John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 2

Unblocked

The curtains of confusion are gone. Much (though certainly not all) of the stress that had been inhibiting my creativity has vanished.

I am terribly relieved.

I can tell I’m feeling better, because my productivity has surged. I’ve gone from writing maybe 1000 words a day, to 2500-3000. I’m not having to fight to make the thoughts come or the plot develop. It’s happening naturally.

Last week was a true marker. My editor sent The Armageddon Clock back to me for changes. So I wrote 2500-3000 words of the next book in “The Usurpers Saga” in the early morning, and then edited 10 chapters of TAC over the course of the day. It was easily the most productive week, I’ve had in a long time.

My goal for this week is another five chapters of the new book, and a rewrite of TAC.

I’m sure I won’t be able to maintain this pace for long. Life will get in the way, and I’ll get some freelance gigs that’ll eat into my production time.

But the problem of stress-induced writer’s block appears to have cleared. I feel like a writer again. I feel like myself again.

I’m relieved. And I’m joyful.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: writer's block, writing

Mars-gazing

If you’ve been paying attention to your Facebook feed recently, you probably know Mars is in opposition right now, meaning Earth is directly between the Red Planet and the sun. Additionally, it’s very close to Earth right now. In fact, next Tuesday it’ll be the closest it’s been since 2005.

All that means Mars is really bright in the night sky. As long as there isn’t a lot of cloud cover, you can look up and see it with the naked eye.

So Sunday night, on a pop cultural whim, I went out into the cool, spring air and looked up.

Sure enough, there it was — a big, red dot in the darkness to the right of the moon. I had to stare at for a few seconds to make sure it wasn’t a plane. We live close to the airport, and little, red, blinking lights move over our house all the time.

But no, this one was staying put. It was definitely Mars.

I was suddenly overcome with a sense of wonder. I’ve seen planets before. I’ve spotted Venus based on news reports of where to look in relation to the moon. And when I was in college, I got to look at Jupiter through the telescope during astronomy class.

But the thing with Mars is that it’s so obviously another planet. You look up and everything is white dots on a black field. Except for Mars. Mars is red. It’s different. And I could see it without looking through a telescope like when I observed Jupiter.

I’ve never been much of a stargazer. I like seeing rare astronomical events, but I don’t go out just to look up and see what there is.

But I felt compelled to look at Mars, because how often do you get to see something like that?

And that was what struck me. I stopped my life long enough to look at something cool. It was chilly and I was underdressed, but I went outside anyway. Because I wanted to say I’d done it. Because I wanted to see it.

Because my life was pretty chaotic that day (and has been for awhile), and I just wanted to take a moment to observe how really amazing the universe is.

So if you haven’t done so yet, go out tonight and have a look at Mars. It’s off to the right of the moon. It’s kind of cool.

Give yourself a moment to appreciate the wonder of a strange and beautiful universe. You’ll be glad you did.

Filed under: Current Events Tagged: Mars

Show Me Your Socks

The Internet is home to pretty much everything — cute cat videos, conspiracy theories (complete with . . . “evidence”), and, uh, fetishes.

I’ve become interested in something a little more innocent — socks.

As I wrote in this space a few weeks ago, I’ve become kind of sock-obsessed. I don’t really know how it began, but it’s a thing for me now.

So much so that I’ve decided the Internet is the perfect place for it. Tuesday, I started tweeting pictures of my socks for the days. I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but it’s a lot more innocuous than a lot of stuff I’ve seen tweeted.

And the thing about the Internet in general and social media in particular is they allow you to have others join in the fun of obsessing over something relatively inconsequential.  So I’m inviting others to the party.

Tweet your socks at me. Take a picture of your feet in your socks. (Please, just sock-wearing feet, especially if socks are all you have on.) Tweet it at @JohnRPhythyonJr and use the hashtag, #ShowMeYourSocks.

In addition to tweeting my own socks, I’ll retweet the ones I think look pretty cool.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I suppose it’ll depend on what develops and whether I create an Internet socks following. Perhaps this will be the last you ever read of it.

But for the time being, show me your socks. Let’s see who’s got the funkiest, spiffiest, most outlandish socks on the web.

It’s time for socks to get the attention they deserve.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: #ShowMeYourSocks, socks

Something New

I’m trying something new.

My current work-in-progress, the third book in “The Usurpers Saga,” is told through a series of flashbacks. That’s not especially new in and of itself. (Francis Ford Coppola perfected it in The Godfather, Part II.) I’m using a well-worn tactic to explain the motivations of my two main characters, fill in the history of my world, and explain how they come to the places and decisions they do at the novel’s climax.

How I’m writing it is new (to me,

anyway). Rather than writing those flashback sequences as they occur in the sequence of the narrative, I writing them whole cloth as separate short stories.

For one thing, they’re a little too long to just fit neatly into the chapters where they go. They run about 3000 words — long enough that I risk losing the main thread of the story if I just insert them as-is. I intend to break them up into 1000-1500-word chunks and spread them around the novel.

But writing them that way threatens to break the flow of those mini-stories. I might miss some important connective or causal material.

So I’m writing this novel in a way I’ve never done before. When it is time for a flashback sequence, I type “[INSERT FLASHBACK]” into the manuscript and keep going. At another writing session, I sit down and write out that whole mini-narrative.

Those views into the past have been fun. Many of them concern the adventures of Zod and Gothemus from their younger days. Some of them were hinted at in The Sword and the Sorcerer, and I’m getting the opportunity to flesh out my world’s history in the form of quasi-fables.

Of course, all that’s forcing me to keep a pretty good map of where I’m going. With a complex, multi-part narrative, it’s easy to lose track of where something should go and to wander off-course. It’s entirely possible some parts of these historical pieces will end up getting cut.

But even if that happens, they’ll still inform my understanding of the world I’m writing in and the motivations of the characters.

Anyway, this is kind of a new process for me, and while it’s exciting, it’s also daunting.

Eventually, I’ll have to put all the pieces together in the right order.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: #amwriting, writing

Science Fiction?

Growing up in the 1970’s and ’80’s meant being exposed to a lot of cutting edge science fiction. Star Trek was in syndicated reruns on television, superheroes were all over pop culture, and Star Wars set box office records and changed the way films were made and marketed.

The ’70’s were a treasure trove of visions of a strange tomorrow. Whether it was a starving, overpopulated New York in Soylent Green, mandatory euthanasia in Logan’s Run, or a settlement on the moon in Space: 1999.

Yesterday, I found myself starring in one of these weird, futuristic movies. I was the main character in a drama where scientific advances made the world look unfamiliar.

I had an MRI.

My shoulder hasn’t improved after last year’s physical therapy, and my doctor thought it was time to look inside for a possible rotator cuff tear.

I had an MRI on my knee years ago. It wasn’t that big a thing. Since the knee is on the lower quarter of my body, I was only put into this giant machine from 2001: A Space Odyssey up to my waist. It felt like getting an x-ray.

But the shoulder is near the top of the body. For them to scan it, I would have to be put in head-first all the way to my lower torso. I would be in the machine.

Most of those sci-fi films of the ’70’s had very sterile sets. Everything was white and clean. There were almost no sharp edges; almost everything was curved.

And it was all very well lit. We might be in a frightening dystopia run by evil, corporate overlords, but there was plenty of light.

The room in which my procedure took place looked exactly like these sets. Indeed, the machine itself was large and rounded, with no sharp edges. And it was white.

It reminded me of the cryogenic sleep pods from Alien and 2001. The open space with the machine sitting in the middle made me think of the hospital in The Black Hole.

I was laid down on a table. My arm and shoulder were largely immobilized. (You have to lie perfectly still during an MRI — something I’m not very good at.)

Two techs slid me into the machine, which was a little weird — I’d have expected it to just glide on its own, or at the least a couple of robots would handle the task of getting me into the device.

The other thing about an MRI is that it is very loud. So they gave me headphones with my choice of music to block out the noise. I selected Broadway show tunes, because I was worried if I picked Rock ‘n’ Roll, country, or pop, the infectious beats would prevent my lying still.

So just before the two med-techs-who-should-have-been-robots pushed me in, the guy running the test clapped a pair of headphones on my and switched on the music.

The first song was “One Day More” from Les Miserables. It’s a fugue. So I was completely encased in a well-lit, white, curved machine while at least four different people were singing different lyrics and melodies that all fit together through the genius of music.

Then the science fiction sounds started. Beeps and zaps and clangs and buzzes. It was so loud I could barely hear the music.

I was reminded of Edward G. Robinson having his last meal in Soylent Green, where they let him eat real food and showed him a movie of how the Earth used to be with wide open spaces and natural beauty while they poisoned him.

I kept expecting lasers to drill into my mind like they did with Yvette Mimieux in The Black Hole.

Or perhaps, I would become a pod-person like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

If any of that happened, though, I didn’t notice it. The test went on for about half an hour. I listened to Les Miserables, and Phantom of the Opera, and Chicago, unable to make out the words over the din of the scanning.

Then they pulled me out and sent me home without any ceremony. The results are supposed to be available today.

But they’re lying. I know it. I’ve seen all those sci-fi movies.

After a full-body scan, cataloging my DNA, they’ll be creating an unstoppable army of Johns to conduct their secret war.

They’ll be coming for me soon.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: 1970s, MRI, sci-fi, science fiction

Stress Hampers Creativity

You’ve no doubt been told stress is bad for the body. It can cause everything from simple headaches to heart attacks to gingivitis.

It’s also bad for the mind.

Maybe that seems obvious. After all, stress is a mental thing. It may be caused by external stimuli, but the pressure is exerted in the brain. People under stress experience — whether they realize it or not — diminished cognitive function.

And that’s a bad thing for artists. Art, regardless of medium comes from inside. It’s expressed physically — whether by words, paints, performance, etc. — but it germinates in the mind.

The author imagines the story. The painter sees the picture in his or her mind’s eye before transferring it to canvas. The dancer hears the music, internalizes it, and then expresses it physically.

The brain has to be working for that function. When it becomes over-worried, the doors into the artistic soul — that special place inside all artists have but don’t truly understand — closes. No matter how you try, you just can’t get back in.

Making art requires peace, quiescence, relaxation.

A couple weeks ago, I was recalled to Kansas on an emergency. I brought my computer with me. I often find having work as a distraction is helpful from the stress of the situation, and there is usually a lot of downtime where you sit around with nothing to do.

So I figured I’d work on the new novel in the hours I had to sit around and wait for something to happen. I opened the computer, cracked my knuckles, and prepared to lose myself in the world of The Usurpers Saga.

Nothing happened.

I couldn’t write. I couldn’t think where to begin. I had notes to guide me, but I couldn’t figure out what was supposed to happen next. Hell, I couldn’t figure out what was supposed to happen first. I couldn’t keep track of what was happening in the chapter I was supposed to be writing. For that matter, I wasn’t sure what was supposed to be happening  in the whole novel!

I very rarely get writer’s block. I don’t believe in it. Writer’s block is defeated by writing your way through it.

But I couldn’t come up with the first word to type. I was like Billy Crystal in Throw Momma from the Train. I knew the night was sultry, but I didn’t know that was the word I needed.

The maddening part of the stress I’ve been under is that I’m really excited about this book. I look forward to writing it, to telling this particular story and exploring the themes in it.

But stress.

Stress keeps me away from the computer. Stress keeps me from writing when I’m at the computer.

It’s bad for the mind. It’s bad for the artistic soul.

I’m working on reducing my stress levels. I’ve managed to eliminate a couple of the stressors in my life. I’m planning to write again today. Because the only way to defeat writer’s block is to write through it.

But stress. It’s my number-one enemy right now.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: stress, writing

Indescribable

I’ve been struggling for almost a week to process the death of Prince and describe what he meant to me.

He’s not the first musician of note to die this year, of course. David Bowie’s sudden defeat at the hands of cancer was shocking and a huge loss.

But it didn’t affect me personally. I liked David Bowie — how could you not? The man was brilliant. But I was never into Bowie.

I was into The Eagles. Despite coming of age in the 1980’s, long after The Eagles broke up, I had both their Greatest Hits albums and played them religiously.

But I was much more of a Don Henley guy than Glenn Frey. Henley’s vocals and solo music spoke to me much more than Frey’s. So the death of Frey wasn’t a devastating blow to me either.

But Prince is different.

I was just hitting high school when “Little Red Corvette” broke through. Something about the sound of that song drew me in. The words intrigued. The follow-up, “1999,” became one of the major anthems of my generation (and naturally resurfaced in the lead-up to Y2K).

But it was Prince’s 1984 motion picture, Purple Rain, that really hit me. I identified with Prince on some visceral level I couldn’t explain. I was not a multiracial rock genius from Minneapolis. I didn’t have the kind of skill and virtuosity Prince displayed in virtually every song he recorded.

But I was a skinny kid with a deep love of just about every kind of music, and I couldn’t seem to find people who really got me.

The music of Purple Rain got under my skin, spoke to my heart. The catchy, dance-inspiring sound of “Let’s Go Crazy” made me want to celebrate being alive. The tragic regret of “When Doves Cry” spoke to my developing adolescent consciousness. I longed for someone I could sing “Take Me with U” to. The brazenness of “Darling Nikki” popped my eyes and made me wish I had Prince’s unap0logetic sexual confidence.

Thirty-two years later, I can still only partially describe how Purple Rain made me feel. But when I was learning to play guitar, I told my teacher I wanted to be able to play like Prince at the end of “Let’s Go Crazy.” And after my mother watched the film with a jaundiced eye, I declared it was brilliant over her objections.

Prince was such a part of my youth and young adulthood — I heard “Kiss” for the first time at my Senior Ball, and “Raspberry Beret” practically forced me to dance whenever it was on — that I failed at the time to notice how much I loved his music. It was ubiquitous. Someone always had Prince on, and I enjoyed everything I heard.

But I think the thing that stayed with me the most was his fierce individualism. No one was was like Prince — not musically, not personally, not culturally. He was gloriously weird, bombastically unusual. He did things no one understood and declared them the height of cool.

And because it was so difficult to define him, to fully grasp what he was up to, it was hard to argue with his thesis. It was cool. It was brilliant. And it was impossible to imitate.

I’m a writer, a wordsmith. Describing scenes, characters, and emotions is what I do for a living. But thirty-four years after I first heard his music, five days after his death, I struggle to describe Prince, his music, and his impact on both pop culture and me. He is, if you will, indescribable.

So I grieve for his death and celebrate the life and the music he gave to us. Only in my wildest dreams will I ever make the kind of contributions to art and culture as he did. And I’ll never be as brilliant.

Rest in peace, Prince. I can’t describe you or what you meant. But your music and charisma mattered — to me and to the world.

If you’ll forgive me, this is what it sounds like when doves cry.

Filed under: Current Events Tagged: Let's Go Crazy, pop culture, Prince, Purple Rain

Back at It Again

I’m at it again.

This week, I began a new novel. The Armageddon Clock is currently with the editor, and I like to stack projects so I’m not wasting productive time.

So with my creative plate momentarily clear, I’ve begun writing the third book in The Usurpers Saga.

Zod the Fearless (Calibot’s uncle from The Sword and the Sorcerer) receives a proposition from Lord Kremdor (the puppet master, who aided Lord Vicia’s rise to power in A Contest of Succession). He’ll help Zod steal the throne of Sothernia in exchange for Zod agreeing to align himself with Kremdor. Depressed and dissatisfied with life after his brother’s betrayal, Zod agrees.

The plan involves a quest across the ocean to the Dread Islands to retrieve a powerful artifact capable of summoning and controlling the legendary sea monster, the Kraken. Zod receives assistance from Kremdor’s agent, a changeling named T’Lenn Dartha, and from a thief he rescues from execution.

Getting started is harder than it sounds, though. I was exhausted from all the work I put in last week for SPACE, and I’ve had a lot of follow-up tasks that have been consuming my attention since the show ended.

But I managed to knock out 500 words on Monday and another 500 on Tuesday. I’ve got the first chapter pretty well sorted out. Time to move onto the next.

This is the same thing that happens every time. The start is slow. I have to get my mind framed for the story. After I’ve forced myself to sit down and write the first few chapters, the floodgates open. The story starts to consume me, and it becomes easy. It’ll flow out of my fingers faster than I can follow.

But for the moment, I’m in the start/stop/force-myself-to-do-it phase.

That’s okay. I’ll get past that. It’s nice to be writing again.

 

Filed under: Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, writing

SPACE-d Out

This past weekend, I exhibited at the Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo (SPACE) in Columbus, Ohio. It’s a small show, and as the name implies, it’s geared largely to the alt-comics crowd.

However, since I write fantasy literature, I thought there might be some crossover with the audiences, and, since the booths were only $75, I decided it was a low-risk proposition to exhibit and see if I could find some new readers.

Below are my takeaways from my first show in eight years and my first as a novelist.

Surprise, Surprise

The most frequent question I got over the weekend was, “You wrote all of these?”

I had six books on the table — the three Modern Fairy Tales, Magic & Monsters, and the two books in The Usurpers Saga. I didn’t bring the Wolf Dasher books, because I’m in the middle of a cover overhaul that isn’t finished yet, and I didn’t bring Legend in my own Mind, because I didn’t think it would appeal to the audience at the show.

People seemed surprised that I had written that many full-length books and had them for sale.

The second-most frequent question I got was, “Wait, you’re a novelist? What are you doing at a comics show?”

When I explained my strategy, most people got it. And it prompted them to look through my books. I had free bookmarks on the table, and many people took at least one after talking to me.

Patience is a Virtue

When you’re in business for yourself, it is hard sometimes to wait for success to come. But selling is not always an activity that yields immediate results.

I only sold three books on the show’s first day. I spent most of my time talking to people about my writing and the kinds of things they would find inside the covers. Many walked away without making a purchase. Many examined my merchandise, thought they might like it, but decided to roam the floor to see everything before opening their wallets.

I went into Sunday just hoping to break even on the price of the table. Because I viewed the whole exercise as a marketing expense, I expected to take a loss on the show, but it was looking like it might a more significant one than I’d hoped.

But things turned around the next day. I ran package deals on The Usurpers Saga and the Modern Fairy Tales, and on Sunday, people bit. I sold two of each package, plus a number of other sales, and raked in $175 the second day alone — enough to cover the cost of the booth and the ad I’d purchased. Some of those sales were comebacks from people who had visited me before and decided to pull the trigger the second or third time around.

On a related note, my price point required patience as well. Most booths were selling black-and-white comics printed on their home printer, or they were selling art. The average price of an item at other booths was about $5. I sold my novellas for $10 and my novels for $15. So there may have been some price resistance from shoppers.

However, when I made sales, they added up. I basically set myself up for fewer total sales but an equitable amount of cash. If I hadn’t bought the ad (more on that below), the show would have been much more profitable for me.

Predictable Results

As I expected, Little Red Riding Hoodie was my best seller. It appeals to a broad base of people, and the title is clever enough to get people to pick it up and read the back cover copy. Not only did it sell stronger than the other books, it was also the most examined.

Magic & Monsters did well too. I should have been able to predict that, but I hadn’t. It’s a small volume for only for $10, and there are five stories in it. So it’s a low-risk investment for someone unfamiliar with my work.

Mistakes

The biggest mistake was buying an ad. I purchased the inside front cover of the program, because it was available at a late date, and I thought it would increase my visibility, helping bring people to the table of a new exhibitor who was not quite the right fit for the audience.

In reality, the show was small enough that visitors got around to every table multiple times. No one mentioned the ad to me. I’m pretty well convinced all it did was cut into my profits.

It also may have been a mistake not to bring the Dasher books. I ran a contest wherein signing up for my mailing list would enter a person into a chance to win the whole line, and many people were intrigued by the “James Bond meets Game of Thrones” tagline. I could probably have sold some Dasher books if I’d had them available.

Conclusions

The mistake of buying an ad notwithstanding, SPACE was totally worth it. I got a bunch of signups for my mailing list, I gave away bookmarks with my website and links to books on them, and I made decent sales to offset most of the cost of attending.

I’m not really factoring in the inventory cost of getting the books printed nor the investment of display materials, because I can sell/use them at other shows. However, those costs can’t be totally ignored, and if I roll them all into this show, that makes the loss on it pretty significant.

However, I engaged with a lot of people, and I view the whole thing as an opportunity to get my brand and my words in front of new readers. I will definitely attend SPACE again next year, and I am looking for other shows I can exhibit at that have moderate investments.

I plan for this to be the first of many shows for me as I continue to develop my business model.

 

Filed under: e-Publishing

Exhibiting in SPACE

For the first time in eight years, I’ll be exhibiting at a consumer show. For the first time in twelve years, I’ll be selling my own material.

I’m kind of excited.

This weekend, I’ll have a booth at SPACE (Small Press Alternate Comic Expo) in Columbus, Ohio.

This used to be a regular thing for me. When I was publishing hobby games, I did tw0 to four consumer shows a year, plus a trade show aimed at retailers. But, despite this being my fifth year as an independent author, this is the first show I’ll be attending.

Partly, it’s been a question of it being worth it. I’ve only recently put together a diversified enough print inventory that I felt I could put enough wares on the table. If I’d shown up with only one or two books, it wouldn’t have made much of an impression, and I’d have struggled to make back the price of the booth.

This weekend, I’ll have the two novels in “The Usurpers Saga,” three Modern Fairy Tales, and my short story collection, Magic & Monsters. I’ll have some package deals to encourage multiple purchases.

I won’t be featuring the Wolf Dasher books this weekend, because I’m the middle of a cover redux, and I don’t have consistent branding for them. Which is unfortunate, because that’s another five novels I could have put on the table. But I will be using them as a carrot to drive mailing list signup. You already get a free copy of Red Dragon Five with a mailing list subscription, but I’ll offer the whole line (including the forthcoming The Armageddon Clock) to the winner of a drawing.

In fact, I’ll offer the same deal here. Send me an email at john at john phythyon dot com before midnight on Sunday, saying you’d like to be subscribed, and I’ll add you and enter you in a drawing for the full line of Dasher eBooks.

I’ll also be live-tweeting the show as I’m able (follow me at @JohnRPhythyonJr) and posting updates to my Facebook page. And I’ll post a wrap up here next week. Stay tuned!

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: John Phythyon, Small Press Alternate Comics Expo, SPACE