, yet up to this point had never seen possibilities in the abstract.
I really like this paragraph from my novel because it demonstrates the ideals of an entire society through one character. The Pirassi are heavily entrenched in their own customs and traditions. They take great pride in their culture and seek to propagate and perpetuate it at any cost. The symbolism here is comparing the strength and solidarity of the Pirassi people in regards to their culture to that of stone. Stone is hard, durable and has many uses, however, its weakness is that it has no flexibility. The Pirassi people suffer from the same weakness in that they are unable to culturally adapt to changing times which is a major underlying conflict across the course of not only the novel, but the series as a whole.
Q: What advice would you give other indie authors starting out?
The best advice I can give other indie authors who are just now getting their feet wet can be summarized in one word: perseverance. Writing a novel was one of the most difficult projects that I've ever undertaken. It requires a great deal of time, energy, and unlimited patience. Ideas and creativity can't be turned on and off with the flip of a switch unfortunately. I would advise carrying around a small notebook or ledger. I would find that ideas came to me in the most unlikely of places at varying times of the day. I even kept my ledger on my bedside table because I would wake up in the middle of the night and find myself scribbling down an idea from a dream. Organization is paramount. Once you've collected your ideas, be sure to have a process to your writing. Build an outline and organize your ideas before you start working on a draft. Don't lose yourself in the never ending cycle of editing. Your work will never be finished and it will never be good enough. You just have to find a point where you are content with the final product and let go. The final piece of advice that I have is to never get discouraged. Some days my creativity just dried up and I felt like I was wandering through the desert for what seemed like ages. Your ebb and flow of ideas has its own rhythm; don't force it. Manage your expectations and always keep your reasons for writing at the forefront of your mind.
Q: What's children's cartoon best represents your personality?
If I could choose a cartoon that best represents my personality, I'd have to go with Brain from the show "Pinky and the Brain." I'm a planner by nature (although I'd hardly consider my plans to be diabolical) and I have an incredible amount of determination when it comes to something that I want to see come to fruition.
Q: What else do you love to do besides write and read?
Aside from writing and reading, I really enjoy spending time outdoors. I love to camp, kayak, spelunk, climb, hike, fish, swim, wakeboard, and tube.
Q: Has a particular setting, landscape, or cityscape influenced you?
I'm happy to say that my writing (the characters and the world they inhabit) find their origin in all of the people and places I've seen and met in my young adult life. As a committed expatriate, I've visited thirty-eight different countries in my thirty-three years of walking this Earth and it has made a tremendous impact on my ability to create art. I honestly believe that experience is the currency of life and a truly wealthy man dies not with an abundance of things but an abundance of wisdom.
August 1, 2017
War and Peace - The First 100 Pages
War and Peace by Leo TolstoyThe first 100 pages...
Life is too short to read "War and Peace". And yet.
And yet, here I am, reading bits and pieces of it at work. I do it mostly to ward away the morbid news from home and to remind myself that this is not the first time that the world has gone through horror and upheaval. In this case, it is a novel about fighting Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the early part of the novel, there are some great scenes that could have been written at any time. There are timely discussions of perpetual peace, the way marriage destroys a man's soul. There are fun drinking games at a house party as the specter of war approaches. These early chapters are the long approach to building mood, character, and investment in characters.
Where will the novel go from here?
Hard to say, but if it keeps me away from the news and social media for a little -- the enemies of mental health -- then "War and Peace" will be a book worth reading!
So...perhaps life isn't too short to read "War and Peace".
View all my reviews
July 30, 2017
Zero to One: Notes on Startups (Peter Thiel) Review
It starts with a simple and elegant thesis: a new idea is a singularity that changes the world.
The best paths in business are new and untried. For this reason, there can be no definite road plan toward their creation. Every formula for innovation is new and unique.
Buried within a book on business and startups is a deep thesis about the relationship between technology, society, and our historical moment. From the beginning, I assumed this was a book written by an MBA or computer scientist, but instead it was written by a philosophy major and law school graduate -- these influences showed. There is a subtlety and thoughtfulness that are rare in the business book sludge.
This thin book seemed both small and abnormally huge at the same time. It vacillated between talking about building a startup company that could dominate a small market segment and discussing innovation as the salvation of the world.
Thus, the book is both about how to start a company and how to save the world: entrepreneurship as business; entrepreneurship as social salvation.
In the author's own strange but beautiful philosophy startups are a kind of salvation from societal decline and stagnation. This makes the book more interesting and important. But because the book is mostly about starting a company, the author's societal thesis and its grand, sweeping arguments about technology, the role of leaders, the plague of bureaucracy, and the macro-history of innovation are left untested and underexplained.
And yet...these aspects of the book are the most intriguing because they are the least explained and most controversial.
Thus, you either had to tentatively accept the underlying theory or if not, bracket it, to make your way through the rest of the ideas about start ups.
If Mr. Thiel, however, were to write a follow-up book outlining his underpinning philosophy, here is what he should address.
1) Zero to One makes the case for "definite optimism" -- having a plan and using resources to deliberately follow that plan. In some cases, it even seems like he is advocating this approach on a large scale. Since the book challenges many of the lessons of "libertarianism" (on the right) and "social justice/rights" advocates (on the left), I would like the book to address some of the great works in both of these genres -- James Scott's "Seeing Like a State" which argues against large-scale state planning; "The Tyranny of Experts" written by William Easterly, which has interesting ideas about when not to use expert advice; Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Black Swan" which makes the best case for "optionality" and small-scale tinkering.
2) Since it rails against bureaucratization but also lauds grand projects like the canalization of large parts of the world, the space program, the Manhattan project, the interstate highway program, and the Empire State Building, I would like the any follow-up to address how a "definite optimism" future of the world can possibly work without large-scale bureaucracies. I would also like the author to explain how the European Union is not a "definite optimist" project.
(I wonder also if there is a historical process to the American loss of "definite optimism". One perhaps that begins in Vietnam?)
3) I would like this follow up books to address the difference between large-scale entrepreneurship, which relies on large bureaucracies implementing projects and small-scale tech entrepreneurship that rely on small teams. Is he suggesting that large engineering projects should be broken up into small teams? Is there a process aspect that I missed? Does innovation start with small teams and then move toward a bureaucratization stage (in the scaling up stage)? Since the pre-1970s "definite optimist" US employed bureaucracies extensively, this is a question that I would like answered. Or at least a more nuanced theory used in its place.
4) I would also like the author to address in more nuance the difference between technologies that are a result of creative discovery (see Nassim Nicholas Taleb) versus those that are the result of deliberate planning. I would also like the author to take on Nassim Taleb's thesis that most innovation is a process of creative discovery, not deliberate planning.
This is a wish list. I doubt I'll ever see Peter Thiel's full underlying philosophy explained, tested, or fleshed out, but it would make a very good book. Probably a big one, too. (One, I'm sure, he's too busy to write.)
Top Ideas I took away from the book:
Dominate a Niche Market (then grow from there):
It's okay for a company to meet a macro-need, but all great startups need to start by carving a niche and dominating a small market (Facebook with the Harvard social scene; Paypal with eBay).
Build a Small Team:
Innovation happens best when planned in small groups rather than individually or in large organizations. Individuals are best for idiosyncratic creations like novels and comic books. Large groups usually do things like bureaucracies, at a snail's pace. Small organizations maintain focus and flexibility.
A Start-Up is Like a Cult (Organized around an Idea about How to Change the World, not a Crank Idea):
The interesting thing about start ups is their "cult-like" status (to the point of ignoring their family and friends, and gaining social value from interactions with each other). Start ups share the aspects of a cult because they believe fanatically they are right about ideas others are wrong about.
On Sales:
No one likes salespeople, but everyone is a salesperson. The better you are at not looking like a salesman, the better you are at sales.
On the Destructiveness of Competition:
*The more we compete, the less we gain. Competition is stupid and unhealthy. All industries with heavy competition have very low-profit margins. War is costly and destructive. When deciding whether to fight, there is no middle ground: either don't throw any punches or strike hard and end it quickly.
*In business, pride and honor get in the way of this truth. *Avoid direct competition altogether!
*Most brave people are willing to fight for almost nothing at all. (This might make them ideologically anti-business.)
The 10x Rule:
For an existing technology to be a monopoly it must be about 10x better than its next competitor.
Dominate a Niche Market:
It's better to dominate a small market than try to gain a small percentage of a large market.
Between the Easy and the Impossible is Your Target:
Between easy truths and unknowable truths are very difficult problems. These are the ones most satisfying. If you don't believe in these, you are especially prone to fundamentalism. Fundamentalism attributes all great problem-solving to an outside force: the market, the environment, God.
July 28, 2017
The Ghosts of Nagasaki - Enter the Welshman
This excerpt is from the novel "The Ghosts of Nagasaki".
You can download a free Kindle copy until July 31st. So, please pick up a copy.
amazon.com/Ghosts-Nagasaki-Daniel-Cla...
Description of the Novel:
One night a foreign business analyst in Tokyo sits down in his spacious high rise apartment and begins typing something. The words pour out and exhaust him. He soon realizes that the words appearing on his laptop are memories of his first days in Nagasaki four years ago.
Nagasaki, the non-birthplace of atomic warfare, but instead its brother, second cousin, was a place full of spirits, a garrulous Welsh roommate, and a lingering mystery. Though he wants to give up his writing, though he wants to let the past rest, within his compulsive writing is the key to his salvation.
Somehow he must finish the story of four years ago--a story that involves a young Japanese girl, the ghost of a dead Japanese writer, and a mysterious island. He must solve this mystery while maneuvering the hazards of middle management, a cruel Japanese samurai, and his own knowledge that if he doesn't solve this mystery soon his heart will transform into a ball of steel, crushing his soul forever.
Enter the Welshman
My workspace in Tokyo is bland and depressing. Yet somehow, I've managed to conquer a part of my small cubicle. I have usurped the space under my desk. When I crawl under, I find my own fortress of solitude, constructed out of books. Stacked way in the back, they lie half hidden by the shadow of the desk. If any of my coworkers were to see me with my feet dangling out of the bottom of my desk, I could always say that I'm searching for the magic portal to former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's head.
Among basic guides on financial analysis, here and there are the books that sustain me: a copy of Barbara Leaming's biography of Orson Welles, here; the History of the Peloponnesian War, there; a few books by Haruki Murakami; and good ol' Maniac Magee. And there, in the very back, is T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Perfect.
I take it with me to lunch, in part to ward off the evil spirits and the office lady courting me as a suitor. In part I take it to help me remember.
I walk to a café located near the subway station, an old place with dimmed lights--someplace that seems so forgotten its existence is questionable. Smoke hangs like a fog as the old-timers sit around with their newspapers, cigarettes, and bitter coffee. The older men wear black suits and ties, but it's impossible to tell what they do or even if they're still employed. The older suits and I leave each other to ourselves.
I open the book and read some of my crude handwritten notes from college: ideas about essays, notes on bills I had to pay. All these things remind me of those haphazard, fast days that were finished before they ever began. Eventually, I focus on the words because I want to be sitting next to Lawrence. Not the real T.E. Lawrence, but the one that exists in my head.
If every moment has a rhythm, then every discomfort has its book, an author who shares in your feelings with solidarity. Today, T.E. Lawrence is my confidant. My eyes go over the words, feeling his uneasiness, feeling the awkwardness of writing, the relief of expression/confession, and the frightening sensation when an expression catches the tail end of something hidden in truth's basement.
"A man who gives himself to be a possession of aliens leads a Yahoo life." In my buttoned-down suit, necktie choking my face red, my hair nicely trimmed, I can feel T.E. Lawrence's cold, clammy sentiment on the back of my neck. Glancing over the pages I'm reminded that I'm an Englishman in Arab garb. I am here in Tokyo, and cannot explain my own existence. My shoes, dress, tongue, and nationality clash beautifully with what is around me, and for a moment I'm sure I exist unreal as mountain gods oppressing the lives of salarymen, the supernatural management of Japan waiting to weed out the malcontents.
***
Though I sit in the coffee shop with Lawrence, my mind lives in that short time when I first arrived in Nagasaki four years ago. As I unpack my books from my suitcase and pile them in the corner of my tatami mat room, my Welsh roommate looks on, speaking quickly, a little bit incomprehensibly. He makes his way from a self-introduction to the finer points of Japanese customs in the time it takes me to wonder how he changed the subject so quickly.
"What's your name?" I ask.
This person, my roommate, he could be real. He could be real in the way you and I know real. Or he could just be a figment of my imagination. I choose to hide his real-fantasy under tasteless pseudonym.
"Let's see, you can call me beer-belly Mike," he offers in his thick Welsh accent, showing off his protruding belly.
"Nah."
"How about Long-schlong McFaddon?" he says.
"They're pseudonyms, not stage names. It's not like we're porn stars."
"Speak for yourself, mate. I aspire to greater things."
"How about Mikey Welsh?"
"Oh I see, because you want to constantly point out my nationality.
Is that how you're going to play the game? What do we call you then, Joe America?"
"You don't need to call me anything, because I'll be narrating this adventure."
"I see, fancy yourself as the protagonist, do you? Well, good luck with that."
"Thanks."
"Now, on to other issues of concern."
"Okay."
"So you're from the States, right?"
"Yeah."
"Do you or have you ever owned a handgun?"
"No."
"Right. Are you at all religious? Do you babble a lot about finding Jesus and the horrors of evolutionary theory?"
"I don't think so."
"Do you believe that your government really needs to spend as much money on defense as the rest of the world combined?"
"I haven't really thought about it," I say honestly.
"Do you call football 'soccer'?"
"Uh . . . you mean the sport where they kick the ball around. Yeah, I call it soccer."
"That might be a bit of a problem. Confusion and what not. We could soon have a whole Tower of Babel thing going on before you know it. These things have a tendency to snowball, you see. Okay, fair enough, though at some point we really should discuss US defense spending a bit more. Let me give you a fair bit of warning: right after I get off the can, the bathroom stinks for a good twenty or thirty minutes. The fan in there works, but I don't think it's sucking up any of the stink. I can't speak very much Japanese, so I haven't been able to call any maintenance people to come and fix it. By the way, I've had quite a few guys look over at my johnson. Japanese men that is, not Americans. Don't be bothered mate, it's not because they're queer or anything, it's just that they're curious. Same thing with the touching. I was waiting at the tram stop the other day, and I saw two boys feeling each others' muscles. Not just touching them, you understand, but really checking each other out, going for a good rub. Nobody much worries about these kinds of things because nobody even considers the idea that they may be homosexual, at least not in Nagasaki. Are you homosexual?"
"No."
"Are you a homophobe?"
"No."
"Well, that's a relief. That you're not a homophobe that is, not that you're not homosexual."
I soon realize that he doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon, that he's going to continue talking, and that I can either wait for him to run out of breath or I can move on with my life. So I continue to unpack my books and stack them in the corner. Meanwhile, he seems to make himself more comfortable in my room, settling in for the long haul.
"I had a mate who was a homosexual, but he didn't know it till one day when he gets a good look at me coming out of the shower. Anyway, that's at least what I think happened based on information I got from a mate of mine. You can imagine how awkward that must've been. He was a real monstrous hooligan looking dude as well. So imagine this butch, hard-ass dude coming up to me and being like: 'Hey Mikey, I caught a
glimpse of your johnson and now I got a thing for the schlong.'" He says this last part doing his best hooligan impression.
"Now that I think about it, I guess I should be a bit flattered. I mean, I have the kind of johnson that turns men gay. Gotta figure there're worse things out there. After all, I could have the kind of prick that turns women lesbian. Or who was that American guy who got his cock cut off? I could have a detachable. We could go play catch with it if we ever got bored. Imagine playing 'catch the genitalia.' That would be a hell of a first date."
This catches me at the right moment and I find myself laughing.
My mind is swirling, trying to digest this. Unable to, I go back to unstacking books. Each book has its own history. I get to the T.E. Lawrence book and something about it touches me. I was supposed to read the book for a university class but never got around to it. When I touch it I'm reminded of the accumulated weight of unfinished projects.
"Aw look at that--Lawrence of Arabia. Heard the guy liked a bit of the sadomasochism from time to time. Punishment for all the bad things he had to do in the desert. The weight of guilt tends to have unusual effects on people."
When he says this, I just shrug.
Before I even finish my shrug, though, he's off on another subject.
"I see you like to read," the Welshman says, looking through my books. "I had a friend who went to America one time, somewhere in the South. He was reading a book on politics at a bus station and someone comes up to him and says: 'Watcha readin' for?' Not 'Watcha readin'?' but, 'Watcha readin' for?'" He says this trying to do his best impression of someone from the American South.
"I tell you what, though," he says to me. "I've only known you for about ten minutes, but as long as you don't start pummeling me with a detachable penis, I think we're going to get along just fine."
He was Mikey Welsh, the Welshman, my Welsh roommate. As I would find out later, his ranting was a way to keep his mind healthy--a good rant before work, a rant after supper, and then he would stop for a cigarette or to eat on occasion, although I'm sure he babbled in his sleep. Great Ciceronian speeches no doubt.
It's hard to know now whether he was real or not. Long after he said he was supposed to leave Nagasaki, he stayed behind, transmuting his body into a fire-breathing, drunk and garrulous dragon. He was my professor in all things Japanese, better than a Lonely Planet because he knew how to make an observation entertaining, twist it a bit and turn it into something philosophical. He was also the one who convinced me to treat my stay more like a getaway than the start of a new life, less seriously than I was inclined to, though I had my heart set on this not being Hemingway's Spain.
***
Back in the café in Tokyo, I take a break to go pee. I'm holding my member trying to relax and let nature take its course. The guy next to me casually turns his head my way and smiles. I try not to look perturbed. I stare straight ahead, trying to ignore him. But this proves easier said than done. Soon he's nonchalantly looking downward, examining my penis.
"Not bad," he says in his best English with a nod of approval.
I smile to myself; thoughts of the Welshman cross my mind. And as I give my member a last shake, I realize that I'm shaking it in two places at once, and that when I leave the bathroom there's a good chance I'll be twenty-two again and back in Nagasaki.
July 26, 2017
Micro-Author Interview - Michael Keenan Gutierrez
I recently read Michael Keenan Gutierrez’s excellent book “The Trench Angel”. Michael was gracious enough to allow me to interview him for this blog.
Bio:
Michael Keenan Gutierrez is the author of The Trench Angel. His work has been published in The Delmarva Review, The Guardian, The Collagist, Scarab, The Pisgah Review, Untoward, The Boiler, Crossborder, and We're History.
What’s your favorite sentence or paragraph from one of your books? What does it mean to you?
The opening to The Trench Angel—“The men lined up for their pictures before they died.”
I struggled for a few years with how to step into the novel. Sometimes I tried to give a more postmodern approach, commenting on the narrative structure itself, or I put the reader inside of the protagonist’s head right away, especially during the earlier drafts when the novel was in third person. The one that stuck came to me in the shower. What I like about how it came out is that it’s a strong image, hits the reader with the main theme—the commodification and manufacturing of death—and it’s slightly disorienting, like being in a trench during the First World War.
What advice would you give other authors starting out?
Write every day—timeworn but true—and don’t rush to publish. I think because I began writing fiction seriously a bit later than many writers—I was 26—I felt I had to publish right away to keep up and The Trench Angel went out to publishers long before it was fully cooked.
I also think an MFA program can be a great experience. It gets a bad rap at times and I know people who’ve had rough times and say it’s pointless, but if you’re getting a teaching stipend so the program is free, it ends up being 2-3 years where you get to focus exclusively on your work, while being surrounded by cohorts who not only think that literature is emotionally meaningful, but that it’s socially crucial. You don’t get that in most aspects of life and if you get a great mentor like I did, it can change your life.
I wrote about my own experience here: https://themfayears.com/2016/05/24/wr...
What question would you like to see in future interviews?
If Shakespeare could write a blurb for your last book, what would he say?
Bonus Question:
If Shakespeare could write a blurb for your last book, what would he say?
How about this from "Venus and Adonis."
"It shall be raging mad, and silly mild,
Make the young old, the old become a child."
July 22, 2017
Na. Ta. Lee.
Na. Ta. Lee. Natalie, life's paprika, the spice of my life. My torment, the reason for my unreason. Na-ta-lee: a step to the left, two steps to the right. A love too hot to register. Na - left - ta -right - lee - right. A tap dance with desire. A Texas three-step with agonizing love. Na. Ta. Lee.
