Sam Wiebe's Blog, page 9

Yes.

The goal of any artist should be to get to where no one can fuck with you. I relearned this lesson from pro wrestling.

Bear with me.

For most people, wrestling is synonymous with Hulk Hogan. A competent wrestler with the size, physique and charisma of a star, Hogan was always going to be a success. But Hogan became THE success--he dominated the World Wrestling Federation throughout the 1980s, rarely lost (and almost never lost cleanly), and never strayed far from the heavyweight championship title. Hogan's success granted him the ability to write his ticket throughout his declining years, the nineties and oughts and early teens: as he got older and less impressive in the ring, he could choose if, when, and how he lost matches.

Hogan is a great businessman and an undeniable icon. But my point is, he had help getting there.

Bryan Danielson is the current star of World Wrestling Entertainment. He's 5'6" (and billed at 5'8"), bearded, and quite probably the greatest technical wrestler in the world right now. An incredibly popular wrestler on the independent scene, when he came to WWE his in-ring name was changed to Daniel Bryan. He started at the bottom, on a WWE reality show, where he was frequently insulted and belittled by the commentators as a 'nerd,' 'internet darling,' and someone who lacked the 'it' factor. He lost almost every match, and was voted off the show. He was later fired for pretending to strangle an announcer in 'too realistic' a fashion.

After a successful return to the independents and Japan, Bryan reappeared in WWE. His Wrestlemania debut was cut from the card and never aired. The next year at Wrestlemania, he lost in 18 seconds.

Last year at Summerslam, Bryan challenged WWE champ and Hogan heir apparent John Cena. He won--only to lost to the returning Randy Orton three minutes later. For the next six months, Bryan would be cheated and screwed out of the belt, shuffled out of the title picture into a tag team, brainwashed by hillbilly cultists (wrestling, remember?), and worst, completely left out of the Royal Rumble, the prestigious battle royale that determines who headlines Wrestlemania 30. That honor went to Batista, a wrestler-cum-MMA fighter-cum-actor, who hadn't wrestled in four years, and appeared winded after wrestling only a few minutes.

But the thing is, Bryan has become popular in spite of the company--fans appreciate his talent and won't accept anything less than Bryan in the main event of the biggest show of the year. His 'Yes' chants are the loudest crowd response since the days of Stone Cold Steve Austin. Bryan is so popular, so 'over,' that the company has been forced to create a stipulation allowing him entry into the main even of Wrestlemania. We can argue about how much of this is scripted and how much is 'real,'  but the point is, the fans chose Bryan.

When you can win by losing, my friend, that's one definition of success.

Daniel Bryan doesn't look like a Wrestling Superstar. He doesn't act or talk like one. But he wrestles as well as anyone has ever wrestled, and the fan respect he's earned has insulated him. If WWE freed him, he would succeed elsewhere--maybe not at Hogan levels, but how great is it that he doesn't need to protect himself the way Hogan does?

One last point, and then I swear, back to writing-related posts. Promise.

At the Monday Night Raw in Tacoma, which my friend Mike and I attended, the show ended with the ring crammed full of Wrestling legends of yesteryear. Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley, CM Punk--and Bryan. The point of the exercise was to hype the unification match between John Cena and Randy Orton.

On live television, the crowd cheered Bryan's name and catchphrase for two straight minutes. 

 

 

Book Trailer

The book trailer for LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS is here! Masterfully photographed and edited by Mel Yap, featuring music by East Vanguard, the one-minute trailer captures the atmosphere of the novel. It's not too early to pre-order your copy!

Click to watch on Youtube or Vimeo, and embedded below. 

Doin' It to Death

The single funniest joke I've ever heard is from the late Patrice O'Neal, talking about his struggles with diabetes and obesity: "I have to lose weight now to stay alive...and that's just not enough motivation..."

I don't do drugs anymore, I drink in moderation, I smoke the very occasional cigarette, I don't play excessive amounts of video games, and the most I gamble is a few dollars on Gold Rush tickets once in a blue moon. But I'm far, far overweight, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. To be so unhealthy is frustrating and terrifying. It's cost me a lot of social opportunities. It also pisses me off--someone as smart as I am should be above this shit.

Last year was extremely successful for weight loss--the first seven months, anyway. I managed to drop about 10% of my body weight. As I write this, I am ten pounds down from my starting weight, which means I've gained most of that back. It's a miserable, redundant, perplexing condition.

I'm good at identifying patterns of behavior, especially relating to self-deception or self-sabotage. I've seen people close to me unable to get off the hamster wheel of minor success--overthinking--self-defeat--social withdrawal. It irks me that a person can't intellectualize their way out of addictions or bad habits. As the saying goes, you can't think your way to right action, only act your way to right thinking.

One major roadblock is that every meaningful social interaction is based around food, beer, or sedentary activity. Whether it's dinner with parents, after-work beers with coworkers, or a sixpack and a movie with friends, each associates camaraderie and happiness with the intake of calories. Add to that stress-eating, celebration-eating, depression-eating...

So I'm starting back at square one. Yesterday I threw out all the junk food in the house, got two good walks in, and managed to weigh in without doing something drastic, like smash my head into a wall for thirty minutes. Today the calorie tracking starts.

Sorry this doesn't have anything to do with writing, other than weight loss and healthy eating allow a person to not die and therefore get more writing done. Would you believe that's actually a significant motivation right now?

The Only True Currency In this Bankrupt World

Some stray thoughts:

1. I've been on Twitter for a week now, and I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but...I don't get it. Trying to read the Twitter feed is like reading the binary code from the Matrix. Trying to come up with clever 140-word posts is drudgery. I like verbiage. I like depth. Twitter is sort of a surface-level tool. But I'm determined to give it a bit more time. I'm much more pleased with my Facebook page. I wish Facebook wasn't trying to squeeze money out of the page system, which seems needlessly petty for a billion-dollar company.

2. Philip Seymour Hoffman's death really bummed me out, and I'm not usually affected by celebrity stuff. He was a brilliant actor who more often than not chose interesting roles. From Almost Famous and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to Mission Impossible, he brought his A-game to everything. The films he did with Paul Thomas Anderson, starting with Sidney/Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and leading up to the Master, are some of the most human performances captured. 'Human' is a strange word, because as much of a star as he was, and even going back to Scent of a Woman you could tell he was going somewhere, he always looked like one of us. In fact, for my second novel, I had Hoffman in mind when I visualized the protagonist. Someone with a certain shabby charisma, a slovenly dignity that would fit in in the seediest bars or the swankiest hotel lounges. You could swill beer with that guy, trade dirty jokes, gripe. Yeah, I miss him.

3. From eulogy to self-promotion: my story "Snow Fall" will appear in the April issue of Yellow Mama, an online crime fiction site. The Yellow Mama is the nickname for Alabama's electric chair. "Snow Fall" is about a woman who's thrown out of a plane. Then things start to go wrong. I'm proud of that story, and I'm glad it's found a home.

4. True Detective is a good show. I'm pretty well-versed in both crime fiction and the Southern Gothic, so it doesn't seem as revolutionary to me as to some people, but I've enjoyed every episode. Who knew Matthew McConaughey had such depth? His mid-career renaissance has been fascinating. I'd recommend Mud, which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

5. On the other end of the television spectrum, Sherlock's third season was disappointing. Coming up with puzzling crimes, and idiosyncratic yet satisfying paths of deduction, is really hard. Really, really hard. Try it sometime. So I sympathize with their decision to take the show in a more relationship-centered direction, but...well, it's something like introducing a serial sex killer into Seinfeld or the Office. Sad to waste the amazing chemistry between Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

6. It's been an astonishingly strange few weeks for pro wrestling fans. At the Royal Rumble, the crowd's love of bearded Washingtonian Daniel Bryan was so vociferous, their dislike at his burial by the creative team so strong, that they booed the ending to the pay-per-view. The following Monday, CM Punk walked off the job. Punk and Bryan are the two best wrestlers on the roster, and the two guys who make all the house shows. Both showed up in Vancouver last year, and Vancouver's a relatively small market. To lose or under-utilize those two is strange, and the fans recognize that, and I hope the WWE does, too. There's no match I'd rather see at Wrestlemania than a Punk-Bryan classic for the championship.

7. National Theatre Live simulcasts British stage productions in movie theaters. Last week I saw Coriolanus with Tom Hiddleston and Mark Gatiss. It was a good show, and a weird crowd--septuagenarians out to Experience High Culture, and teeny-boppers interested in seeing Hiddleston in a semi-translucent robe. 

8. I'll end with a photo I nicked off the Dundurn website: the ARCs (advance reader copies) of LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS arrived at the publisher's offices this week. I think my response was something dignified and worldly, along the lines of, "Holy shit." I still find this whole thing a puzzling, beautiful experience. 

Follow Me On Facebook and Twitter

Today I have made a concerted effort to increase my social media presence. I joined Twitter, I joined Google Plus, and in a moment I'm going to make myself an author page on Facebook. I don't do this lightly; this should be seen as a statement of exactly how good I think LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS is. Someone once said books are like children, and you end up doing a lot of stupid things for your children.

Not that I'm anti-social media; I'm just antisocial. But that ends today. If I were you, I'd follow me on Twitter right now. Then in five years, when I'm either a raging success or a horrible burned-out shell of a man, you can tell people, "I remember that guy, I was into him way before he was a big deal."


The other day I was in Nanaimo to celebrate my friends Andrew and Lauren's birthdays. We watched Citizen Kane, along with their friends and their friends' kids. I love Orson Welles and I can watch Kane any day. That said, it's not really a children's movie. It was an odd experience, but I think they got something out of it. Usually Andrew and I just watch Leprechaun movies or Batman cartoons.

Other news: I joined the Crime Writers of Canada. I have my friend Mel working on a promotional video for Last of the Independents. My brother Josh and I will be blogging about noir soon. Andrew is still plugging away at The Falls, weather permitting. Lots of exciting developments for 2014. Stay tuned.

Bringing Your Produce to Market

The editing for LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS is finished. I was nervous as hell going in, but thanks to some great suggestions (and a little hand-holding) by my wonderful editor Laura Harris, the book is good to go.

Now it's time to relax and go back to the comforting terror of the blank page.

On Monday I'm meeting with some great local crime writers like Robin Spano and E.R. Brown. I hope to pick their brains on ways to promote. What's effective, what's do-able, and what's not worth the hassle.

Of all the parts of writing, it's the marketing and promotion I'm least comfortable with. And I'm not someone with a fear of public speaking. I teach, and I've done readings that have gone well. But it feels unnatural. When I saw Ian Rankin, he flat-out refused to read from his books. I understand that.

Think of a great book written in the first-person, like one of Chandler's books, or True Grit by Charles Portis. The narrator's voice is one of the great selling points of those books. When we read those books, through the miracle of art, we don't just identify with the narrator, their voice becomes ours. 

Inserting a flesh-and-blood person into things can only ruin that feeling. I don't want people thinking of me when they read my book, I want them to think of themselves. I know that sounds weird. But when I read Chandler, I'm not thinking of Chandler, I'm thinking of Marlowe, and creating a mental image of the author reading the work would only intrude on that.

But then again, all books on tape are 'mediated' in that way. Except that when an actor reads, they are attempting to give life to the role, while an author brings a certain authority. A great reader-of-their-own-work, someone like James Ellroy, resets the voice you hear in your head. (Once you hear him reading from 'Blood's a Rover,' it's hard to get that mediated voice out of your skull).

Something to think on. Anyway...

I've been hesitant to open up comments on this site, since nothing looks more forlorn than the "0 Comments" indicator when your blog is starting out. It's like no one showing up to your birthday party. But if you want to send me missives about the vast fortune you have waiting for you when you get back to your Nigerian kingdom, or make an actual comment, please have at it.

Peter Temple is a great writer. I've read the first book in his Jack Irish series, Bad Debts, and am currently going through The Broken Shore. Very compelling stuff. Guy Pearce has starred in the adaptations of Bad Debts and Black Tide, which are both worth watching (and the theme song is "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave, which makes it pretty much the greatest anything ever).

Happy New Year.

Trailer for Jack Irish:

James Ellroy Reading from Blood's a Rover:

Comics...

In early November I read a novel so bad--so damn, damn bad--that it put me off reading novels.

With sporadic time for reading, a short attention span, and a desire for something that's not stupid, I started reading graphic novels* again. I picked up two amazing Batman collections, Scott Snyder's The Black Mirror and Ed Brubaker's The Man Who Laughs...and the disease has metastasized from there. 

Thanks to the Vancouver Public Library system and an astonishingly high credit card limit, I've read a lot of graphic novels over the last couple months.  Some have been incredibly entertaining (Denise Mina's run on Hellblazer, for instance, or Frank Miller's Ronin), some downright revelatory (Grant Morrison's runs on Animal Man and JLA, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing). Others have been fine diversions and one or two have been wretched. But there's a deep vein of quality literature in the graphic novel form, and it's always pleasurable to dip back into it.

Two 'mature' crime series deserve special praise: Matt Wagner and Steven Seagle's Sandman Mystery Theatre and Ed Brubaker's Criminal. Both are forward-thinking, socially-involved, and as enjoyable as any crime fiction you'll read.

Sandman Mystery Theatre is set in the forties, on the eve of World War Two, and follows Wesley Dodds and his sometime girlfriend Dian Belmont. Dodds is a pudgy, bespectacled, slightly-effeminate insomniac who dresses in a trenchcoat, fedora and gas mask to investigate murders. The stories touch on homosexuality, women's rights, interracial relationships, incest, drugs, politics, racism--all the good stuff the original pulp heroes weren't equipped to acknowledge.

Ed Brubaker is the best current writer of comics, in my humble and entirely correct opinion**: I particularly love his issues of Gotham Central, an NYPD-Blue-esque take on the police force of the Batman universe. Criminal is like a more intelligent, more fatalistic version of Frank Miller's Sin City. Like Sin City, each arc features a different protagonist. The first arc of volume one, "Coward,' focuses on a character more afraid of his own capacity for violence than the hardboiled crooks around him. The final arc of volume two, "Last of the Innocent," is a brilliant, deviant take on the Archie universe. Seriously.

It's late December and there is a hillock of library graphic novels in front of me. I have another hillock of stuff I've bought, and another dozen I've put on hold. I am not touching another 'real' novel until January. Hallejulah.

*Comics, graphic novels, trade paperbacks, prestige-format sequential art collections, whatever you want to call them. The books with the pictures in 'em.

**Brubaker is my current favorite, Frank Miller is my all-time favorite, and Grant Morrison and Matt Wagner are the ones I should've been reading twenty years ago, instead of buying the upteenth polybagged copy of X-Force #1.

***This isn't a footnote as much as a completely off-topic anecdote: my brother Josh and I attended a comic-con in Vancouver waaaaaayy back in the day, for the purpose of getting Tim Sale's autograph. Sale pencilled Jeph Loeb's great Batman stories The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. He also drew Matt Wagner's Grendel. When we flipped through the Grendel books laid out at Sale's table, we found a panel of a man who had hung himself in his bathroom, penis on display. We still talk about that. Bear in mind, up until that time, the most hardcore comic we'd ever read was probably a Spiderman/Punisher Team-Up.

Guns, Feminist Litmus Tests, and the Oxford Comma

It's two in the morning. I've been up editing the LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS manuscript to make the Friday deadline. Not easy when you're also in the last week of class before exams. Every student wants a few minutes to grade-grub or clarify some minor point of literary theory or exam procedure. Everyone wants their fears allayed in the opening weeks of December, in the death throes of the year.

Here are some minor facts I discovered about my manuscript while editing:

1) Apparently I don't believe in the "Oxford Comma." Lists read better without superfluous punctuation. "But Sam," I hear the objections, "what if you sent a friend into a comics shop to pick up new issues of Superman and Batman and Robin, and you wrote out a list that didn't adhere to Oxfordian comma rules? Would your friend walk out with two comics or three?" Two. Because no one EVER bought a Robin standalone comic.

2) Printed out, the manuscript came to 357 pages, which also happens to be my favorite caliber!

3) I might have written the only first-person-(male)-narrated book that passes the Bechdel test.

I went into editing with trepidation, but every comment my editor Laura Harris made served the story, made it better. Sometimes spectacularly so. Often, I found myself saying, "Of COURSE Amelia would be wearing leggings, not slacks!" (Those are the kinds of comments your neighbours appreciate when you scream them out at four in the morning.) Little details which say something about the characters. Story verisimilitude hinges on such things.

I'll probably update more once the semester ends. By then my brother Josh will be out. This holiday season, I'm hoping to do some fun things with the family.

That last sentence is a bold-faced lie. I'm looking forward to drinking excessive amounts of bourbon and watching Batman cartoons and pro wrestling. Whether my family is in the province is of secondary import.

The Shit At the Centre of the Universe

Starting editing today--by which I mean, printing out the corrected manuscript, staring at it, making coffee and finding excuses not to edit it. Like, "Oh, I just remembered I didn't finish reading the entire Knightfall saga in Detective Comics. Better go to Book Warehouse and buy some Batman comics." Important shit like that...

I admit, I'm dealing with a lot of anxiety, and I do not do that well. I remember jokingly telling my friend Mike, as we contemplated book deals and such, "I'm not going to enjoy any part of this, am I?"

Well, I'm very grateful, and I think LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS deserves to be edited as well as possible. I'm very hard on my work, and I can say proudly it's a good read. But it does make me nervous, being this close to publication and having to go back through the book yet again.

In my experience, most people who want to be artists don't finish what they start. I feel like I can't stop finishing things. The book's finished when it's submitted/edited/in galleys/on the shelves...I will magestically refrain from quoting that misattributed old saw about poems never being finished, only abandoned.

I started writing LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS in 2010-2011. At that point Christian Bale was still an unproven quantity as Batman. By the time the book comes out, Ben Affleck will be Batman. And poor Michael Keaton will be a whisp of memory...

Anyway, this is exciting, terrifying, harrowing, challenging...as my friend Mercy would say, these are good problems to have.

Hemingway said, when you start writing, you get all the kick and the reader gets none, and eventually that paradigm reverses. I don't remember what makes up that "eventually," but knowing Papa I'll assume it's a combination of editing, aging, bullfighting and rum.

And after going through this process, I will never judge another artist's substance abuse, vocal outbursts or behavior again. As much of a goofball as Kanye West is, his rants betray someone torn between self-doubt and supreme arrogance. I'm not going to piss and moan if I don't get awards, or tweet an all-caps tirade if someone doesn't recognize my absolute literary magnificence and fall to their knees in genuflection...but man, do I understand the anxiety that produces idiocy like that.

Out of the Picture

 

'You may be quite sure, you know where you're going
But sooner or later you're out of the picture
Too many lost names, too many rules to the game
Better find a focus or you're out of the picture.'

 

I may be alone in thinking that Son Volt is the better band to come out of the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, but Trace, their first album, is at least as good as anything Wilco ever did. "Out of the Picture" is one of those perfect country-rock songs of exhaustion, like Neil Young's "Albuquerque." They just sound like utter desolation.

How's that for an iTunes Playlist? "Songs of Exhaustion and Moral Fatigue." 

Anyway. I'm going to bitch about some personal stuff. ["On an obscure blog?," I can hear some of you say. "Who would deign to do such a thing?"] 

Everytime I come back from a party I feel like I've failed some sort of test. I don't socialize well. I'm an introvert, and while I love teaching or talking to a group of people, when the gathering gets to that eight-fifteen person size, part of me just shuts down. I don't know why. Being raised by excommunicated cultists probably didn't help.

I lost my nutritionist this week, which has been really sobering. I've learned a lot about basic nutrition and body chemistry from her, but now that she's gone and the holiday season is upon us, I'm getting a bit nervous. In a way it's like leaving your parents--you know what you have to do, but the challenge seems insurmountable at times.

I have a really good idea for a comic/graphic novel, sort of a cross between the Sopranos/Breaking Bad and the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline from X-Men. I'm going to write up the first part/issue and see if I can find an artist to work with. If you know of someone with art skills who'd be interested, or are yourself such a one, get in contact. I might post the script when I'm finished it.

Anyway, editing of Last of the Independents is underway, I now have an agent for the next book, and I've finished the third. I have a few stories in the mail and a couple of ideas for the next books. Working on a graphic novel in my spare time will be a nice change of pace.