Matt Weber's Blog, page 13

New exoskeleton who dis

Spotted at the Nash County Rest Area in Dortches, North Carolina, USA.

I’ve never actually seen a just-emerged cicada before, and the lightness of its coloration makes it hard to tell what kind it is. But the Internet says there’s a thing called a “dog day cicada” that lives in North Carolina, and I’m a grown human and can choose what I believe.

Will the trade winds take me south through Georgia grain?

For reasons, I’ve been driving a car without my usual presets or a Bluetooth link, which I guess is a good way to discover radio? I ran into WDVR‘s Wednesday morning show, “Loose Threads,” which I stuck with long enough to hear a vaguely Fleetwood Mac song I don’t remember, a cover of “Girl from the North Country” that wasn’t as good as Adam Duritz’s (don’t @ me), and the Avett Brothers’ “No Hard Feelings.”

I mean I suppose I’m a sucker for songs about death, or maybe — belay that, I’m surely in a mood, but this one really hit me. The specificity of what’s being left behind, and the smallness of it; the litany of questions all left answerless, and the one answer at the end that can only be an answer at the end.

When my body won’t hold me anymore

And it finally lets me free

Will I be ready?

When my feet won’t walk another mile

And my lips give their last kiss goodbye

Will my hands be steady when I lay down my fears, my hopes, and my doubts?

The rings on my fingers, and the keys to my house

With no hard feelings

If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.

We now return to

It’s the day after Labor Day, when kid cameos are on everyone’s Instagram feed. Because I fundamentally believe the human condition is that of a word-soaked meat sponge plus incidentals, I’ll share my son’s homework assignment instead. I cannot get over this kid.

The first day of school was soaked with rain, but three kids came home from new schools happy, and two were even on time. It even feels like fall, a little; I assume it’ll be 97 tomorrow.

This wouldn’t be a proper commonplace book if I didn’t mention that I’ve spent much of the last 48 hours mourning the death of Dan Osherson, my Ph.D. advisor. Through a series of weird coincidences, his obituary will be written by a college friend of mine; so I have the chance and the obligation to come up with some words for her to quote. I think I’ve got a few I’m not ashamed of, but it would be mean to scoop a friend. I’ll link the final product when it’s available.

Every so often, an old-fashioned feels like the drink for the hour. Biden’s election was one time. This one’s for Dan.

If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.

A pause

Clouds over the parking lot, Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex, Trenton. (Not shown: The parking lot. You should thank me.)

I’m on vacation until Labor Day. I know this thing hasn’t been around long enough to become appointment reading for anybody, but I’ll declare a pause if only as an implicit declaration of intent to unpause. This is what happens when you work with lawyers all day.

I’m borrowing the association of “soothing nature image = break from production” from Heather Cox Richardson, whose nearly-daily Letters from an American are indispensable.

If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.

Pearl

Pearl, by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Gaydos. I ended up choosing an image that highlights the art rather than the writing — in an alternate universe, this post has a two-page spread where the Endo twins go back and forth about Rumor Endo’s idée fixe of a “porn mall.”

If your library system offers a hoopla subscription with your library card, you can borrow a digital copy for free from there.

If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.

The Parable of Jani Lane

I mean who in the Year of Our Lord 2022 is going to disagree with a blog post that says “Reject the Algorithm” — but Nick Maggiuli still offers a nice read w/r/t the case for rejecting the algorithm. I mean it’s absolutely a return to the sort of “cream rises to the top” magical thinking that, on average, works for nobody; but social media also works for nobody on average, it’s just that the people it’s working for are by definition the people who get noticed. Anyway, the Parable of Jani Lane is worth the price of admission, and it’s right at the beginning.

Maggiuli’s argument is of course a variation on Cory Doctorow’s in “The Memex Method,” which long-time readers will recall is what got me back to blogging after 7 years, but it’s also relevant to one of the themes Joanna Penn and others have been pushing in the indie author space, namely direct sales. Ebook sales platforms like Amazon KDP, Kobo Writing Life, Nook Press, &c more or less created the contemporary indie author business model, where you publish for “free” but the platform takes a 30-70% cut. But authors can now create their own powerful e-commerce platforms at low cost. In that regime, the case for sticking with the platforms is the algorithm: Give us our cut of your sales and, if you do well, the platform will promote your book!

And this has worked, and will continue to work… but not for every book, and 30-70% is a big cut. Depending on the platform, it tends to be on the higher end with very low prices, which means reducing a book’s price from $4.99 to $0.99 is slashing your unit revenue by a factor of, not 5, but almost 12. But effective promotions usually involve a $0.99 sale, so…

… anyway, direct isn’t a magic bullet — because those promotions on the platforms do work, and if you don’t have a big audience, that may be the way you get one. But it will create a bit more space for authors to do better on books that don’t fare well on the algorithm.

If this is at all interesting to you, I definitely recommend listening to Joanna Penn’s podcast episodes on the topic: #628, #639, #640.

Life, finding a way

Rogue tomato plants by the compost, August 2022. I assume these will get eaten by a deer or, in the limit, killed by autumn before they produce anything. But it’s nice to see a random bit of life take root where nobody meant it to.

The rule of three

“So how are your new roly-poly friends?” he asked. “And the skittery ones?”

“Very technologically advanced. They like small babies, and Dinar’s jam, and taking apart gas giants to use as construction material.”

A HALF-BUILT GARDEN, by Ruthanna Emrys

Cory Doctorow has a great review of this book at Pluralistic; the one thing I’d call out that he didn’t is the rare foregrounding of motherhood in American science fiction. It spoils nothing to point out the very early-breaking detail that mothers have a near-monopoly on power in Ringer society, in large part because marshaling the village required to raise a child indicates charisma and leadership skills. Children are brought to high-stakes negotiations both as an icebreaker (it’s hard to stay mad when shenanigans break out or someone needs to nurse) and as hostages ensuring violence won’t break out. This isn’t presented uncritically as a good thing; the role of the childless in Ringer society gets air time as well. And Emrys spares no time in linking motherhood to gender — naturally enough on an Earth where all dimensions of gender have evolved a lot relative to 2022. Emrys’ description of the corporate world will evoke THE HUNGER GAMES for a lot of readers, and that’s fair enough, but the first thing that came to mind for me was Carla Speed McNeil’s depictions of Clan Llaverac in FINDER, especially VOICE — insular societies where gender is performance and performance is always about power.

Discovering what’s always been

Since I started working in Trenton, I’ve noticed these on the side of the highway for the first time — blue flowers growing on stalks a foot or two high. Once I started looking, I found them everywhere. I think they’re chicory.

I visited my brother in the Chicago suburbs this summer and was surprised when he didn’t know what the black birds with the red blazes on their wings were called — it’s so striking, it looks like a digital effect. (They’re red-winged blackbirds.) But it turns out that I’ve lived in this area for 38 actual years, and somehow I can still discover things that are absolutely everywhere.

There are no objective metrics

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a post up today on “How Writers Fail”; the topic is “competition.” Specifically, the thesis is that viewing yourself as competing with other writers will tend to provide excuses not to write, because there’s always a worse writer doing better than you. If you’re competing against someone less skilled and they do better, then the game must be rigged; and no one wants to play a rigged game.

To be clear, the point of Kris’ piece is it’s not a game; you can’t win or lose at writing. (It’s long, my quick summary can’t do it justice, go read it.) Which maybe explains why I’ve been at it so long with so little, career-wise, to show for it.

I’m not immune to the jealousies she talks about. There are authors it’s taken me forever to read because I watched them come up while I was struggling to sell my first short story. Maybe more insidious are the metrics. China Mieville sold his first novel as a grad student. Mary Robinette Kowal made her first professional sale the same year I did (or so I once calculated, she may in fact have been a year or two earlier). I look at authors’ ages a lot, as if being a few years younger than someone who’s been successful for decades is some weird sign that it’s not over for me yet. Catherynne Valente is about a year older than me. Ta-Nehisi Coates is five years older. Lin-Manuel Miranda is I think a few months younger. Emily Oster is actually exactly my age, like born on my literal birthday, and has tenure at an Ivy League university. Zachary Jernigan is my age and someone called him the new Gene Wolfe in a blurb.

You don’t hear much about Zachary Jernigan these days. I can’t stress enough how even remotely dunk-adjacent this isn’t; it’s just a fact that he’s not gotten as famous as the other people I mentioned. If this were a game, he’d be beating me, but not them.

Man, though. Writing to evoke Delany, Zelazny, Wolfe? Like, isn’t this stuff I should be laying eyes on? Doesn’t this sound like what I want? One of those authors I wouldn’t read for jealousy… when I finally read her work, it gave me my nickname for my oldest daughter. I still use it, nine years later. I mean, what a thing to miss. Right?

And I think… I mean, everyone metabolizes these toxic comparisons in their own way, and mine is avoiding. But, for me, this is the real damage, the angle Kris doesn’t quite talk about. I’m too old for “you’re going to be a failed writer” to have much sting; by any objective metric I’ve failed already, but the good news is there are no objective metrics and nothing actually stopping me from killing it tomorrow.

But I got into this because I know the value of the right book. And depriving myself of that is no way to live.

Anyway, resolved: I should learn to write shorter posts. And I should pick up No Return, by Zachary Jernigan. (Even if Tamsyn Muir is actually the new Gene Wolfe.)