Conspiracy Theory and The Near Future

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

A book announcement.

The 1970s were the pinnacle years for conspiracy theories in America. Uncertainties about JFK’s assassination got things rolling in the 1960s, but the stories got weirder and weirder the more we watched our great cultural heroes pass on into death well before their time — Kerouac, Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, MLK, Jr., even Elvis — to name just a few.

For years it was said that no one ever saw The Doors’ Jim Morrison’s body after he died and that his grave in Paris was empty. 

Conspiracy theorists had a field day when evidence of CIA misdeeds came to light during the Church Committee Hearings. No one had ever heard of Remote Viewing. The experiments performed by various military and CIA intelligence units on unwitting citizens using psychedelic drugs seemed like proof that the mysteries of LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin were more than psychological fancy. 
As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s & 1990s, abandoned missile silos throughout the prairie belt of the US became decommissioned and old school Cold War paranoids became convinced the military was up to something far more dangerous than nuclear missiles. And then there were all the stories about secret “black helicopters” and paramilitary militia groups, bolstered by the realities of the Reverend Jim Jones, David Koresh, and other fanatic cult groups. 
My new novel, Beyond the Will of God, playfully links a good portion of these tantalizing “theories” together. Imagine as well that something far more important is at the root of what’s really been going on. Somewhere in the heart of central Missouri in the near future, mysterious music will filter through night darkened farmland. The dead body of an Amish teenager will launch a police investigation that leads to a great deal more than a simple homicide. Elvis will be seen roaming the countryside. A young, drug-addled clairvoyant will arrive in the area, confused about some odd power that improvisational psychedelic music has over human consciousness. The Sumter brothers and their unofficial militia group are also somehow involved.

Police Sergeant Jill Simpson teams up with Philadelphia tabloid reporter Franklin Harris to tie all of these issues together. These mysteries play out amidst the dense heat of rural central Missouri and on the edges of the almost forgotten city of Columbia. Secrets are revealed about the supposed doors of perception and the limits of expanded consciousness.

If you are looking for summer reading that is fun and thought provoking and far beyond the usual, this book is worth the read. I think of Beyond the Will of God as sort of a fairytale for Baby Boomers and other people who “get it.” It’s part thriller, part mystery, part science fiction, part paranormal speculation.

Publication is scheduled for June 15 at Amazon’s Kindle Store. Contact me if you’d like an advance digital copy (available by June 1). Just email me david.c.biddle@gmail.com and I will forward you a digital copy for your iPad, Kindle, Nook or most anything else.

See the top of the page to sign up for email updates regarding Beyond the Will of God and other stuff I’m working on.

And, lastly, for what it’s worth, please forward the link for this announcement to those who might be interested. Believe it or not, all the marketing studies out there say that word-of-mouth is the most effective way to sell books. I’m an independent writer. I need your help. Post the link on your FaceBook Page, email it to friends, Tweet it, whatever makes sense. I am Grateful!

-dcb

Our Real Great American Novelist

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

We’ve been reading a great deal lately about the issue of gender preference in the publishing world. More than anything, the proclamation a few years back that Jonathan Franzen had written the new Great American Novel (complete with JonnieFranz’s appearance on the cover of Time magazine) really upset a lot of people. Probably the most cogent questioning of this issue came in the form of an essay by Gabriel Brownstein at The Millions comparing Franzen and his book Freedom to Allegra Goodman and her book The Cookbook Collector. Read this excellent piece here.

There’s been a good amount of hand wringing on this topic too for years — mostly by women. I think they have a point. It’s not clear to me what is going on in the media world with the need to anoint a book as the next great American novel. Partly, I suppose, arguments against novels have been a mainstream occupation of contrarians and critics now for decades.  Anytime a big, sweeping book like Freedom or Don Delillo’s Underworld comes out those who are pro-novel in the publishing world (i.e., people who make their living funding novels) can’t help themselves. The fact that men seem to be the ones who supposedly write these great American novels is as much a “book-as-phallus” issue as it is anything else. 
But something that bothers me in all these debates is that many people seem to miss the fact that only one American writer has won the Nobel Prize since Saul Bellow won it in 1976. That American has written a number of great American novels. This spring she will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She has also had to grapple with being categorized as a Black Woman Author, a Female Author, and a Black Female Author. She is, of course, Toni Morrison (who has also been on many magazine covers in her day). Her books obviously tell the story of the African American experience in the New World, but that story is in many ways all of our stories. She writes of love and revenge and lust and family turmoil, the urge to create, succeed, destroy, and kill. In this land of free willed creatures, those are certainly traits of great American stories.
More than anything, at least from what I have read of hers, Morrison shows the heroism of people (usually women) rising above the difficulties of circumstance and even the horrors and atrocities of life. Too often novelists of today get by with characters nobly accepting their circumstances or tragically being the source of their own ruination. Morrison usually steps far beyond acceptance and making peace with life. More than anything, it seems to me, what is required of a Great Writer of any kind is the ability to show us what it means to be Great in Life and to be part of this Great Country that continues to blow open the doors of history.
Photo from Guardian click here for article
The more I think about this issue of Greatness and the question of what it is that defines Great Art, I can’t help myself in the conclusion that Toni Morrison is truly our Great American Novelist. Books like Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Jazz aren’t simple little entertainments.  
For those of us who care about books and stories — and the novel — we need to think more about emulating and learning from this great poet and creator and less about arguing whether men or women should get credit for defining things here in our times. 
Congratulations Ms. Morrison on your latest award. Please let us know when you’re coming out with your next work.  

Experiments in Kindle Consciousness: The Plasticity of Digital Indie Writing

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

I recently received two reader reviews on stories of mine available at Amazon’s Kindle Store. Both reviewers were rather unhappy. That’s fine. I know that fiction, like most everything else, is a matter of taste. Not everyone is going to like everything they encounter in life — from movies to food to music.

The experience of bad (sad?) reviews got me thinking about the Indie Author Experience and how different it is from the status quo, old school legacy publisher experience. As an indie writer I can edit and change my stories in a matter of a few hours and have them re-posted by the next day. Writers beholden to old school publishing houses (even small independent ones) are locked into their published content — even electronically — for a very long time. The process of bringing a novel or memoir or whatever to publication requires the extended efforts of many different people (a team, really) over a year to eighteen months…or more. Once a product is deemed complete, it goes out to the world and it’s pretty hard to change even if you’re lucky enough to publish multiple editions over the years. As an indie author it’s a heckuvalot easier to re-tool and re-vise. 
Thus, if a reviewer doesn’t like the ending of my story “House Sitting,” I can go back in and juice it up with an unexpected suicide, hot erotic encounter, or perhaps an amusing culinary domestic roadkill experience. Likewise, if reviewers don’t like the idea of creepy men going through laundry looking for a neighbors’ unmentionables, I can just censor that aspect of the story and offer an excised version that is more palatable for at least those who have taken the time to offer a review. In theory, multiple versions of an Indie story can be posted. If you think about it very long, the permutations here are endless.
However, in the legacy publishing world, none of those permutations make any sense at all. When you buy a book published by [name your well-known company] — whether on paper or digitally — you get what you get. In the movie world you might be able to get the “Director’s Cut” after a first run, but it’s rare to find a “writer’s edition” in the book world. This limitation is actually a function of what I think of as “the book as property.” I’m not going to get into it here, but digital offerings are something far different than property as we know it. The best term we might be able to come up with is “virtual property,” but I don’t think that really addresses what’s going on. The very malleability of an independently published text means that writers can treat their work more as a word sculpture that they’re working on while standing in a quasi-public square.   
Rest assured, I have not changed a thing with “House Sitting.” The story is what it is because that’s the way it was written and I’m very happy with what it says. Nor have I done anything with “Guda and His Son” because in a very few words I think that story says a great deal about cultural perception and 9/11. 
However, in pondering this whole issue — let’s call it the plasticity of digital indie writing — I realized that I have never liked the ending of “Jenna’s Mother.” It was just too abrupt and tone deaf. A new version has been posted this week. I like it much more and it says what I wanted the story to say much more definitively. In re-writing the ending, I also found several elements to the piece that required copy-editing and word changes. “Jenna’s Mother” is now better. The reading experience should be superior because of that. 
I offer all of this as a set of observations on how the Indie experience is different both for writers and readers — potentially, anyway. As the new world of publishing continues to develop, differences like this can and should be experimented with continually by both entities in the equation. 
In closing, it is important to note that the quality control issue for Indie publications is an obvious problem on many different levels. Better put, the quality control that traditional legacy publishers invest in each work offered in their name is exceedingly important. Forget grammar, punctuation, typos and wording, editors and their staff often turn raw talent into masterful stars and refine loose drafts and 2,000 page manuscripts into gems that transform culture.

I don’t think it makes sense yet to say that digital Indie books are taking over and that the old school folks are toast (or wadded up paper). There is room for both approaches for sure. And you as a reader should take both seriously. However, it is important to understand that there is virtually nothing buffering the relationship between Indie Writers and their readers. The plasticity of digital media is a profoundly new and powerful opportunity that allows writers and readers to connect and modify the world of letters in a new and exciting way. Readers should remember that they are supporting writers directly and that the works they buy are much more real and raw than what they might get through standard publishing venues.

There’s no telling how this is all going to end up for all of us, but it’s clear that the new world of digital publishing is so open-ended and filled with potential readers and writers are in for an interesting ride as we move through the next decade. Stay tuned…and if you haven’t yet purchased a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or whatever, now’s the time. Things are getting very interesting…

What is Beyond the Will of God? (contains a full prologue excerpt)

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment


And they also threw this in my face, they said,
Anyway, you know good and well
It would be beyond the will of God
And the grace of a king.

– Jimi Hendrix, “1983…(A Merman I Should Turn to Be)”

Beyond the Will of God is a mystery coming out in Summer 2012. It ain’t your run of the mill whodunit, though. Somehow everyone forgot all those conspiracy theories and weird coincidences that kept popping up in the late Sixties and all through the Seventies. More than anything, the music of folks like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors, and The Allman Brothers (even The Beatles and Elvis if you were paying attention) spoke to something deep and wild in each of us. Do you remember?

Beyond the Will of God brings you back to that place, and offers a great deal of whacky ideas and provocative characters all related to a series of murders that take place in central Missouri during the heat of summer when the insects are buzzing and the air is thick with possibility once again.
Here’s how the book opens:
Prologue
  
Journal Entry 1397: Cecil Miller
I found it on a number of bootleg recordings first, but there are a few examples of it on studio works as well – all from groups who understand what is possible. On the live recordings, you hear it best. There’s a certain moment where something happens with the music and everything comes together. You have to know what to listen for, though, or you won’t experience it.

>snip<
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I was required to delete the rest of this prologue due to my agreement with Amazon in their KDP Select program. For what it’s worth, buy the book. It’s worth it. Just click the cover near the top of the page and you’ll be taken to the Amazon page.

______________________________________

This novel will be independently published through Amazon’s Kindle system over the summer and then more widely distributed in the Fall. If all is successful, a paper print version will be ready by Christmas. You can still buy Kindle books and read them on your computer or iPad or smartphone. Check out Amazon’s Free Apps online.


Go to the top of this page to subscribe to this blog, or come back weekly for more information and more excerpts and more…

“Something’s happening, but you don’t know what it is, do you? Mr. Jones.”
-DB

Thoughts on Story Pricing: Trying to Care

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been experimenting with the pricing of my Kindle stories this past month. My book of short stories (Trying to Care) is currently for sale through the Kindle Publishing Direct system. The collection is written for people interested in questions of marital fidelity, mature love, and caring for family members at many stages of life. The title story is about a guy who watches his mother on closed-circuit video instead of visiting her at her senior housing complex. There’s a story about a husband who thinks his wife murdered the family pet; another about weirdness taking care of the neighbor’s house; and then others about love and quitting cigarettes, visiting a mom in high rise housing, and a Pakistani father and son working at a gas station on 9/11.

Each of the six stories can be purchased separately for $0.99 just like a basic song on iTunes. Originally, I’d intended to make just four stories available separately. If you wanted all six you could by the book for $2.99. That’s a decent deal. However, I have been paying careful attention to pricing scales that other more seasoned indie writers recommend. A collection of short stories like mine is more reasonably priced at $4.99 – $5.99. I chose to price it at $4.99. I also ended up posting all six of the stories at $0.99. You can find everything at my author page by clicking here.

All of this is experimental. A lot of folks on Kindle aren’t posting short stories to the extent that I am. Not a lot of writers seem to see the $0.99 option as a meaningful pricing model. Makes total sense to me, though, so I’m keeping it for the moment (even though a lot of iTunes songs are now $1.29). In fact, I’d say that one of the amazing advantages of this new digital publishing world is that writers can in fact publish short singles (fiction or non-fiction) at a very modest price. We don’t get much by way of royalties this way, but the idea, obviously, is depending on volume.
Today, in the interest of further experimentation, I’ve now dropped the price of Trying to Care the book, to $3.99. The logic is that at $4.99 you only save about a dollar off of buying all six stories. So, if you bought one story as a single and then decided you wanted the entire collection, you wouldn’t save anything at all. At $3.99 you save two bucks and hopefully would buy the collection after reading a single knowing that you still save money. I probably should just publish four stories and keep things at $4.99, but we’ll see what happens with a $3.99 set for the next few months.
If you’re interested in reading good, non-linear fiction with attention to character, emotions, and the meaning of relationships (and the confusion of being a real person in the world), you should check out these stories. They’re not your run-of-the-mill anything…and I’ve made sure they are well-edited.
While a Kindle or iPad is highly recommended, you can also download Amazon’s computer reading software for either Windows or Macintosh. They’ve got smartphone apps too…Go here for all the apps that’s fit to download.
Whether you buy my stuff or other indie writers work, know that you are supporting committed and thoughtful writers working hard to provide readers with quality stories. Any feedback you may have, please send it my way.
Happy reading…

Digital Reading Impediments?

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

I’m a strong proponent of digital reading. I also believe that when folks talk about healing our economy, the key is for consumers to step up and consume. There is no question in my mind that part of the gentle plus side of the growing economy of 2012 is the development of the digital reading/electronic tablet/iPad markets. It is likely that you saw Apple’s phenomenal sales figure of 3 million new iPads sold in the past week. Do you know as well that studies are now indicating that roughly one-third of American households now has at least on electronic reader/tablet?

Digital reading is more than just here. It is a dominant new experience for all of us. The arguments against e-reading or the notion that this is just a bubble (ie, those of us reading nuts are on spending sprees but will be satiated soon) are specious. In five years most college students will be doing all of their reading with iPads. In ten years all students from age 5 – 85 will do 95% of their work on iPads (or whatever new invention is on the make in 2022).

But an online Time article from their Healthland series should give us all pause for thought. I’ve referenced it at the end of this article. If you pay attention to your digital reading experience and compare it to reading paper, there is no question that the geography of a digital screen is somewhat disorienting compared to paper. In fact, it seems to me we need to make a distinction between what you might call screen reading and page reading. Screen reading is literally virtual, especially on small screens like Kindles, iPods, and iPhones. It is a somewhat confined reading experience. Even with a larger iPad screen words, ideas, paragraphs, whatever are more or less floating in that little electro-liquid enclosure, kind of like a bathtub stuffed full of floating toys.

Page reading is different. When you look at a page of paper filled with text it is fully with you in space and connected to the light, sounds, smells, and furniture of the room around you — even the music you may be listening to. Pages have full context in the world. How you relate to them, if you think about it, is almost a second-nature, instinctive process of cognition. You look at a page and even though you’re reading words line by line, just like you do on a screen, your peripheral vision is aware of the entire paragraph and all the other paragraphs on the page. You know where the chunk of text you are attacking with reading cognition is. The whole page is a map of text in your hand.

Screen reading is not the same. There is at once a tight limitation to what you can view and a sense that the limitation can expand or contract with the click of a button. It’s fully open ended, but constricted at the same time. I think we’re still learning how to read screens. The Internet has taught us to more absorb or skim meaning out of light than it has rewarded us for focused reading cognition.

The article in question below, which you need to read in a sec, talks a lot about memory loss from e-reading and is sort of vague about “research” going on out there. I just finished reading Jonathan Franzen’s 576-page novel Freedom alternating between my iPad and my new Kindle Touch. I enjoyed the experience and remember the characters’ names and have had several lovely conversations with my wife about the story and what happens with Patty, Walter, Joey, Jessica, Richard, Connie, etc. I don’t know what the difference is between long-term and not so long-term memory, but I think it was a good, meaningful, memorable experience.

My take for now on the digital reading experience is that we are still learning how to do this new thing. Research is not going to reveal much other than the experience is kind of weird. It’s easy to scan a small screen and grok two or three sentence fragments without actually “reading.” But it’s also quite fun to lie in bed with all the lights out and your iPad in “night” mode with nothing but sepia letters floating on top of a blackened screen to look at as the hours fly by and Walter and Patty struggle to grow beyond the malaise of middle age.

Do they get back together? Should they get back together…read the book and find out…I think it’s the same digitally as it is on the page, but I’m not completely sure.

See here for the Time article in question.

Happy reading!

Heart and Soul and Click

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

There’s a lot of talk about Great American Writers these days. Jonathan Franzen got branded with a version of that moniker (Great American Novelist) a number of years ago when he published The Corrections (and then made the Oprah Follies). Freedom, his latest, still gives the dude buzz 2 years after it came out (and gave him a chance to make nice with Big O). I’ve read as much of both books as I possibly can, and I’m sorry: Franzen is a great writer, a monster writer in fact, if you will let me invent such a term. Both novels are gargantuan stories about what it means to live in America here in the future. But there are many more profound and touching books out there that the press, Oprah, and Time Magazine don’t seem to be aware of.

My favorite writer over the past decade has been Anthony Doerr. I read his book of short stories, Memory Wall, back in early 2011 and was blown away. It’s out in paperback now. You should read it. See a short video here where he talks some about the main story, “Memory Wall.” They’re making it into a feature film too. The whole book is a collection of stories taking different angles on the question of memory, something all of us over the age of 50 are obviously very interested in…and concerned about.
In the video Tony also talks about his first published short story, “The Hunter’s Wife,” that came out in The Atlantic nearly 11 years ago (you can access the story here, although I suggest buying the whole book of stories, see references at the end of this entry). I read that story when it first came out and was blown away by Doerr’s talent. That one story made me believe there was still hope for short fiction in America. Although The Atlantic has stupidly discontinued their monthly offering, short story writing seems to me better than it’s been in several decades.
If we’re going to talk about Great American Writers on any level, the first and most important thing about them needs to be their ability to wield language like a kind of real world magic. Most of the bestsellers out there do very little with language. There is no heart and soul in the words, no click, as David Foster Wallace would say. In “The Hunter’s Wife” there is serious heart and soul and click, from the first line to the last. I highly recommend reading it if you want to spend time with a Great American Writer. (The same heart and soul and click can be found in most of Toni Morrison’s work for sure; Diane Williams and Amy Hempel, master micro-fiction artists are all about heart and soul and click; and what Annie Dillard does with language in her lone novel since 1992, The Maytrees, is truly amazing…and I’m sad that she says she is done writing).
Most importantly, what I find in Doerr’s work is a lyrical, intelligent and even spiritual (in a 21st century way) approach to stories and characters. Couple that with his astounding linguistic talents and you have the makings of quiet genius. He has a passion for the details of the physical world and enormity of “the environment” such as this paragraph when the hunter takes his wife out in the snow to “hear the grizzly”:
“The bear denned every winter in the same hollow cedar, the top of which had been shorn off by a storm. Black, three-fingered, and huge, in the starlight it resembled a skeletal hand thrust up from the ground, a ghoulish visitor scrabbling its way out of the underworld. They knelt. Above them the stars were knife points, hard and white. “Put your ear here,” he whispered. The breath that carried his words crystallized and blew away. They listened, face-to-face, their ears over woodpecker holes in the trunk. She heard it after a minute, tuning her ears in to something like a drowsy sigh, a long exhalation of slumber. Her eyes widened. A full minute passed. She heard it again.”
The grizzly listening section goes on for a few more paragraphs with the Hunter’s Wife wanting to touch the hibernating bear. That section is a treat in and of itself and well worth the read.
Doerr’s work is available digitally as well as in book form. Personally, I believe some fiction should be collected for the shelf. Memory Wall is a book you will want to go back to every once in a while over the next 30 years.
Quick Resource Links:

Trying to Care: A Story Collection

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

Trying to Care, a collection of six short stories about love, family, confusion, parenting and mid-life romance, has just been published at Amazon.com’s Kindle Book Store. These stories are not intended to provide answers to the reader. They are intended to give perspective and strange insight into love in these post-modern times.

“I Could Pity You” starts the collection off with a wife trying to get her husband to quit smoking when she tells him it makes her want to pity him. In “Millie Floating,” a husband waking up one snowy morning is convinced his wife has murdered the family dog. 
“Jenna’s Mother”finds a daughter troubled by her mother’s late life situation living in Section 8 senior housing. Jenna Tambore feels uncomfortable in the building and confused about how to help her mom. 
In “House Sitting,” a husband struggles to understand why it is he and his wife are always fighting. He gets his answer taking care of the neighbors’ house while they’re away on vacation dealing with a rodent problem. “Guda and His Son” is the shortest story in the collection. It is about a Pakistani father and son behind the counter at their service station on 9/11. 
And, finally, the title story, “Trying to Care,” finds a successful entrepreneur admitting to his new girl friend that he has placed a closed-circuit camera in his mother’s apartment so that he can watch her whenever he wants. This is because he never visits her. He must also deal with a promise he made to her years ago. 
Please go to my Amazon page at Authors Central to learn more about this book and others I have on Amazon: amazon.com/author/davidbiddle

Happy Birthday David Foster Wallace

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

Today, February 21, 2012, would have been David Foster Wallace’s 50th birthday. We could have started thinking of him as a gray beard in the American literary canon. Instead, he will be forever young (see my 2008 farewell to him here).

Wallace is kind of the Dostoevsky of the modern American era. While old Fyodor was consumed by the idea of suffering as the means to human redemption, Wallace was consumed by the poetry of loneliness that our consumer culture tries valiantly to defeat. 
Both men came at their worlds with full-throttle intellects, but the voices they chose often tended to be strangely childish or buffoonish, and either heroically unselfconscious or tragically confused and far too self-conscious.  Dostoevsky’s world was always one of transitional ideas and moral questioning. Wallace’s was one of transitional consumerism and the drunken hype of media think. 
I think of the two in the same basket most because more than any other writers I know of, as a reader you want to take them in the other room during their stories and just say, “Dude, lighten up!” Even Wallace’s funniest moments are so filled with the echo of modern anomie (they’re based on it). And Dostoevsky’s thick and heavy conversations — twisted precursors to the existential writers of the first half of the 20th century — are all so muddled by the breaking down of religion going on at the time and the consequent question of how the individual builds morality up as a buffer for facing life’s inevitable pain. 
I’ve written this after coming back from the baseball field with my youngest son, Conor. We were working on field grounders from deep in the hole at short. I probably hit him 150 balls. The key was staying down and trusting his eye-hand coordination. He did well. He looked great out there. I hit one very hard in the gap near second base. Conor lay out for the ball perfectly, flying horizontal to the ground, skidding on his chest, snagging the white pill in his glove like a pro. It was very impressive and seemed to me as good a reason as any to love life and know that magic can be real. 
As a treat to yourself (if you like wild thinking guys who believe in the magic of stories) check out The David Foster Wallace Audio Project. 
Happy Birthday, Dave.