The Anachronist

To Self Publish, Or Not To Self Publish

[I wrote an article on making the decision to self-publish—or not!—for this month’s edition of Old Hedgy Times.  You can read the whole article here, and if you like it, I hope you’ll head over to Amazon and pick up a copy of the whole magazine for your Kindle.  It’s got three more writing advice articles, one of them by me.]

Let me tell you a story about an author. An author named Bilbo Baggins. I’m using him, here, to represent many of you on the outset of your journey to a literary career. Bilbo is a skilled writer, who has honed his ability to communicate with words and has just finished the manuscript for his first novel, There and Back Again, A Hobbit’s Tale. I am assuming that you are like Bilbo, in that your book is good and your skills are honed. If that’s not true, I’ll tell you right here that you need to get good before this article can help you. This article is about what you do after you get to the point of being able to tell a good story on paper. Shall we?

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The Electrochemical Shadow Knows

[Hello, lovely followers!  JS here.  Below you’ll find the first 300 words of the story I’ve got in the latest Aoife’s Kiss, from Sam’s Dot Publishing.  It’s called “The Electrochemical Shadow Knows,” and is sort of a cyberpunk fever dream…more of a nightmare.  If you like it, there’s a link to buy the mag at the bottom. TW: the opening to this story involves some brutality against a female character, to the tune of the cold open of an episode of Law & Order.]

I haven’t had a death like this one in a long time.  It’s a shame to ruin such a nice night with it, too.  One minute, I’m walking to my apartment in warm summer rain—the kind that smells like fresh concrete—and then the next I’m being murdered again.  If it was the usual I wouldn’t even mention it, but this one seems personal. 

In this one I have long hair, and I’m a girl.  I don’t think I know this girl, even though this is my neighborhood.  I’m—She’s being drowned in a tub of water.  He’s grabbed her by the hair.  No, stop…please stop…please don’t…no don’t please…no, don’t get lost in it.  I can’t get lost in this death.  It’s too late for her.  I have to remember.  I can almost make out his face in the water.

I’m trying not to fall to my knees.  I don’t want to make a scene.  Do you know what it’s like, though, to be drowned?  You expect to thrash and squirm and make movements and try to fight.  She can’t fight, though.  Our lungs are full of water.  We’re running on instinct now, our body is flattened out and we’re trying to float.  But we can’t float, because this is a bathtub and someone—who is it?—is pressing us down into the water.

It’s over.  God, it’s finally over.  I’m back on the street.  The few people outside right now are not looking at me, so I guess I didn’t scream.  The tears came, though.  Still human.

Quinn’s green eyes started it all, with the way they made me trust her.  Well, that and her masters in neural engineering.  “Don’t be a tool, Ned.  This chip’ll blow your mind.”

Mind = blown.

Want to read more?  Go get yourself a copy of Aoife’s Kiss.

LAB WORK

whatshouldwecallgradschool:

credit: Alex

WEEKEND POLICY

whatshouldwecallgradschool:

credit: Alex

[In last month’s Old Hedgy Times, I had a piece about They Might Be Giants and their efforts with alternative broadcasting, from Dial-a-Song to their new app.  This is it.]

On my phone, there’s now an app with a picture of a felt cassette tape that plays music. It only plays five songs, one of those songs changes every day, and all the songs are by the same band.

If you’re like me, you’re used to a world where up-and-coming bands give away a preview of their music for free on the Internet. It’s a way of building audience and gaining fans, and everyone goes home happy. Yet there was a time when this kind of thing was rare and strange. Someone had to be the first to give their music away for free to a wide audience. The story I’m going to tell you is part of that.

It begins in the 1980s.

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