Craig Lancaster's Blog, page 3

Look who’s four years old

On this date in 2011, I welcomed my second novel into the world.

And then I watched as The Summer Son—a book whose difficult delivery included a year’s work, three entire rewrites, and one morning of sheer terror when I couldn’t find the manuscript on my hard drive and needed the intervention of experts—proceeded to face-plant several times on its way to maturity.

In August and September of that year, when I would have hoped for the book to find its sales stride, it sold a grand total of 26 copies. Print and e-book. With the marketing muscle of a large, skillful publisher behind it. I don’t often talk about sales figures, because (a) it’s unseemly to do so and (b) such figures reveal a lot about a book’s marketability but little about its quality. I’d rather spend my time talking about, and pursuing, good writing. But it’s safe to say this: In the summer of 2011, I didn’t hold out much hope for the book’s future or for mine as a novelist. The only dream I’d allowed myself, that I might someday be able to make a living as a fiction writer, seemed to reside on the far side of the galaxy.

With that memory in mind, I break protocol once more: The most recent figures I have for the book put its total sales at more than 48,000 copies. Clearly, the book eventually did better. My prospects did, too.

Again, I intend nothing boastful about sharing this. For one thing, while 48,000 is a respectable number, I have good friends who have multiplied that several times over with a single title. In other words, everything’s relative. No, sharing that number is more about an ethos I consider essential for anyone who wants to pursue artistic ambitions, whether those aspirations are to make a living or achieve something loftier. Here it is: There is one thing within the control of the artist (a word I use for its inclusive qualities, not to strike some snooty pose), and that thing is the quality of what’s being created. The marketplace, the tastes of consumers, the organizational effort at promotion afforded the work—these things all lie well outside the province of the work’s creator. Good books enter the market and fail, all the time. Bad books enter the market and sell wildly, sometimes. It’s just the way it goes, and getting comfortable with—or at least not being paralyzed by—that fact helps protect one’s ongoing sanity.

One of the many reasons I love my publisher, Lake Union Publishing, is that it never gives up on a book. It has consistently viewed The Summer Son as a work with a long future, which puts Lake Union and me into perfect alignment.

For the good of my state of mind and for the many books I still want to write, I’m unable to look at it in any other way.

This is Butte. You Have Ten Minutes.

One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a while and haven’t, for whatever reason, is adapt one of my stories for the stage. (If this smacks of “I’ve always wanted to direct,” my apologies.) I have such a vibrant love of live theater, and such a profound respect for those who perform it, that I’ve long wanted to get involved somehow. Whether because of the demands of the next manuscript or a clinging relationship to my comfort zone, I haven’t done much to push this aspiration forward.

That’s why I’m so thankful for Patrick Wilson. Patrick, a theater veteran who founded Sacrifice Cliff Theater Company here in Billings, Montana, approached me recently and asked if I had anything in the archives that could be adapted for the theater’s New Works Festival.

As a matter of fact …

The story I chose—called This is Butte. You Have Ten Minutes.—was included in my 2011 short-story collection, Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure. It’s a deeply personal story for me, one inspired by my own late-night bus ride from Billings to Missoula while my then-wife was using my car to move her belongings out of the house we shared. All of the stories, in some way, tie into the notions of separation and yearning, but this is the one that sprang to mind when I considered dramatic possibilities. With Patrick’s help, I’ll get to see it come to fruition.

So, to mark this coming occasion, I’ve decided to offer up the short story to readers of this site.

You can download the PDF here.

For more information about Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure, go here.

Thanks for reading.

So This is Christmas …

Well, not yet. But soon.

I’ve had a year, to say the least. This seems to happen when the calendar is on an even number. Divorce, heartbreak, starting anew in an old place, trying to get my bearings. Again. There has been happiness, too, of course—a new book came out, new friendships emerged, I settled into my life as a nearly full-time author, and as I see the end of the year coming fast, I have high hopes for what’s ahead.

My mother messaged me a couple of weeks ago—the near-constant contact of Facebook makes telephone conversations ever more quaint, which is just as well by me, because I hate talking on the damn things—and asked if I’d come home to North Richland Hills, Texas, for Christmas. She knows I’ve been hurting. I know I’ve been hurting. My impulse was to say no. So I said yes. My impulses haven’t been all that reliable lately.

That supplied the occasion for doing a bit of math. Here’s what I looked like, more or less, the last time I spent Christmas with my family in Texas:

With my sister Karen circa 1991, just before I moved away to Kenai, Alaska.

 

And here’s what I look like, more or less, today:

In Billings, Montana, Spring 2014. (Photo by Casey Page)

Near as I can tell, I haven’t spent a Christmas in Texas since 1990. Less than a year later, just before Thanksgiving 1991, I was off to Alaska, and then my nascent (or, at least, not-quite-static) career carried me to Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, back to Alaska, California, back to Texas for a few short months, Washington state, back to California and, finally, here to Montana, where I’ve been since June 2006. It’s an article of faith among young newspaper journalists, if such creatures exist anymore, that holidays are for working. I never imagined that I’d stay away from the place I call home for 24 years’ worth of holidays, but that’s the way it went.

A lot has happened, obviously, to all of us. My part of Texas is now thick with nieces and nephews. I’ve gone and become middle-aged, built a marriage and seen it come apart, watched people come and go from my life. I’m older. That’s undeniable. Am I wiser? I wonder sometimes. My parents—vital and healthy though they may be—are in their autumn years. I’ve burned through one career and started another, and while my prospects appear as ascendant as they did when I was twenty years old, I have the energy of a man my age, not the boundless optimism and unstoppable motor I had then. It’s not the same. That’s OK, but I should have found the time for my family, for the place that gave me a foundation for my life, long before now.

So I’m going to Texas. And I’m going to damn well enjoy it. Better late than never, right?

HUGO HUNTER comes out punching

This is a big day for The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter. The book, set for a November 1st general release, is one of the October selections for the Kindle First program, in which electronic versions of new books are released a month early to Kindle customers.

If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can read Hugo Hunter right now for free. If you’re not a Prime member, you can still pick up the Kindle version for just $1.99, for the entire month of October.

Here’s what my editor, Terry Goodman, has to say about the book:

When Craig Lancaster … told me he was submitting a ‘boxing novel’, I was nonplussed, having never been a fan of the sport—but then I read it. I’m happy to report that The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter is a high-wire act that shouldn’t work, yet does. It might be Craig’s best novel to date.

In many ways, Hugo is a study in contradictions. Although it’s set in the gritty, down-on-its-luck world of professional boxing, it’s not really about sport any more than Raging Bull or Million Dollar Baby are. The main character—flawed, complex Hugo—isn’t the sharpest tool in the box, but he has a good heart…mostly. Even when his self-destructive forays into alcoholism and drug dependence make you want to smack him, you still find yourself rooting for him. The story takes place in the present but feels both classic and timeless—it could pass for a Warner Bros. film from the forties. And somehow it manages to be a tear-jerker despite not having a whiff of sentimentality.

Hugo is about more than only Hugo, of course. It features a great supporting cast of fully realised, all-too-human and flinty friends and family, and narrated by the sportswriter who’s Hugo’s mentor and conscience. Ultimately, this book is about memory, honour, second chances, and redemption. You might not want to be Hugo Hunter when you finish it, but you’ll know him.

Visit this link to take advantage of the Kindle First offer.

And that’s not all…

From now until October 15th, signed paperback copies of Hugo Hunter are being offered for sale here at Craig-Lancaster.com. If you order during this period, you’ll receive your signed book as close to the general release date of November 1st as possible, along with a special gift: Twenty Uneasy Pieces, a collection of Craig’s short fiction. Your price for both books: $14.95. Domestic and international shipping are available.

Visit this link to order.

And still there’s more…

The appearances in support of Hugo Hunter are piling up. You can see the entire schedule at the Events page, and here are some select events coming up in Montana:

October 9th-11th: Montana Festival of the Book, Missoula.

November 1st: Reading at the Billings Public Library, 2 p.m.

November 7th: Hugo Hunter launch party at Harper & Madison, Billings.

Q&A with Tyler Dilts

If you’re the sort who picks through the Kindle bestseller lists for something new to read, you couldn’t have missed Tyler Dilts and his new novel, A Cold and Broken Hallelujah, in August.

A selection for the prestigious Kindle First program, where books get a digital rollout a month before their official release, the book went directly to No. 1 in the entire store and stayed there awhile. Now just days into its official release, it continues to burn brightly on the bestseller lists and has racked up impressive reviews.

Tyler, a buddy since we met at an Amazon party in New York a few years back, was kind enough to entertain some questions about the new book and the literary sensibility he brings to the police-procedural genre. Read the Q&A, then read the book. You’ll be glad you did.

You’ve created a very human character in Det. Danny Beckett. In A King of Infinite Space , he’s doing his job while dealing with the loss of his wife and family, and in The Pain Scale , it’s the chronic pain after a yearlong medical leave. In what condition do we find Danny at the beginning of A Cold and Broken Hallelujah?

At the opening of the new novel, Danny’s come to terms with much of what was haunting him in the first two books, but a murder he investigates—a homeless man who is burned to death by a group of teenagers—tests his resolve, especially in mourning his late wife, who also died by burning. Danny’s the kind of detective who carries the weight of the past with him. It’s a quality that is certainly not healthy for him, but it keeps him connected to the victims of the crimes he investigates and allows him to maintain a sense of empathy. He knows that it is his greatest strength as a detective, so he can’t bring himself to let go, even though he’d be healthier and happier if he did.

Your Amazon profile notes that you once dreamed of following your father’s path and becoming a police officer. What did he do, and when did you realize that your aspirations lay elsewhere?

My father was Sheriff’s Deputy for Los Angeles County. He worked in quite a few different capacities—in the county jails, on patrol, as a trainer at the academy, and as a detective. I think I realized that I wouldn’t follow in his footsteps sometime in high school. But I didn’t know what path I would take until I got to college and discovered theatre. I got my BA in Acting and Directing and spent several years working in theatre in LA. I’m a big guy and found myself getting typecast, so a good friend, after hearing me complaining about the fourth time I played Lennie in Of Mice and Men, suggested that I start writing my own plays. That led me back to grad school, this time in English Lit and Creative Writing. In a way, writing about Danny Beckett feels like coming full circle and returning to that desire to follow in my father’s footsteps.

What’s the role of Long Beach in your writing? You don’t pull any punches in your depiction of it, but it’s also clear there’s a lot of love there.

Tyler Dilts

I’ve always loved crime fiction. When I was working on my MA in English Lit, I always tried to keep that interest quiet. There was a lot of genre-disparaging going on around me, and I hoped to avoid getting pegged as a lightweight by my grad school peers. Around that time, though, I discovered James Lee Burke and realized that crime fiction could be every bit as “literary” as the stuff I was studying in my classes. It seems absurd to me now that I ever thought any differently, but I did. Burke was the first author who really showed me that it was possible to combine the literary quality and the genre elements that captivated me in the same work. He showed me it wasn’t an either/or proposition (dozens of other authors would show me the same thing when I read them—but Burke showed me first). One of my favorite elements of his work is the way he captures the settings his characters inhabit. The setting in any Burke novel is an intrinsic part of the narrative and characterization. Place is every bit as important and vital as any other element of the story. That was something that I really connected to as a reader, and I remember thinking very clearly and specifically when I started writing about Danny Beckett that I wanted to do the same thing for Long Beach that James Lee Burke did for New Iberia, Louisiana. Fortunately, I was naive enough at the time not to realize the challenge I was setting for myself. I don’t know if I’ll ever come close to reaching that ideal, but I am happy to report that three books into the Long Beach Homicide series, I finally managed one paragraph that I feel lives up to the challenge I set for myself. Maybe I can manage two paragraphs in the next book.

What are the challenges of developing a character over a series of books?

It actually feels like a great luxury to be able to develop a number of characters over a series of books. It’s very enjoyable to be able to explore so much more of a character’s life and backstory than would be possible in a single book. One of the long-term goals of the series is to actually make several supporting characters protagonists in future novels. The next in the series, for example, will feature Danny’s partner, Jennifer Tanaka, as the lead. That’s something Ed McBain did very well with his 87th Precinct novels. That said, there are challenges as well. The biggest for me is keeping everyone’s backstory straight. I remember the big events, of course, but I can’t seem to write a chapter that doesn’t force me to dig into one of the previous books to find out what color someone’s eyes were or what kind of car someone drove or some other small detail. I’ve started keeping notebooks to record details like these. I wish I had started that at the beginning of the first book.

What drew you to the police procedural as an artistic vehicle? How daunting is it to get the particular details of police work right?

I didn’t realize this until long after I’d started writing A King of Infinite Space, but I think a significant aspect of my interest in police procedurals comes from my father. He died when I was only five. My life-long interest in cop stories comes from trying to understand what my dad did and through understanding that, to understand something more about who he was. I discovered Joseph Wambaugh as a teenager, and, much later, heard Michael Connelly quote him: “What’s interesting is not how cops work on cases, but how cases work on cops.” That’s what fascinated me about cop stories. It wasn’t so much the mysteries of the crimes themselves, but rather how those mysteries affected the investigators that fascinated me. And I knew when I started thinking about writing my first novel, it would be a cop story. I didn’t understand much of this at that point, though. My thinking was simply that my dad had been a cop, I know a lot of cops, I read a lot of stuff about cops, I should write about cops. It was only over the years of working on the series that I really came to understand how deeply personal my connection to these novels and their subject matter was.

As for the technical aspect of writing procedurals, it can be very daunting to get the details right. I had an advantage knowing cops when I was young, so I was able to do a pretty good job with what I call “cop culture” from the outset. The personalities, the language, things like that. The investigative details were another matter. I educated myself as much as I could with criminal justice and investigative procedure textbooks, and I rely on on a few people with real world experience to get the details right. And that’s something that I take very seriously—I go for authenticity and believability in all the investigative procedure. I’m very picky and I know nothing spoils a police story for me more quickly than an unrealistic detail. I sweat the small stuff. I actually had quite a bit of anxiety while we were editing A Cold and Broken Hallelujah because some of the things the detectives do in the story were rendered unconstitutional by a recent Supreme Court decision. I seriously considered re-writing a few hundred pages, but then I discovered that I could make myself feel better by referring to the book as a “historical novel.”

You teach writing at the college level. In what ways does that help inform or shape your own work?

I’m really very fortunate to have the day job that I do because I genuinely enjoy it. But also because it makes me a better writer. I get to teach a lot of fiction writing classes, and because our primary work is analyzing the students’ work, I wrestle every day with the same questions of craft that they do. I get to see what works and what doesn’t. And in discussing these issues, I usually feel like I gain as much as they do. This is a real benefit, and very much the same one I received while working on my MFA. Seeing problems and talking through them and figuring out how to fix them really helps me keep my own craft in tune.

The only real downside is that it’s a time-consuming job that you can’t help but bring home with you. It’s not the kind of thing you can leave behind when you clock out. I understand the benefits of that kind of occupation, but for me, the ability to spend most of my time talking and thinking about stories is very helpful when I sit down to write.

What are you working on now?

The next novel is a stand-alone thriller titled No Straight Thing. The title comes from a quote from Kant: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” It’s about kidnapping, snipers, drones, drug cartels, and fracking. It’s something different for me and that seemed really exciting when I was planning it, but now that I’m actually working on it, it is pretty much just scaring the crap out of me.

Follow Tyler Dilts on Twitter

My friend, Sue Hart

Sue Hart: 1936-2014

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m trying to breathe again.

The past week has been one of the most difficult of my life—for many reasons, some of which I’m not prepared to talk about. It’s also been one of the most extraordinary. I’m continually amazed at what life takes and gives. How anyone finds a footing is beyond me, sometimes.

Monday brought the crushing news that my dear friend Sue Hart had passed on. I’m not sure I have the capacity of language to get at the depth of what she means to me: friend, mentor, mother figure, role model for generous living. Those of us who love her—and we are legion—knew she was ailing, but nobody expected to lose her so abruptly.

I spoke at her vigil service Thursday, and in a personal story I tried to get at the universality of what it was to love Sue, and to be loved by her. I share it here for anyone who wasn’t fortunate enough to know her.

Sue Hart

When I first met Sue, in early 2009, I had just badly self-published my first novel. I had this awful, awful artifact that I was toting around—seriously, if you judge a book by its cover, this one wasn’t fit for a firing squad—and I was trying to get somebody interested in it. Anybody. I think my mom had bought a copy. That was about it.

Chris Rubich, the longtime features editor at the Billings Gazette and then a co-worker of mine, suggested that I introduce myself to Sue and see what she had to say. Now, I knew of Sue, but in the same way that I know a rocket has to go really fast to get into orbit. I didn’t know. But I would come to, and I’ll get to that in a second.

I sent her an email and made my pathetic little spiel. She replied and suggested that I come talk to her freshman comp class. It wasn’t quite what I expected to hear. I figured she’d say, “Bring your book by,” and it would languish in another slush pile. Seriously, if you ever saw her office, you know that book would have been a goner. But, no, she said, “Come talk to my students,” and I said, “OK. You don’t really know me. Are you sure?”

And she said, “Maybe you better send me a chapter of your book first.”

 

I did go talk to that class. It was wonderful. Sue was encouraging, she kept the conversation going when the students let it drop, and she dribbled out these bits of wisdom and perspective in a plainspoken way, with such simplicity and humility that you’d have to stop yourself and say, “Holy crap, she’s talking about Dorothy Johnson from direct, personal experience. Oh, good god, she knows Jim Harrison. McGuane! She’s talking about McGuane like he’s flesh and blood, which is of course ridiculous! What the hell?”

Every semester, reliable as anything else in my life, Sue would ask me back. I got better at it. I’d do a little song and dance, and she’d make me tell my own publishing story, and I can still see her, glasses on her nose, as she’d gently reproach me if I was too self-effacing or silly. “Oh, Craig!” And here’s the other thing: Every time, she’d drag out that godawful first iteration of the book, the one with the cover that looks like it was designed by Stevie Wonder and spaces between the lines big enough to drive a swather through. I want to run away from that thing, but Sue was proud of it. That’s the kind of person she was. She was an encourager.

And here’s the thing about those classroom visits: That alone would have been enough. Given those moments with Sue, in the classroom, an hour and a half at a time, I could have never complained if that’s the only part of her I ever got to enjoy.

But if Sue claimed you and brought you into the family—and there are untold hundreds of us—you weren’t going to get off that easy. You were going to enjoy eclectic dinner parties with her at the Granary. You were coming over for Christmas. You were going to be set down next to the most interesting people you’ve ever met, and Sue was going to make sure that her friends were your friends. She was a connector, with every everybody she met. If you were trying to sell a few books at the Writers Roundup in December, there’s one sale you could count on: Sue would come by and buy one. Even if she already had it. She supported the culture she existed in. Extraordinary, that’s what she was.

We’ve all morphed together, Sue’s people. I see Deb and Rachel Schaffer and I can’t remember if I met them independently, or if it was because of Sue. It doesn’t matter. What we have in common, most of all, is that we loved Sue Hart, and Sue loved us. That’s the best club in the whole damned world.

I wasn’t fortunate enough to have big sisters. Sue took care of that for me, by bringing Kathleen and Mary and Margaret into my life, and I’m immeasurably richer for her having done that. That’s a gift Sue gave me. It’s like she knew I needed it. And I did. And I love you guys.

For the past year, since I kicked the Gazette’s dust off my boots and took up with Scott McMillion and his Montana Quarterly enterprise in Livingston, I’ve had a tradition on the day we close the magazine. I’d pack up my stuff, give McMillion a slap on the rump, and then drive around the corner to where Sue lived out her final days. And I’d sit and talk with her and sometimes Dick for a while. About anything. About everything. Sue’s as fine a woman as I’ve ever known, as close to my heart as my own mother. And Dick is one of the world’s great gentlemen. I’d sit there and be astounded by my good fortune to know them. And when it was time to leave, I’d kiss Sue goodbye and tell her I loved her.

A couple of weeks ago, after Scott and I put the latest issue to bed, I headed over. When I got to her door, I peeked in, and Sue was sweetly asleep in her chair. I crept back down the hallway and out of there. I had business in Bozeman the next day, and I knew I’d be back through on my way home to Billings.

Well, the next day came, and by the time I finished what I was doing up the road, I was too brain-addled to remember my plans. I blew past Livingston and was well on my way to Big Timber before I remembered. And then it was, “Aw, hell. I’ll get her next time.”

Well. So there’s that. I feel so stupid for assuming there would be a next time. And this is a hell of a penalty for inattentiveness from the universe, if you ask me. I’m glad I got to see her, silent and asleep and serene. I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell her one more time that I loved her.

Because I did. And I do. And I always will.

Thank you.

*****

You can read the news story of Sue’s passing here. This ran as a front-page centerpiece in the Billings Gazette. Her obituary can be read here.

Jon Clinch on Belzoni, micro-publishing, and What Comes After

Jon Clinch, the acclaimed literary author who shocked just about everybody by opting for self-publishing in 2012, has taken another unconventional turn. His latest novel, Belzoni Dreams of Egypt, is greeting the world in monthly installments, which Clinch is pricing at 99 cents apiece, before the entire novel is released in December.

It’s a throwback move, and Clinch has given us a throwback character at the center of the story.

Here’s how the book’s cover bills Belzoni:

Part adventure, part romance, and part tall tale, BELZONI DREAMS OF EGYPT is the “fictional autobiography” of Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a real-life 19th-century explorer, circus performer, and shameless self-promoter. He narrates the story at the end of his life, aboard a ship bound for the coast of Africa and his final, fatal adventure. Belzoni’s voice is bombastic and beautiful, and his narrative is both an unabashed love story and a ripping yarn. 

Plus, it’s mostly lies. 

The real-life Belzoni pillaged Egypt while Lord Elgin was pillaging Greece—only a whole lot more colorfully. Born in Padua, raised in Rome, and educated by the Capuchins, he stood nearly seven feet tall and easily found work in England as a circus strongman. His strength and agility, along with his expertise in hydraulics and pyrotechnics, brought him to the attention of of Mohammed ‘Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, and from there it was short work to begin ransacking the Valley of the Kings. 

BELZONI DREAMS OF EGYPT brings Belzoni back to vivid life, yarning about his exploits in a series of cliff-hangers involving pyramids and catacombs, poison gas and carnival freaks, heartless popes and Napoleon’s army. To say nothing of his loyal companion, the Irish orphan James Curtin, and his one true love, the faithful Sarah Banne Belzoni.

Clinch was kind enough to field a few questions about why he took the episodic approach with the new novel, the challenges and opportunities of self-publishing, and what we can expect to see next from him. This much seems certain: It won’t be a rerun.

Let’s start with Belzoni. What a larger-than-life character—literally. How long have you been carrying this guy around, thinking he’d be a good candidate for a fictional treatment?

I discovered him probably fifteen years ago as a kind of footnote in Barrow’s Boys, Fergus Fleming’s history of the British age of exploration. (Each part of Belzoni Dreams of Egypt begins with a quote from some book or other, relative to Belzoni’s life story and background; only a couple of them—the Fleming included—are real.)

Was it as much fun to write as it is to read?

This project was a whole lot more fun than usual. I never like to write the same thing twice, as many of my readers have noticed—and Belzoni is definitely very different from anything else I’ve ever done. The story is fast-paced, the characters are broadly-painted and funny, the language is over the top. It’s an homage to everything from Indiana Jones to Baron von Münchausen to Mark Helprin’s gloriously demented Memoir from Antproof Case.

I’m wondering about process. Did your original concept of the story break down in an episodic way, or was it something you came to eventually? How did that work?

The novel is a kind of bildungsroman, taking Belzoni from the formative moments of his childhood in Rome through his adult years in Egypt and finally to his death on the coast of Africa. It broke down naturally into six more-or-less equal segments, for that reason and because I’m always interested in maintaining careful control over pacing in any novel. The six “books,” as I called them in the first draft, because the six “parts.”

What has been the reception to the monthly story installments?

Unsurprisingly enough, most of what I hear is that people are waiting to buy the whole thing at once. That’s fine with me. I’d always resisted participating in the whole “cheap ebooks” economy, figuring that selling a novel for a dollar or so—or, worse, just giving it away—was bad for the integrity of the whole literary enterprise. So when it occurred to me that I could release Belzoni in six bite-sized chunks for $.99 each, I figured why not? If folks want to read it as it goes along, great. If they want to wait—it’ll be out there as a complete ebook and paperback on December 1—that’s great too.

This is your second novel under your own Unmediated Ink imprint. How’s life in the craft-brew world of literature?

I’ve learned a few things, or at least I hope I have. Chief among them is that the audience for micropublished books tends to cluster around the genres. Since I’m not a genre writer, that puts me at something of a disadvantage. Many of my readers won’t find out that I have a new book out unless it gets reviewed in the New York Times or the Washington Post, and those papers have rigid policies against reviewing self-published books. It’s a catch-22, so far.

I read Unmediated Ink: Notes from the Self-Publishing Revolution and found it indispensable for anyone who wants to approach this in a clear-eyed, professional way. Is there anything you’d add to it now that you’re another book deeper into this way of doing things?

Thanks for your kind words. One thing I might add is a recent observation by many in the field that Amazon seems to have adjusted their discovery algorithms so as to favor ebooks that are published exclusively on their site. Micropublishers who count on working with the full range of platforms—iBooks, B&N, Kobo—find our books sinking lower and lower in the Amazon recommendation system. I guess that’s no big surprise. I’m doing tons better at Barnes & Noble than at Amazon these days, which is a huge reversal.

What are you working on now?

There are a couple of new manuscripts cooking along at various stages of urgency, a new novel making the rounds with the big houses, and a pilot screenplay for a short-run series based on What Came After—the sci-fi novel I published under a pen name a few years ago. It surprised everybody, including me, by reaching #8 on Amazon’s science fiction list for a while, even very briefly outselling Game of Thrones. It’s a very poignant story about a father and daughter making their way in a post-apocalyptic world, and I think it’ll make great TV if we can make it happen.

Ain’t too proud to beg (for your address)

If you’ve been hanging around the new website or my Official Author Facebook Page, A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Me Inc., you may have noticed that I’ve been making a big push to get you to sign up for my mailing list.

Then again, maybe you didn’t, because it’s entirely possible you’re not on the list yet.

Then again, maybe you haven’t been hanging out here or my Official Author Facebook Page, etc., etc. In which case, I have to wonder what’s wrong with you. And how you’re reading this right now.

In any case, maybe now that I’ve made a pest of myself, you’re thinking, “Craig, I want to make this good. How do I sign up for your mailing list?”

Glad you asked.

How to sign up for my mailing list

On this page, or on any page on the site, you can snake down to the bottom right-hand corner, enter your e-mail address, hit submit, and you’re golden.

I’ve provided a handy-dandy illustrated guide below:

But maybe you’re saying, “Craig, I love you, man, but I’m totally here by accident. I prefer to do my mailing list whatnot on Facebook, where the action is.”

I can’t blame you there, pal. Luckily, I have an option for you there, too.

When you’re on the Official Author Facebook Page—and, please, make sure it’s the author page, where I’m looking all authorial, and not my personal page, where I’m likely to take selfies with my dogs—you should be able to see a “join my mailing list” link in the toolbar at the top. Simply click and enter the information.

Again, here’s a visual guide:

‘Why should I sign up for your mailing list, Craig?’

Don’t be insolent. Just do it.

Sorry. Sorry. I haven’t had patience since before the war.

Why?

Because I like you. And because I’m occasionally going to send you stuff you might be interested in, like information about new releases, book tours, upcoming parties, my plans to sleep on your couch, etc. It’s better that you know these things direct from me, if you get what I’m saying.

Also:

Because I’ll only send you useful stuff.
Because I’ll never spam you.
Because I’ll never sell your name. Ever.
Because I like you.
Yes, even you.

Seriously, dude, tell me

Well, I already have. But there’s also this:

You want to know when the pre-sale for signed copies of The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter happens. There are going to be a lot of extra goodies included in that.

That will be announced to e-mail subscribers, and the sale won’t last long.

It’s coming, any day now. And it will be over with a month later.

You don’t want to miss it.

Also, because I like you.

Going Off the Path with Adrian Jawort

Adrian Jawort

Earlier this year, a publishing project in Montana received a fair amount of attention: Adrian Jawort, a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe who grew up in the Billings area, launched an anthology called Off the Path: An Anthology of 21st Century Montana American Indian Writers, Vol. 1. The extensive title, with the implicit promise of more Native writing to come, suggested equally ambitious plans. So did the website of Off the Path LLC, Jawort’s publishing company, which promises: “The Off the Path anthology is not afraid to be daring, bold, and go to where your head and heart craves to go—even if they didn’t know it yet.”

As you’ll see from this Q&A, Jawort—and the writers he’s championing—intends to follow through. We talked about how the first anthology came about, what’s missing from contemporary literature about life on the reservation, and the role of technology allowing this group of friends and colleagues to build a true grass-roots publishing company.

Walk me through the genesis of the idea behind the anthology. What was the moment where you and your partners decided, hey, we have to do this?

Cinnamon Spear

The idea had been something I’d contemplated for the last couple of years, but then I really started thinking about it seriously after I read a young Northern Cheyenne woman writer Cinnamon Spear’s work last October and I was blown away by the skill level well beyond her twenty-six years. She has a master’s degree in creative writing from Dartmouth. A couple of weeks after I met Ms. Spear, as a journalist I covered a meeting in Billings about the proposed banning in the school district curriculum of the Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. After seeing dozens of people speak out passionately in favor of keeping the book in the curriculum and how important it was to both Natives and non-Natives personally, I knew there was a potential audience for more Native lit—especially if it could be from a Montana Indian point of view and by younger authors.

What was the response when you started soliciting pieces for the project?

Sterling HolyWhiteMountain

Well, Cinnamon Spear has been very enthusiastic about it since day one, and has been a staunch supporter throughout. She deserves a lot of credit. I knew a couple of writers personally, but I also reached out to tribal colleges and universities and the like via my journalism contacts. One name that came up repeatedly was Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, a Blackfeet writer from Browning, Montana. Turns out he’d gone to the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop, which would in itself be a pretty big deal for any Montana writer, and he just so happens to be Native. Anyway, the stories selected ended up being pretty bleak yet beautifully written. For Vol. 2 I’ve vetted out a unique crop of dedicated writers and the response from them so far has been basically, “It’s so cool you’re doing this and it’s much needed! I’d love to contribute something!”

Why Off the Path? What ideas did you want to push across with this project?

Foremost, I wanted to bring this literature by younger Montana American Indian writers directly to the intended audience: Natives and Montanans, and then ripple out from there. A lot of these stories could easily be picked up by a respected literary journal, but your average reader would likely never come across it. And I’m publishing not just one story in a magazine or journal, but an entire wide-ranging book that I’m taking directly to Indian reservations, tribal colleges, universities, local bookstores, and wherever else I need to go to find an audience that relates to it.

It’s also different in that a lot of people open the book perhaps expecting something typical and almost clichéd and formulaic about Native Americans, but this is very edgy and atypical. We do touch on plaguing real issues like suicide, abuse , alcoholism, and poverty that Natives out west deal with on a seemingly extreme level and a lot of it is biographical, but it’s still very original fiction. Off the Path has basically created a life force of its own and a lot of that stemmed from positive reactions to it. People just coming up and thanking me sincerely with tears in their eyes saying how they related so personally to this story or that story, or telling me how important this collection is for Natives. With future volumes in the works, we hope to continue feeding those reactions.

How much of a factor were digital publishing and print-on-demand technology in your decision to launch this publication?

The faster production and lower costs of getting books these days out were certainly huge factors. I’ve studied the publishing industry closely for years and there has been rapid and major changes lately like ebooks that big publishing houses have been slow to grasp because nothing much changed with the status quo for decades but the names, and they were the proverbial gatekeepers and that was that. Prior, novels and books traditionally would take about a year to 18 months to get published after acceptance, and that was after they got a hold of you months later, and often that was only after you were fortunate enough to land an agent. As a freelance journalist who is used to getting paid only after something is printed, that kind of wait would drive me nuts! Not that I’m getting rich or anything off of this first volume because I share the profits with other writers and throw a lot of my own personal money into it, but now it’s easier to merely take all if those middlemen out and speed up the process and do things like hire your own freelance editors or cover designers if need be, et cetera. With diligent work, I was able to get out a high quality, handsomely printed product that does justice to the content within. And although ebooks are free to make, a print book has seemed to be by far the preferred reading medium of Montanans at least.

But to make us a legitimate and dedicated independent press as opposed to merely self-published, I went through all the proper channels to get an LLC business license and did seemingly trivial but important details like purchase my own ISBN bar code numbers for the books. Your average book store won’t carry your book if you don’t have things like that covered, for instance.

What are your plans from here? Your website lays out a pretty ambitious vision statement.

I suppose it is! But why wait for someone else to give us permission to go forward, you know? Right now I’m just about booked up with Off the Path Vol. 2 writers, and I hope to have that out by the end of the year. That one will have a couple of returning Montana writers, but I’ve also expanded into areas like the southwest and South Dakota and elsewhere. I’m particularly excited that I have a 30-year-old indigenous Maori woman writer named Kim M. Harris from New Zealand who currently resides in Australia. Maori and Aboriginals have historically faced a lot of the negative affects of colonialization that mirror the Natives in North America, from attempted genocides to forcing children to go to boarding schools, yet they’re strong survivors and have kept their culture alive in spite of the West’s best attempts to eradicate it. I was actually going use Vol. 3 to get other countries involved, but again, why wait? Kim M. Harris was ready and eager to write for us, and so we were eager to publish her.

We also hope to eventually have a female Native writer anthology edited by Cinnamon Spear out next year, and another Off the Path contributor, Eric Leland Bigman Brien, convinced me a poetry anthology was something we should do and that will be out this later year. Plus, it will be a good way to be more inclusive to the general Native writing community who may be sitting on some good verses and get them to feel more like, “Off the Pass Press LLC is our press as well!”

And last but not least, I’ve also got a novel coming out this fall. I put that on hold as it’s vastly different than Off the Path and I didn’t want it to detract too much from it. It’s wild and sure to offend!

There’s been plenty of western writing about the reservations. What was missing from that narrative that you wanted to address?

Our own specific voices as told by younger Natives themselves. Although we Natives have, respectfully, Sherman Alexie and Louise Erdrich and older writers representing us on the best seller lists, their experiences don’t mirror our own, and I wanted to showcase rising talent, hence the “21st Century” aspect of the title. Reservations and tribes may be similar in many ways in that we can always relate on some base level, but to note Natives as one singular conglomerate and say “Alexie speaks for all us!” is to negate all of those factors like language and cultural beliefs unique to individual tribes, and would be like claiming England and Germany and France are all alike just because they’re mostly white people. Alexie grew up with the Spokane Tribe in Washington state, but we have Montana-related experiences, and of course we all have vastly different writing styles.

How can people support this effort and get a copy of the book?

That evil Amazon.com. Jokes! But seriously I must touch on the now controversial Amazon.com subject because while those six- and seven-figure authors have been railing against Amazon—”Don’t buy from them! Only buy from local bookstores!”—many indie publishers have cringed when that’s said, because that’s a lifeline for us to be easily and readily available to those readers not from around here. Although we’d like to be in every bookstore like those bestselling authors already are, we simply aren’t yet, although we’re always reaching out and hoping to be carried in most Montana campuses and area bookstores. In the meanwhile, Off the Path is at places like The University of Montana and Fact in Fiction bookstore in Missoula; Elk River Books in Livingston, and Barjon’s Books in Billings as well as a few other places.

And of course one can also go to the website and there’s direct contact information on there to get a hold of me to receive an autographed copy.

A tour around the new place

If you’re a repeat visitor to the site, you may notice that we’ve done some remodeling. If it’s your first time here, welcome. We’ve tried to make the place as inviting and informational as we possibly can.

Photo by Casey Page

My home on the Net has been around for several years now—first as a standalone WordPress blog, later as a flash site, finally at this address (www.craig-lancaster.com)—and for a while I’ve badly needed a site that was both cutting-edge and timeless, something that would scale to any device, with useful content arranged in a manner that’s accessible and sensible. But that kind of site requires resources and expertise that have heretofore been beyond my scope.

When I was at last ready to make the leap, I knew who to talk to: Preston Stahley at Uncommon Design. Seriously. He rocks, and he’s largely responsible for the look and feel of this new place.

I invite you to take a swing through the site and see what it has to offer. Among the highlights:

A more dynamic front page: Three modules point visitors to a range of offerings, on the site and off. Look for these to change with regularity, heralding news, book promotions, event information and other good stuff.

A layered look at the most important thing I have to offer—my books: A general page gives the rundown on my work, with standalone pages that delve more deeply into each title (e.g., The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter).

An up-to-date event listing: If I’m making a public appearance, you can find it here. If you have an event you’d like me to attend, you can invite me here.

A rethinking of the old blog: The word blog denotes frequent updating, sometimes multiple times a day (as with my old friend Ed Kemmick at Last Best News). I write in this space infrequently at best, but when I have something to offer, I want you to be able to find it quickly. Hence, “updates.”

A media page you can actually use: There are photos here that are free to use (just credit the photographers, please), along with media kits for all the books (book summary, high-resolution cover image, critical praise, book club questions) and various bits of audio and video.

A virtual shingle: Part of my work time is spent helping other authors move toward their dreams, so if you need design or editing help with a publishing project, be sure to check out what I do. I offer competitive rates and a strong track record of work.

A first-rate store: If you want a signed paperback or an audiobook, you can get it direct from me. Domestic and international shipping are available.

A mailing list: I invite you to sign up (the form is at the bottom of this page). I promise I won’t spam you, and I’ll never sell your contact information. What I will do is send you low-volume updates about new releases and other important news as it develops.

The old website was a virtual stake in the ground. The plans are bigger and more interactive this time around. I hope you’ll be a regular visitor.

Thanks for dropping by …