James Rozoff's Blog, page 35

The Solutionist

 
Here’s an idea in its infancy, a mere babe in its swaddling clothes that could easily perish through neglect or disinterest. And yet the idea, though small as a mustard seed, has vast potential if people can find their way to it. It is not my idea, but already I think that just by my awareness of it, it has already grown somewhat beyond the sole ownership of its originator. See, that’s the thing; I don’t want to tell you what it is supposed to mean, rather I’d like to tell you what it means to me. And from there, you are welcome to share it with others as you see fit, allowing the basic idea to grow as people contribute to it.
Here is a link to a blog post I recently read: http://www.thesolutionist.us/?p=88
It goes beyond a simple question, actually. The author of that brief post is also the author of a book called The Solutionist, which can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/kindle/dp/B0076B3CII
The basic premise, if I may provide my own take on it, is that through working and communicating together we can make the world a better place by improving the processes we use in every area of our lives.
Again, it is a simple idea, but its simplicity does make it any less worthwhile. Most of us care about the world and the people in it and would like to do what we could to make it a better place. But most of us don’t do anything because we really don’t know where to start, or because we are really not sure which is the best way to go about it.
Well here is a place to start. As for the best way to go about it, let’s talk amongst ourselves and together fashion workable ways to solve the world’s problems. Which problems am I talking about? All of them, or at least whichever ones are important to you, whichever ones you think you can assist with. Here is a flag planted in the ground around which we can rally. Let’s start now and get the ball rolling. It can be done, we only need to have the belief required to begin the task. It is not a task any one of us can do alone, but it can be done when a determined group of people work together without personal agendas. It is not about one’s religion, politics, or philosophy, it is about changing the way we do things as a society in order to make the world a better place. It is doable, if we wish to do it. Let’s start today. The world's problems are not insurmountable, though it often can seem that way because we can not see above the ruts in which we are stuck.
As I said, this is my own personal take on the book and the idea of Joe Euclide. But I believe he would not claim the term “solutionist” to refer to himself alone, but to anyone desiring to find answers to the problems that face us today. And as I also said, this is but a single beginning, a rallying point for those interested in improving our world. Who knows what it could become? It has the potential to grow far beyond a simple blog, or a simple book. Where it goes is up to you, and to solutionists everywhere.
 

Amazon Sale of Perchance To Dream

Beginning November 26 at 8:00 a.m., my book, Perchance To Dream, will be on special promotion on Amazon for 88 hours. For the first 44 hours it will be available as an e-book for only 99 cents. For the next 44 hours it will still be discounted at $1.99. I urge you to check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Perchance-Dream-Amazing-Morse-Rozoff-ebook/dp/B00F7O5C20/ref=la_B00847RE9G_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385433299&sr=1-3

It's the story of a magician who comes to realize there's more to magic than pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

Art Or Entertainment?

 
 
In an online group of writers of which I am a part, I read a thread about whether writing should be thought of as art or entertainment. I won’t share too much what others had to say, but I thought I might share my thoughts on the matter.
Why do people read? Is it to pass the time, to get some sort of thrill from it that in the end means nothing? Lets expand the question a little: why does one live, is it merely to try to derive some sort of enjoyment out of it, pass the time in the most pleasant of ways while we pass between one stretch of non-existence and another? Or do we desire some kind of meaning from existence? When we get to the end of our lives, will we be happy to say that we got through it being amused more often than not?
You may say it is unfair to compare life to literature. I will argue the point later, but please bear with me until I do. Many people do indeed go through life searching for one distraction after another. While there seems to be something to be said for having fun for fun’s sake, it doesn’t seem to provide enough in the long run. By the time we reach a certain age, most of us are looking for something more enduring than transient thrills. We want our lives to have meaning, we want our presence on this world to last beyond the brief moment of life that we get. So we seek to create, to accomplish, make things that will outlive us. We give birth to and raise children, desiring to pass along not only our genetics but also our values and hopes. And as fond as we are of our comforts and our amusements, we quite easily sacrifice them when we have a goal, a hope, or a child whose best interests we wish to advance. Even when we haven’t made the sacrifices ourselves, each of us thrills to the story of someone who has endured hardships in the name of a goal. And we cry and take to our hearts those heroes who have made the sacrifice of their very lives in the pursuit of goals that were bigger than the individual’s interest of comfort and amusement. So I would have to say that to the vast majority of humans life does have meaning.
Let us now get back to literature. Must it too have meaning? Because that after all is what art is all about to me, that it contains something more than the elements of a story artfully crafted to amuse a child or adult. My assertion is that, like food, a written work must do more than appeal to the taste buds. We know enough to at least try to refrain from eating a Twinkie because we know that while it entertains us, it does little to enrich us. And of course it is much easier to deny a child that Twinkie, knowing that while it may taste good, it does not possess the necessary healthful aspects that food is supposed to provide. We know that to be healthy and face life with the maximum of vigor, we should be careful about what we put into our bodies. But too often we neglect the fact that the mind too must be fed by organic, healthy “food” in order for it to act at peak efficiency.
I know, it all sounds so very utilitarian. Of course amusement has a place in our diet—it is the spice of life. But when we start eating Twizzlers for breakfast, we have lost sight of the concept of the occasional indulgence. When we read certain types of literature—which we freely admit are not art—exclusively, we deny ourselves the healthy aspects that reading can actually give us.
But isn’t reading supposed to be escapist? After all, the mere act of reading takes us away from more productive things we could be doing. I would respond to this by saying that reading a work of art does not take us away from life but in fact allows us to see life more clearly. If a book is written with a desire to speak truth, then the reader has an opportunity to broaden their appreciation for life.
Lastly, if life should have meaning, then all things should have meaning. Again, this seems like a heavy burden to place upon us little mortals, who have so little time on this Earth. But all the more reason to embrace the life we have while it exists. All diversions from life and the reality of the life we are living are like little deaths. String enough of them together and it’s not really living at all. In a sense then, art is life, or at least a mirror that allows us to see life as it truly is. We might be more amused to look into the mirror and see ourselves as princesses and mighty warriors, but we are better served, and perhaps happier in the long term, if we dare to look at life unflinchingly. If literature, like life, should have meaning, then the book will continue to live on in the reader long after he has turned the last page.

Susan Boyle Meets Rocky Balboa

    
Buy my book! It's easy, just click on the cover that is situated to the right. And if you click on the cover of The Amazing Morse, it’s only 99 cents for the Kindle version.
Sorry, I’m not very good at marketing. I’m supposed to be engaging my audience, I’m supposed to talk about whatever’s hot at the moment. But really, all the work I do on Facebook, Blogger, about.me, etc. is just a complicated way to get you to buy my book. So do us both a favor and just buy it now.
It really is a good book you know. I put all my efforts into my actual writing rather than in marketing or blogging. At least take a look at it—Amazon will let you read a bit of it for free—and tell me what you think.
I’m not looking to get rich, but I dream of being able to write for a living. As it stands now, I work full-time in a factory. You may ask yourself what a factory worker knows about writing novels, but therein lies the appeal. It’s a classic Rocky Balboa or Susan Boyle story, the story of a person who fought against all odds to achieve a dream. This is even more unlikely, it’s like Susan Boyle fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world.
Like I said, I’m not very good at the marketing side of things. When I was in college, I started wondering what I was going to do with the English degree I was working on. I thought advertising was a natural fit, as it involved putting together convincing arguments. I even went so far as to do an internship with a television production company. It was there I learned such terms as “product placement” and “soft sell”. I really thought I could be good at that sort of thing. There was only one problem; it was evil. I didn’t want to use my hard-earned powers of persuasion to manipulate people’s minds and emotions, I wanted to show them the truth to the best of my ability. It was little different in my experiences with journalism. Again, it was advertisers before integrity. So I left the writing business for a time and found myself an honest job. But the 21st Century has offered opportunities to the independents in the form of self-publishing. I at last have a chance to put forth something I truly believe in. Give it a look. You have my word that I respect what I do too much to give you anything that would not be good for you. And when you someday see my book in someone else’s hands, you can tell that person how much you helped that writer get his break. Thanks.

A Message Written In The Past

I have piles of papers upon which I have managed to drag pens across, scribbling ideas that once seemed worth saving. They are like messages and momentos from the person I used to be. Once in a while I go through some of them in hopes of inspiration. What I normally find is something like this: nothing to help me write a story, but ideas I don’t feel like discarding. I suppose if I put it on my blog, I can justify throwing the paper away (except that there’s something written on the other side as well). Let me know what you think:
 
“Extended concentration seems impossible, as the ticking of the clock pervades my consciousness. One’s time is divided by infinite instants, none of them giving enough space for a productive action. A moment later a moment is gone forever, burnt like a limited supply of kindling in the face of an endless winter. Time flows one way—perhaps the only constant in this world—never, not once to turn back the clock even for a second. We can retrace our steps in all things but this, can return to any home but the past. Yet the past IS our home. In it is everything we have ever known. Every feeling of love or belonging lies there. We are travelers without destination, merely going forward, always departing the comfortable and the familiar. Eternal refugees.”

I'm Not Like Everybody Else

What I should be doing in my blog is involving readers by asking questions and looking for feedback. What I should be doing is referencing what is hot in my particular genre at the moment so that people are attracted to my posts and come to associate my brand with other, more popular brands.
I can’t do that. To begin with, I’m really not sure what my genre is. Sure, when publishing my books, I was forced to choose where my books would be listed (they’re listed under horror and suspense in some form or another). But I don’t really care to be lumped into some great mass where each book is a slight shade different from all of the others, where the reader’s expectations are paramount. Nor do I like the idea that those who like sci-fi, mystery, or any other genre would necessarily be uninterested in anything I have to write. I like to think that what I write, no matter where it falls in the lists, has something universal to say.
But that is not the world we live in. Today, we have so much information that we must categorize it in some fashion. We must summarize everything so that we can get the bigger picture without fussing too much over the details. We are each the CEOs of our own business, none of us having the time to dig too deeply into the essential stuff of existence.
We are missing something as the result of this mindset. Those simplifications that are made are not made by us but by larger forces. Corporations and marketing departments determine the best way to present product in order to maximize sales. In allowing ourselves to accept the categorizations, we slowly forget to question the basic assumptions that created those categories. We surrender our ability to think in order to get through life more quickly, to do and consume more.
For me to reach the maximum amount of people, I must brand myself in such a manner that appeals to people’s uncritical responses. They must subconsciously form decisions about my book that will lure them onwards. All potential barriers, such as complex ideas or unpopular opinions, must be swept away in order to increase my appeal.
Again, I can’t do that. I’d like to think it was a moral choice, but the older I get the more I realize that I don’t have much choice in the matter. There is just something deep down inside of me that rebels at the concept, some sense of individuality. I am an individual and I hope to speak to other individuals. Or at least, we all have some aspect to us that is unique or uniquely human, and I wish to connect that aspect of myself to others. I want to believe that in truly being myself I can better understand and appreciate others, rather than believing I have to limit myself in order to fit in on a superficial level with similarly stunted people. I wish to believe…no, I DO believe that we can all be individuals and yet fit in with the world at large. More than that, I believe that we MUST be ourselves before we can truly find our place in the world, that the less afraid we are to be ourselves the more we are able to relate in a positive manner to others.
I’m sure what I’m saying has already been said better by others. I’m sure I’ve read similar sentiments in Mad Magazine or Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society. Nevertheless, I add my voice to those many who have said it before. I know it sounds contradictory to proclaim my individuality by placing myself in the company of others, but the truth is often a paradox. To discover one’s true voice is to discover that it has a natural harmony with those of others, that not by conforming but by being oneself does one find one’s place in the world. But really, I think the Kinks said it best:  

End of the Road AnthologyAmidst the turbulence of my life...

End of the Road Anthology

Amidst the turbulence of my life, I see I have forgotten to mention that I have had two stories accepted in an anthology of stories based around the theme: End of the Road. There are some truly talented (and successful!) writers included in this anthology and I feel privileged to have my name in the same book next to theirs. While I would prefer to tell you about the other stories in the book, there are too many for me to mention each of them. Therefore I will tell you briefly about my contributions to the End of the Road Anthology.
As is my normal method of writing, I was initially stumped on what kind of story I wanted to contribute to such a themed anthology. This then led to my mind (virtually) exploding with different ideas of what the end of the road might mean. Since I tend to gravitate towards the extreme, I naturally took the theme to mean death. But since I also tend to reject the obvious, I wanted to portray death in a way that might not really mean the end. So I split the difference and wrote two shorter stories instead of one long one. In what probably amounts to commercial suicide, I wrote one story with strong religious coloring (Waiting In Line), and the other spattered in blood red (The Last Hours Of Brandon Kratz). I guess I’m not real good at the whole branding thing. Actually, I like to think my writing can take many different aspects of life and roll them together into something larger. Hopefully that is what I can achieve in my novels.
The best part of this anthology is that it is absolutely free to anyone with an e-reader device. There is also a paperback available, which has been priced at the absolute lowest possible price. If you want to pick up a free or greatly reduced price sampler please check us out at Amazon or any other book distributer: http://www.amazon.com/End-Road-Jacques-Antoine-ebook/dp/B00E6IUKAM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382321989&sr=8-1&keywords=end+of+the+road+anthology
Again, thanks to those others who were involved in this anthology and were gracious enough to include me as one of them.

Themes and Ideas in The Amazing Morse

 

I’ve wanted to have someone write a paper on my book, The Amazing Morse, but as that is not forthcoming, allow me to point out some of the themes and concepts which are in the novel.
 
The book begins with a man sitting in an office cubicle, reading a book of detention hardware as part of his work. He imagines the various pieces of hardware coming together and forming a prison cell around him, even as the cubicle walls form a sort of prison of their own, a prison of conformity to which he subjects himself.
There is a definite Hindu perspective to this. Man is cut off from the greater reality, each person separated from the greater universe. I jokingly refer to Sting’s The Soul Cages in my second book, and I think that is a fair comparison. But I think the idea of walls and square dividers work on many different levels. The intellect chops things up in to little pieces in order to be able to digest it. It places a grid over the real in order to treat the whole as individual pieces of data. But whatever the intellect experiences is an indirect experience. Our deepest truths are experienced directly, in a way words can never adequately explain. But the older we get, the more we become adults, the less most of us are able to perceive the world in a direct manner. We perceive things in an intellectual manner, see things for what they represent rather than what they are. We become many levels of abstraction away from the essential truth of things.
Dave Morse’s childhood dream was to be a magician. Because of his love of magic, and because of his desire to hold on to the dreams of his childhood, he is still able to see life through the eyes of a child. Therefore he does not fit in to the business world, a place where conformity of thought seems to rule the day. But while he is a magician, he is not an escape artist. A traumatic experience in his youth has left him with a fear of confinement. Thus he is a failure to himself. Unlike his hero, Houdini, he is unable to risk his life in daring escapes. He feels like a fraud, performing tricks and illusions rather than being a true performer. So while Dave has maintained the ideals of youth, he has failed to develop his adult capacity to live those ideals.
Dave sees his personal plight working itself all around him as well. While Dave sees work as a mass of square cubicles, he sees the neighborhood he grew up in as an endless row of almost identical houses, each only a minor variation from the other. Such an environment breeds conformity. Even the field that he and the other neighborhood kids used to play in has been built over and is now indistinguishable from all the other cubed and sliced up patches of sameness that is the suburbs. There is no place left to hide from the all-consuming conformity.
And yet there are some areas that seemed to resist the wave of prefab houses that are everywhere in the suburbs, places where older buildings already existed. In one such area, Dave encounters a psychic, who with a single touch does something strange and unexplainable to him.
He begins to have bad dreams, which push his ability to make sense of his life to the limit. He begins to realize what a tentative grasp on reality humans have. He cannot find intellectual answers to his problems. Again, the intellect is an ineffectual tool for understanding the world.
While Dave’s world unravels around him, he is pushed to make decisions which could ruin his life, or quite possibly, end the lives of others. He tries to be brave, but cannot bring himself to confront his fear of imprisonment. He settles on a compromise of his values, which almost leads to his undoing. But the seeds he sewed in his childhood have not been completely fruitless.
Dave learns that the world he lives in is far larger than any he has allowed himself to believe. He realizes most people live in a small world for fear of the larger, more dangerous one that exists. But in hiding from the dangers of the larger world, they also cut themselves off from the magic that exists. Most people live in a small world and so feel cut off from the real world. They perceive the stars through a telescope, see a world so vast that they feel like they are nothing. In living in a small world, they can pretend they are bigger than they are, but they are cutting themselves off from the truth, and the truth might just be beautiful. No matter how small a part we play, we are not outside observers. We are all part of that great big universe. If we live fully in the small space that is given us, we are playing our part in that vast and cosmic play. In truly being ourselves, rather than submitting ourselves to an artificial reality, we become one with everything.

R.I.P. Darrell K. Sweet

My bucket list is fairly long, but I have been fortunate to have crossed off a number of items. I have seen The Kinks play Apeman live, I have met a few Hall of Fame Rock and Rollers, and I have written novels and pieces of music. But I just realized that there is one thing that will never come to pass. In addition to writing a novel, another goal of mine was to have the art of Darrell K. Sweet on the cover of one of my books. But I just learned that he passed away in 2011.
I first became aware of his work when I saw Lord Fouls Bane in a local bookstore. The back cover blurb was interesting, but it was really the cover that pulled me in.
Two successive chapters in the Thomas Covenant series followed, and each time the artwork called out to me:
I would have bought them right away had I not been an eleven year old with barely enough money for a comic book.
As it was, I would gravitate to them each time I found myself in a bookstore. Eventually, I bought and read the series, which completely lived up to the artwork. Yet I couldn't help wishing he had done more than just one picture per book.

Evidently, it wasn't just me who appreciated his work, since his art has graced countless other books. For me, he has achieved THE trifecta, in that his artwork was chosen for the three greatest trilogies of all time, namely The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Lord of the Rings,
 and the original Foundation series:
Perhaps it is wrong to judge a book by its cover, but I can't help thinking that Darrell K. Sweet inspired an awful lot of people to open a book and explore when they might never have otherwise. Farewell, Mr. Sweet, you have left an impressive legacy, both in what you have drawn and what you have drawn others into.

The Road to "Perchance To Dream"

 
Perchance to Dream is my new novel, and I wanted to take a moment to explain how it all came about. First of all, it may be obvious to some that it comes from Hamlet's second soliloquy. It is a play on words, referring to the Dave Morse’s ability to see things in his dreams. The name was originally a working title for my first book which eventually was changed to The Amazing Morse. Perchance to Dream was never really meant to be a title for any book, but it happened to hang around for a long time just out of convenience. But when I had finished with The Amazing Morse, I couldn’t help the feeling that I had really only begun to flesh out ideas with the novel. Not ideas of characters or plot, but ideas about how people, myself included, perceive the world. I wanted to explore these ideas further, and these characters I created for the first book were eager to investigate their universe more fully as well.
And so began my next novel. And the title, Perchance to Dream, just seemed to fit. It dealt with the subject of death, of man’s attempt to escape it.
Which then leads to the cover image. I wanted to show the elements of escape artistry, thus the chained coffin. I wanted the cover, like the last one, to look like an old-time magic poster. Magic has always made use of the macabre, so a coffin would fit right in with the concept, as would a spirit rising from it. But beyond making a good magician’s poster, I wanted it to say something about man’s attempts to explain death, to triumph over it. Originally, the spirit rising from the coffin was inspired by this album cover: 
I wanted to show man's ability to transcend over his earthly condition. It started well:

 But somehow it got lost in the final version:
So we went with scary instead, which worked out well:

Let me give a quick shout out to the people who took my ideas for a cover and made them a reality. First of all thanks to Nate Adams who is perhaps too willing to trust my judgment on matters and tirelessly tries to bring them to life. His blog can be found here: http://nates-art.blogspot.com/
Also thanks to Suzie O'Connell for her graphic work that seems to come effortlessly and adds things I didn't even know I needed. You can find her website here: http://www.indieproud.com/
I feel as if I expanded upon the concepts that were begun in The Amazing Morse, but I also think there’s some grand vision that I want to achieve with the series. There are some deep religious ideas that can play themselves out against the background of a magician/escape artist, his assistant, and the people they encounter. They exist in a word far beyond their abilities to understand, and need to find their own places in the universe. There is nothing supernatural about that, but it can be magical.
You can find my new novel, available for Kindle, here: http://www.amazon.com/Perchance-Dream-Amazing-Morse-ebook/dp/B00F7O5C20/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379297712&sr=1-3
More formats will be available soon.