“Well . . . I’m Big in Brazil”: 15 Years of Online Writing

Firstly, allow me to apologize for boring many of you with the following piece, but many other Internet writers and self-publishers also write year-end summaries of their achievements, providing statistics to illustrate. Those of you walking a similar path may find my experiences, thoughts, and perspectives in this matter useful. I hope you do.

You may have a good idea of your own share, too. Please do!

To compensate the rest of my loyal non-writing readers on Blogger and at the Red Room, I will provide links to entertaining videos throughout, such as the following promoting the upcoming Film Noir Festival, featuring Eddie Muller:

BASIC STATS AND OVERALL AVERAGES

In the Year of Our Lord 2011, I posted 49 essays on a variety of topics. posting each essay on three separate websites: Blogger, the Red Room, and, beginning in mid-March, Scrib’d, the most in any year since I returned to online writing around 2007.

Based on the stats I keep in a separate Excel sheet, I had a grand total of 26,292 page views over all three pages for the year.

Why three sites? My sense is that an unknown writer like me needs to wave his flag in as many places on the Internet as is comfortable without muddying his footprint or spreading himself too thin.

Despite efforts to drive everyone to my official “A Curious Man” Blogger page, the Red Room had far and away the most views: 15,318. My Blogger page had not even half that: 7,017; my Scrib’d home page came in a further distant third at 3,897 (though it’s probably more for reasons I’ll explain later.

In fact, all these statistics contain some margin of error. I could, if I were obsessive enough, capture every tiny click, but then I'd be an object of pity: “Doesn’t get outside much, does he?”

I received an average of 2,191 views per month or about 505 per week, or about 72 a day. The highest monthly total was in December (2,680). The highest weekly total was 894 for the week of December 10, the week I happened to plant a link to a column on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire series in a Slate magazine comments section.

During the first part of the year, online page views ranged from 300 to 500 per week. Toward the end of the year, they rose from 600 to 800.

Now for an episode of "Simon's Cat":

ONLINE LIFE ON BLOGGER

What were the most popular pieces? It varied among at least two of the pages.

On Blogger, my essay on character actor Lee Van Cleef’s film noir roles far outpaced everything else I posted there in the 2011 (328). Two other pieces from 2011 that were popular were my critique of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire (184) and my annual promise to not watch the Oscars (112) (which received a large number of thumbs down when I posted the link in the comments on the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate—what d'ya say we do that again!?)

All the other top-ten Blogger articles were ones I wrote from 2007 through 2010, including my initial page promoting my novel Dragon’s Ark. Also popular were travel articles on hiking Mt. Tamalpais; an article on e-books; another on self-publishing; a review of a beer house in Emeryville; and a nostalgic look at the 1990s retro swing scene in San Francisco.

Most oddly, a 2007 piece where I praise The Sopranos, character “Paulie Walnuts” Gualitieri and mention his “silver hair,” was popular. (For those who entered “Paulie Walnuts hair,” the second-most popular SEO, in search of sound consumer advice on hair products for older men, I profoundly apologize. It wasn’t that good an article by any stretch, either.)

Comments left by readers average two per article.

Two qualifications: 

1) The statistics above are probably on the low side, as they don’t count the eyeballs that only rolled over the main page.

2) While Blogger stats provide numbers for the day, month and week, they don’t provide them for calendar years, only for the total time period since Blogger introduced their new stat system in May 2009 (which otherwise is not a bad system for my current needs).

Also: of all the articles that made viewers’ top ten, I would pick none of them as my best-ever favorites. This means either a) best does not mean “popular” or b) Burchfield’s a poor critic of his own work.

As for traffic sources, most visits came via Google (many of them from my small e-mail distribution list); in distant second were the good folks who hang out on Ramsey Campbell’s discussion page hosted by knibbworld.com where I weekly place links.

Then comes Slate (thanks to that previously mentioned link); Twitter; JoelFriedlander’s “Book Designer”; then Google UK; Facebook; SFGate.com; the mysterious Christmas2010shop.com; and the even-more mystifying disc.yourwebapps.com (but I’ll take ‘em where I can get ‘em).

Takeaway: As much as has been made of Facebook and Twitter as great tools for driving traffic, that doesn’t seem to be quite my experience; I think this only goes to show the sponginess of the Internet and may also relate to the material I’m providing.

As for my Blogger audience, most came from the U.S. Surprisingly, Germany takes second (Danke schön, Judith!). The UK is third; then Russia, Canada, Netherlands, France, Malaysia, Brazil, and Denmark.

Now, here’s the Drifters singing their 1964 hit “Up on The Roof.”

SCRIB’D

I only started placing my articles on Scrib’d in mid-March 2011, so those stats cover a shorter time period. The results here have been notably different than on Blogger.

The top four spots were held by advertisements and promotions for Dragon’s Ark (649, including a sample chapter from the novel), Whackers preview sample (349); and a promotional piece for a reading I gave at the California Writers Club in April with author Matt Stewart (The French Revolution), who’s more famous than I.

The also-rans: a serious think-piece on Osama bin Laden’s death; a pleasing feuilleton on World War II movies; two Dragon’s Ark-related essays on Dracula in the movies; a meditation on the Fukushima tragedy and my review of Nabokov’s The Gift. No overlap with Blogger in this top-ten list. My Scrib’d readers like different things.

No comments have been left on any of the articles. As for my audience, the stats here don’t seem to be very clear. The U.S. is at the top, of course. India is also a top view-getter.

I am also listed as having 24 “followers,” but these are all Facebook friends and I suspect were automatically connected by Facebook without any of us asking. (Ahem, Mr. Zuckerberg & Co., I'll create my own redundancies, thank you.)

Naturally, my page views on Scrib’d started out on the low side for the first several months. Some days showed no views at all. I considered moving on, but as the numbers have risen a little, I’ll stick around for now.

Scrib’d’s site statistics claim to drill down to a much finer detail than Blogger’s and Red Room’s, capturing numbers such as “Embed Reads,” “Readcasts” (a form of sharing ala Facebook) and “Engagement” (measuring the time readers spend with an article.

Except for “Readcasts,” I’m unsure how reliable these figures are. (The “Engagement” time stands at practically zero seconds; I can’t be that boring, can I?) The program has bugs—occasionally, it fails to include views of specific articles in their daily overall totals. I complain. It gets fixed. Then the hamsters stumble again.

In this episode of “Simon’s Cat,” the cat plays with a box!

THE RED ROOM

Though clearly the most-visited of my three pages, the Red Room provides the least statistical information of all. Their stats cover strictly overall page views and specific sub-page visits (how many visit my profile; how many view my blog page; how many view my advertising, etc.). I also seem able to go back only six months to mid-2011.

I have no idea which articles received the most views. As the Red Room village is populated by highly literate and thoughtful people, I’d guess my book reviews are the most interesting. I also suspect a higher percentage actually read my postings, as Red Room members are truly purpose driven in the best sense.

So: I cannot complain. The Red Room remains a good  neighborhood, even after my efforts to drive traffic to my “Official Site.” After all, I’ve received over 15,000 page views, won three Red Room Creative Challenges and have been featured once on their front page.

So, thank you Red Room!

And now, The Vogues with their 1965 hit "Five O'Clock World"!

BRIEF TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS:

The main purpose behind the burst of essays in 2011 was to promote my book Dragon’sArk. The circus might serve as a useful metaphor: I’m not only the owner and  ringmaster, I’m also the barker hollering outside the tent, handing out these essays as free samples to get passersby inside to lay real money down for the main attraction—the novel—and a couple of inexpensive fun little sideshows—the screenplays Whackers and the upcoming The Uglies.

How’s that working? Not too well, so far. Sales of Dragon’s Ark stand at around 40 or 50. Sales of Whackers are at one.

What can I do to sell more books? I think I’m taking a decent-enough road, but it’s not enough. I’ll have to take other, further steps in the coming year. One of these will be buying advertising space, which I’ve already experimented with some mild and surprising success on Goodreads.

But, as you’re all clawing  the screen for another episode of “Simon’s Cat,” I’ll take up that discussion later.

Text copyrighted 2012 by Thomas Burchfield

Thomas Burchfield has recently completed his 1920s gangster thriller Butchertown. He can be friended on Facebook, followed on Twitter, and read at Goodreads. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.

Read This Book

This week, the Red Room has challenged its members to write about our favorite book for sale on the new Red Room bookstore.

A-ha! I thinks to myself. I could praise Red Room member David Corbett’s novel Do They Know I’m Running? or, recommend any number from member Peter Straub’s distinguished oeuvre.

But, at the end of this short paragraph, lie ten words stretching seductively on a thin mattress of clear digital air: 

“Yes, you're welcome to recommend one of your own books.”

You mean, praise my own book? Dragon's Ark? Really? Just like that? As my heart wings skyward, I look for an oxygen mask to fall from the ceiling. The sun hangs just out of reach, my fingertips brushing its soft molten surface. I shall melt into its liquid hot sea as my light spreads throughout the universe! Even Stephen Colbert will embrace a studied diffidence that will lead him into the priesthood!

Let’s see . . . “Dragon’s Ark is the one Dracula novel that towers above all other books ever written. Not since Leopold Bloom thought about God while seated on the . . . .”

Nah, that’s a bit much. Maybe. Let’s go for a more lolling modesty.

“If Dragon’s Ark had thundered onto the literary scene 60 years ago, Saul Bellow would have packed up his pencil box and retired to Peoria. Take that, Edmund Wilson!”

As you can tell, I’m finding this difficult.

To permit me to say nice things about something I’ve done, for me to ladle the same praise on my novel Dragon’s Ark that Michiko Kakutani slathers on Michael Ondaatje like warm honey, would daunt few of the other authors I’ve known in my life. Many are the writers who secretly believe their books are better than everyone else’s. I’ll bet my next five dollars in royalty payments that, once in awhile, Dan Brown sits staring into a corner, muttering to himself “Robert Ludlum is unfit to vacuum and shake the crumbs from my keyboard.” Even Harold Robbins supposedly crowed—yes, crowed--that he was a greater writer than Joyce and Hemingway.

I was raised by a mid-Westerner, who, was, in turn, raised by an iron-clad Upper Michigan Presbyterian. I lived fifteen years in the Midwest. Some of you may know what means. Some of you may not. What that means is that not only are you not allowed to blow your own tuba, it’s only polite to claim the tuba belongs to someone else.

Praise my own book? In public? Are you kidding? . . . would you like me to strut boldly naked through Union Square for an encore? We do all this doggish groveling to reviewers and authors, wheedling like Oliver Twist for blurbs and reviews and now you tell us we can personally recommend our own book?

“Dragon’s Ark! The vampire novel that fans of Ordinary People have been waiting for!”

Mmmmmm . . . try again.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the Dracula myth has been dozing upside down in my brain cave since I was knob-high to the TV set, mostly in mute secrecy. “Mostly” because whenever I did dare loose it from its cage, out through my mouth, the response would be funny looks, not the ‘ho-ha, that’ll be scary and clever” kind.

Adults, teens, and children alike murped in ever-shifting shades of disapproval, disdain, and outright pallid fear. Fire-purple sneers from parents and teachers and parents of teachers, the word “junk” usually flashing by from somewhere in the word train; curled lips, raised eyebrows while they repeatedly banged me in the nose with a copy of Moby Dick. “You have to be the next Steinbeck and Fitzgerald!” can hang like a horse collar on a guy.

“Hisssssss! Boooooooo!” said a warm, soft, buxom, farm-bred, homespun, Catholic, leftist feminist for whom I carried a soggy sputtering torch for far too long. Oh well, horror fans and writers are a tad on the conservative side anyway.

And then there was the woman, a supervisor at a psychiatric institution near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, who spluttered with genuine moral disdain: “What? You’re a writer? You mean you’re one of those people who live in their own little worlds and don’t care about anyone else?”

You didn’t know such individuals existed? Oh, dear dear reader they have and they do. You may be sitting next to one right now. Pity these people. Pity them because now, with writers everywhere thanks to digitalization, they must feel surrounded by the Zombie Horde. (We, of course, will eat their brains, because, well, where else are we going to get our ideas?)

No, it wasn’t until long after the blessed rise of Stephen King and when people started realizing that John le Carré was a serious writer, that I dare let Dracula’s wing untangle so he could flip open my skull cap and lead other of my many dreams up into the starry night.

I think I experienced the same revelation Stephen King experienced during his brief sojourn in a traditional literary workshop of the Iowa type: No matter how earnestly realistic and “relevant” I tried to be, tale of vampires and cowboys, spies and plunderers, spoke to me more as a writer. I never consulted Richard Stark’s sales figures. I just knew I wanted to explore that fictional realm more than any other—where people do things in the world and often suffer surprising and terrible consequences.

Nowadays, a certain confidence and pride occupy genre writers, both justified and, more often, not. And thanks to that digital technology, thanks to this teeming marketplace where millions of books jostle like fleas, there is no other choice but to be your own salesman somehow, a cruel development for those of shy and modest temperament and whose books may be far far better than anyone else’s, especially those who shout most loudly and cleverly.

So: It’s time to be arrogant, plain and simple.

Dragon’s Ark is a darn good read. There are several 4- and 5-star reviews on Goodreads and Amazon to prove it, plus praise from David Corbett and others on its cover. It’s a scary, colorful, exciting, and dramatic novel. It has all the familiar, but fundamental pleasures of genre fiction, good and great alike: narrative drive, bracing energy, and vivid background and characters. It’s also written in a fresh interesting, entertaining style with wit, humor, and a fresh subtext. Dragon’s Ark imaginatively weaves together themes not often seen in horror fiction of its type in bloody good diverting fashion.

I hope you read it. I hope you’re entertained. I hope you’ll like it.

As Gene Autry said, “It ain’t braggin’ if you done it.”

Copyright 2011 by Thomas Burchfield

(Photo by author)

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available right NOW, published by Ambler House Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editions through your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,  Powell's Books, Smashwords, Scrib'd and now at the Red Room. His original comic screenplay Whackers  is now available in Kindle, Nook, iPad and on Scrib'd, also from Ambler House. Other material can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. Not enough for ya? He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Unfinished Business #10: Dragon’s Ark: The DIY “Book Tour” Part II

On Friday, Elizabeth and I walked through golden morning to the Alpine County Sheriff’s Office to present Dragon’s Ark to Christine Branscombe, deputy, support services coordinator, and beta reader. She expressed her delight, but then confessed to being a Twilight fan. I raised a warning finger, cast an amused scowl: This is not a Twilight novel. But I bet she’ll be scared to her toes when she closes that last page and I hope that Tom Linder will be pleased by my brief look at search and rescue.

We breakfasted at the J. Marklee Toll Station café, one of those Funky Joints with Good Food (metal patio furniture with a side of excellent omelet). There, we were joined by Pete, an English transplant in his mid-60s.

Pete was in the middle of a summer-long bike ride from Canada to Mexico. He planned to make it Bridgeport, 70 miles to the south, that day. This involves, among other travails, a 3,000-foot climb over 4 miles up through Monitor Pass, before the road drains down to the eastern desert. We offered prayers and luck. We wondered about him throughout the day.

We next stopped by Alpine County Health Services near the village of Woodfords to present a copy to Dr. Richard Harvey, Alpine County health officer, and his staff. With their help, Dr. Dave Sutton became a more credible character. But the real-life doctor was, sad to say, away in Berkeley, mere miles from our house. The receptionist enthusiastically received the copy on his behalf and wanted to know when it was going to become a Hollywood movie. This question I could only embarrassingly laugh off.

From there, we rode on down Diamond Springs Road, a lonesome, two-lane roll through cattle ranches and scrub desert, my favorite kind of road, to nowhere in particular, just enchanting country, open sky, and Nature’s surprises, both grand and sly, everywhere. Still, as we rolled along, it saddened me to think how much of its fine detail I’d missed capturing in Dragon’s Ark.

When we reached the large Woodfords Community headquarters of the Washoe Tribe (known here as “Hung-a-Lel-Ti”), we found echoes and near-emptiness. Except for a voice urgently murmuring behind a tightly closed door, no one was about. Certainly not Beverly Caldera and Hector Caldera, who graciously admitted a grimy researcher to the Washoe Community Library on another Friday years ago and allowed him to fumble among their books and files in search of details on Washoe history and culture for the small but important role they play in Dragon’s Ark. I shyly left a copy, my business card, and a clumsily scrawled note on Beverly’s desk, like a friendly passing ghost.

I hadn’t told anyone we were coming. I’m sure it wasn’t me. Honest.

After we stole across the Nevada border to visit an antique store in Gardnerville, we returned along Diamond Springs Road again, toward the mountains.

Back in Markleeville, we took the little road up from Grover Hot Springs Road (as you will in the novel) to a pretty hilltop where sits the Alpine County Museum, my first stop on my original research trip. Here, thanks to its then-curator Ellen Martin, I first learned that the real Alpine County would not fit within the story blooming wildly in the flowerpot of my mind.

And so my imagination swung its wrecking ball. With that god-like confidence that all creative liars since Homer have known—why else do we write stories?—I knocked the museum down and constructed a new one . . . except, notably, for the old jail next door, with its grim interior, part cast-iron jail cell, part blacksmith shop, a perfect setting for a monstrous encounter with moonlight’s cold blade.

 "This is no jail. It's a torture chamber"-- Dr. David Sutton

Since we arrived, Elizabeth and I had picked up sidelong gossip about the small-village politics of Markleeville, a story known everywhere, in Dragon’s Ark, too. From these bitter tidbits, we saw how things can change, even in the slow rhythms of an alpine village.

For one, Ms. Martin was long gone, having abruptly departed for another museum job. In her place sat a soft-spoken Quaker woman, dressed for her faith and whose name I regrettably failed to capture. This time, I was reluctant to donate my book. I felt obliged to firmly warn her that Dragon’s Ark was not a Christian Pacifist novel by ten country kilometers, but she gently and generously reassured me that her husband might like it.

O-kay, we think as we politely stroll out the door, eyes wide over a fixed grin, my befuddled mind screaming with imaginary headline:

“Local Man Divorces Quaker Spouse, Leads Decadent Violent Life After Reading Burchfield Horror Tale.”

Friday’s “book tour” ended at the Alpine County Library, another site both of narrative and research. The book was gratefully accepted by Rita the librarian and will find its way onto the lending shelves.

With day almost done, we headed up to my favorite spot in Alpine County: Monitor Pass. Relieved not to find Pete the Brit Bicyclist sprawled by the side of the lonely road, we wandered for a while. On our first drive up here, many years ago, it was toward dark and we encountered a louring purple snowstorm and sensed eternity everywhere, in the gaps behind the curtain of spinning snowflakes.

I was not able to work this spot into the novel. But Eternity is still here.

After a delicious dinner at the Stonefly in Markleeville, we found a rowdy acoustic country trio, complete with violinist, playing at the Cutthroat Tavern, perfect ending to a Friday--especially when the lead singer announced they’d do a tune by “the greatest country band that ever was” before launching into “Don’t Pass Me By.”

Saturday morning, we stopped by Sorenson’s, the final stop. Like elsewhere, the owners were absent. After lunch, I wandered among the cabins, took a few snaps from scenes that will be recognizable when you read Dragon’s Ark (like I know you’re going to).

From there, it was home.

 "At trail's end, Jeff found a gazebo."

I did no readings. Most everyone to whom I hoped to present copies was somewhere else. But to me, my shoestring “book tour” was a success anyway. I had returned to the beloved mountains of Alpine County.

What more could I have wanted?

(Re-edited 8/9/11)

Copyright 2011 by Thomas Burchfield

Photos by author, copyright 2011 by Thomas Burchfield

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available right NOW, published by Ambler House Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editions through your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,  Powell's Books, Smashwords, and Scrib'd. His original comic screenplay Whackers  is now available in a Kindle editon, also from Ambler House. Other material can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. And if you're still not tired of him, he can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Unfinished Business #9: The Dragon’s Ark DIY “Book Tour” (Part I)

The World of Dragon's Ark

You may have noticed a sag in my marketing efforts for my novel Dragon’s Ark (Ambler HousePublishing; $15, available in POD through your local bookstore, Amazon, Barnes& Noble, Powell's Books, and in e-book versions on Kindle, the Nook, and at Scrib’d).

The reasons for my slow activity may relate to the High Summer Season; certainly, with its tiny resources, Ambler House, a midget micro-publisher, is no Random House; and I’m definitely at work on my next novel, a 1920s Prohibition gangland saga titled Butchertown, which is rat-a-tatting along very nicely.

At least I’ve managed to squeeze in a “book tour.”

The “book tour” lasted two days. On Thursday a week ago, my loving, ever-patient wife and I jumped into the Rav 4, rushed north and east through California’s overbuilt Central Valley, then huffed and puffed up Highway 50, through gold-painted and oak-studded hills into the magnificent California Sierra. We crossed Echo Summit at 7,382 feet and wound down toward South Lake Tahoe, then turned south on Route 89 over Luther Pass to enter small, but beautiful, remote and magical Alpine County: "Two people per square mile and you," they say. To which, I would add, "And a certain, shark-eyed immigrant fiend."

Our two days in the mountains were really a long overdue Thank You tour to express gratitude to those friendly, hardy souls who happily shared with me bits of information and local lore about life as it’s lived in a remote mountain community. They also received free, signed books. For me, it was just being there, after three long years away.

Dragon’s Ark, I must inform the unfortunate many who have not yet opened the door to its darkling world, is far from a pinpoint portrait of Alpine County, a necessity dictated by the story that took wing during a summer sunset in 2003. For one, the county’s population was actually too small. So I doubled it, from around 1,100 to 2,200, constructing a whole new (and larger) town in the eastern flats, snug against the Nevada border like a dusky puzzle piece. For another, it was imagination that raised the titular mountain and cut the deep mysterious canyon it looms over like a cold-eyed god.

Town, mountain, canyon: three things you should not expect to find when you take the Dragon’s Ark literary tour of Alpine County (renamed “Monitor County”).

The first real landmark we came to was Sorenson’s Resort, just past the intersection where Highways 88 and 89 briefly melt together. Renamed “St. Ives” (from a brand of skin lotion, not the nursery rhyme) for the novel, it’s the serene piney setting for the novel’s first horror and about the most popular, well-known spot in the area, even constituting its own separate community. We always try to stay here when we come up, but this time, no affordable cabins were available.

We decided to save Sorenson’s for the trip out and drove on to Markleeville, Alpine County’s major urban center, whose teeming population of 150 has rocketed up to 200 since my last visit. Fortunately, unlike other rural tourist destinations, Markleeville has not yet tarted itself up too much, remaining funky around its soft edges among the pine-blanketed mountains. We actually had trouble parking in front of our motel, The Creekside Lodge, a clean and simple second choice for Alpine County getaways.

The Sheriff's Office

Thanks to construction delays on Highway 89, we were too late to make it to the Alpine County Sheriff’s Office, where I intended to leave my first copy for Christine Branscombe and Tom Linder, who provided law enforcement and search-and-rescue information.

We walked around for a while. I found a nest of fearless barn swallows in the motel breezeway (photos turned out poorly). We hiked down to Markleeville Creek, listened to the silver song of a high mountain stream, no better music in the world (no not even Bach and Debussy).

 A block from downtown Markleevile

Elizabeth needed a nap and I needed to tire myself out to fight off oncoming insomnia, so I drove out to Grover Hot Springs State Park (past where major characters Dave and Carla Sutton and smooth, sneaky Bob Garner dwell). In addition to its hot springs, (favored by Russian tourists), this is also one of the best spots around to hike and camp. This is also where Dave Sutton was caressed by the sweetly eerie dreams that inspired him to move to Monitor County.

Grover Hot Springs

I hiked through a wide meadow under a clear blue sky and golden sunlight, along lively silvery Hot Springs Creek. Sierra peaks loomed on three sides. I hiked until I felt good and tired, two miles and well over an hour, took pictures, got pleasingly lost, and prayed that, when Death comes calling, we would meet here. But I safely found my way home, tired like I wanted to be.

 Henry West's Throne

We had dinner at the Wolf Creek restaurant (setting of atleast one scene) and hoisted a few at the attached Cutthroat Tavern, joshing with the locals, showing my book around. (In the novel, the bar’s front stoop is the jealously guarded throne of angry, alienated, alcoholic, arachnophobic, agoraphobic, and fiercely colorful Henry West.)

Then it was to bed, and a restless night.

(To be continued)

Copyright 2011 by Thomas Burchfield

Photos by author, copyright 2011 by Thomas Burchfield

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available right NOW, published by Ambler House Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editions through your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,  Powell's Books, Smashwords, and Scrib'd. His original comic screenplay Whackers  is now available in a Kindle editon, also from Ambler House. Other material can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. And if you're still not tired of him, he can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Unfinished Business #8: Other Mistakes That Weren't Made

 

Last Sunday, I delivered what I hope will be the first in a series of readings and speeches to promote my novel Dragon’s Ark  at the monthly meeting of the California Writers Club—Berkeley Branch.

I’m a trained actor with a Bachelor’s in Speech-Theatre (U.W.-Oshkosh) and I’ve spoken off and on over the years. I spent days preparing my reading selection and speech, rehearsing them once, twice, three times a day, timing them against the kitchen clock. On the last day, I realized it lacked music that would make some parts funnier and edited it some more.

Still, every time I get up in front of a crowd is, in a sense, like the first time. Butterflies stroked their wings against the lining of my belly, a hoard to draw Nabokov’s net from his bag. (Careful with the boots there, Professor!)

Still, it all went all right.

My lips did not freeze. My tongue did not swell and flop from my mouth. I did not forget to zip my fly and did not trip on my way to the podium. I did not forget to thank anyone immediately important, especially Elizabeth. I did not stand too close to the microphone. I did not stand too far away from the microphone. Nor I did I knock the microphone over with a grand, sweeping gesture.

My hat did not fly off to expose my bald scalp. No one demanded I take it off, either. Nor did it catch fire, like straw hats do.

I did not read from one of the more violent, grotesque sections of my book to this comparatively conservative--in the old non-debased sense--crowd. Nor did I read one of the more boring parts.

I did not mumble and I did not drool. Nor did I vomit, shake, cough, sneeze, or otherwise faint. I suffered no sudden muscle cramps.

I did not stumble over or gulp my words. I neither read too fast, nor read too slow. I did not lose my place. My reading did not go over time and neither did my follow-up speech. My explanation for why I wrote a Dracula novel--adapted from here—did not cause apparent offense, draw visible sneers and did not fail to bring at least some laughter where I hoped it would.

My mild Bela Lugosi impersonation did not sound like Sarah Palin’s.   

I do not think I came off as liking Dracula too much. Or too little.

I did not lose my way or stare numbly into space or anytime experience the falling sense of having nothing to say. I was not at a loss for words. I did not pick up too many and throw them about either.

No word was more than ten letters long.

The audience did not snort, they did not boo, they did not throw food. No one attacked the stage. I, in turn, attacked no one.

Most importantly, no one slept.

Not many questions were asked. I did not have to answer whether or not I was a vampire, though I answered anyway for the ten-cent chuckle. I did not have to answer whether I thought Gary Oldman made a better Dracula than Christopher Lee (Answer not given: Are you kidding!?); nor whether Gilbert
Gottfried should be cast as the lead in the movie version of my book.

When they applauded, I did not hit my head on the podium as I bowed. I did not say “Fuck you very much” instead of “Thank you very much.”

Nor did I refer to that day's main speaker, Matt Stewart, as "a hack." I did not trip as I left the podium or rush straight to the men’s room.

Afterward, I did not sell ten books. I did not sell seven. Of the checks made out to me, I altered none of them to pay for a chalet in Switzerland, a dacha in Russia, or a cottage in Somerset. I did not autograph my books with graceful flair, nor did I inscribe them with my initials instead of my long name.

(As Richard Nixon once said to Bruce Springsteen while Springsteen was signing autographs: “You know Bruce, it must be tough to have such a long name! I bet it makes it hard to sign autographs. President Eisenhower had a long name, too, and you know what he said to me once while signing autographs? He said, ‘Dick, you’re lucky you’ve got a short name!’”)

In short, unlike the Nixon Presidency and so much human history, nothing went wrong.

I wonder: Should I do it again?

 

Copyright 2011 by Thomas Burchfield

 

Photo by Elizabeth Burchfield

 

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark  is available right NOW, published by Ambler House Publishing and can be ordered through your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and will be available as an e-book by the end of April. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.
 

Unfinished Business #3: Two Large Hats, One Very Small Head

Another glimpse of the setting for Dragon's Ark

(In my last two posts, I’ve written about some of the challenges I’ve faced wearing two hats as both an independent publisher and author of the contemporary Dracula novel Dragon’s Ark. I closed with a worried tremble in my voice, concerned with the fate of the publisher/author who’s unable to move on to the next book due to all the work, as publisher, s/he has to do get the current release a decent spot in the tumultuous market place.

I will now continue to finger my worry beads, first, by comparing the past with present.)

Back in the good old days (and I do believe they were truly good) Ernest Hemingway would send one of his many great novels off to the great editor Maxwell Perkins at Scribner’s—what, I’m getting too pretentious now?

Ohhh all right then, goddammit.

Harold Robbins would send his latest boring potboiler over to whoever was the editor at whatever was his publisher. Writer and editor might engage in back and forth over the manuscript (such as it was). There also might be money negotiations between Harold’s lawyers and their lawyers. Next, copyediting and proofreading by Whatever House’s staff or freelancers.

After in-house design did their work, the latest Harold Robbins epic of money-grubbing power grabs, shooting, and fucking would be shipped off to the printers. Before long, it would land in airport and drugstore book racks everywhere to be purchased or furtively thumbed by horny, shifty-eyed teenage boys. (I used to sneak my trembling looks at the copies in the Oshkosh Public Library while my mother worked the front desk, twenty feet away.)

In the time among all this shorthand, Harold Robbins would sprawl on the chaise lounge on the veranda of his 222-room mansion, cozy in his endangered-animal fur robe, boinking bosomy bikinied babes, smoking his cigars, drinking his mint juleps or whatever the hell it was he drank, bragging to everyone that he was the greatest writer who ever lived simply for selling more books than everyone including Hemingway, which in his day—the 1960s through the 1970s--was factually true.

Meanwhile, between the boinking and the boozing, Harold Robbins would be typing out his next book.

Whatever Publisher (Sorry, I can’t even be bothered to Google about this. If the Harold Robbins Literary Legacy Society wants to burn my books, I’ll send the matches.) would meanwhile handle all the marketing and all the distribution. They would make all the media contacts, arrange for all interviews: TV, radio, newspaper, magazine.

In the meantime, Harold Robbins--I'm guessing--drank and boinked, wrote and waited. After the phone call came, maybe from his personal publicist, off he’d fly around the globe to all the media interviews. Perhaps he would haul his typewriter along on his private jet (yes, he owned at least one jet; maybe more) so he could continue typing up The Betsy II or whatever. Maybe he’d stop by Whatz-it House and the entire staff would lick the carpet as he passed because Harold Robbins’s novels were making them soooo much money.

Then back he’d wheel in his rented 30-foot limo to his 6-star hotel, or jet back to the manse, and his typewriter, banging away, martinis lined up like martinets that coolly glistened at his elbow.

He did this for many books over many years. Sweet life, eh?

And so: Welcome to the 21st century and the world of independent publishing. As the new publishing system is now working, if you’re expecting to live the life of Harold Robbins, you’re in trouble, and not just ‘cause people aren’t reading as much anymore.

I know, because I’m in trouble. The first article in this series described all the work I’ve been doing as an independent publisher to get my novel into your kind and waiting hands. In the old, ideal—and increasingly misty sepia—world of long ago, I might write a brief article promoting my next book, a Prohibition saga I’m calling Butchertown, upon which I would be working away, with yummy glasses of mango yogurt drink lined up on my desk (I’m at that age). Meanwhile my publisher
would be doing all the work described above for Dragon’s Ark. And then I'd go out and perform by song-and-dance for maybe six weeks, my Royal (a brand of typewriter) not far away.

That’s not happening. As burning as I am to rat-a-tat my way into Butchertown, I have done little except key up a draft of Chapter 1 and a scrawl a few notes. My obsession with it is growing to Dragon’s-Ark proportions, but I’m stalled, not because I’m “blocked” or lazy from counting up eggs that haven’t hatched yet, but because ... I’m sure you see it now.



Understand, I’ve not made a penny yet out of Dragon’s Ark, and there are no guarantees I will. All the pennies—and there aren’t many--are coming from my day job. Harold Robbins didn't have a day job.

And so, I don’t believe this model of independent publishing can quite sustain in its current form, at least for writers with more than book—maybe many more—to write, especially if they're just trying to break in, or maybe not selling enough to call it a living.

If anything, the time between one book and the next could grow quite a bit longer. Unless I’m a well-paid professional blogger, it seems to me, my postings--no matter how jolly and clever--won’t be enough to keep whatever fans I may have happy. They’ll want my next book. And I’ll want to get it them.

So, what’s to be done? How might—or should—the evolution of this new field proceed? I’ll propose some ideas of where things might go in the next—and maybe final--chapter of this saga.

(Edited 12/21/10)



Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author 

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 15, 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Unfinished Business #2

 A peek at the world of Dragon's Ark

(Second in a series)

As I wrote here a few days ago, I’m busy.

My proofread of Dragon’s Ark speeds along now, without crashes. After I print out the Adobe file for hardcopy proofreading, I close the file until it’s time to enter the corrections. Then I print out the next chapter and close the file again. Save constantly. Keep all other programs closed, except for music. Finally, at the end of every session, I send the file to my thumb drive. My Adobe program has behaved with exemplary calm and good sense.

BTW: I recommend all writers do a hard-copy, mechanical proofread (NOT a copyedit!) before you send your manuscript over to your interior designer; you can pay to have it done (by me, for example); or, you can take some proofreading courses and do it yourself, so long as you be sure to close off the creative part of your mind—lead curtains recommended--and focus strictly on the mechanics: formatting, punctuation, dropped or wrong words, essential grammar errors, misspellings and minor mistakes only.

Getting your mind in that space is hard and not everyone can do it, but it is possible. I pretend I’m Mr. Computer Voice, flatly droning along aloud, enunciating each syllable and punctuation (“Dot ... com ... Bang!). If you dropped by my office to eavesdrop, you’d think I’d gone mad.

All in all, it means less work for both you and your designer and lower costs for you! Another lesson learned by me.

Now, I’ve been closely following the self-evolution of the independent publishing field, this new model of ultra-accessible literary expression, as it unfolds into the future. Last time, I summarized the great deal of work that this independent author/publisher is doing to get his book to the world in the remote hope that it becomes a success.

As this model emerges in its jury-rigged fashion, I detect weaknesses in the structure, possibly significant ones. This piece intends to further the discussion.

First, I’ll propose that a majority of writers only have one book in them, a good book to be sure, a very useful, well-written, non-fiction work like a how-to book, a memoir of a singular experience, a modest history of one of life's obscure corners. Then it’s back to teaching, doctoring, nursing, building, governing, plumbing, chefing, etc. and all the other Work of the World, all of it more important than anything I could write.

This is one definition of Good. There may even the profoundly self-aware novelist who writes one excellent novel and says, “That’s it! I’ve said my say! See ya at the fishin' hole!” (Harper Lee comes to mind.) These individuals are to be admired, respected and maybe even followed.

Further, these writers can go on marketing and publicizing their single contribution forever and never have to worry, because that’s their thing and their proud, and satisfied as are the readers who read it. It may even provide a steady, if minor, income stream—pay down the publishing debts; pay down the mortgage; occasional dinner at Chez Panisse.

But then there’s the rest of us. The writers who can’t shut up.

What about us?

(To be continued)

(re-edited 12/18/10)



Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author 

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 15, 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

The Thrill of the Hunt

“Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“The Adventure of the Abbey Grange”

My wife’s smoke-sweet voice sings through the door ahead of her one cold mid-November night: “I say, Thomas! You’ve got a package!”

The package--ten uncorrected, advance review copies (meaning mistakes remain) of that roof-breaking bestseller that I know you all will line up in twos around the block to buy when it bangs into bookstores on March 15, 2011—Dragon’s Ark.

(At the exact same moment, servers everywhere will melt down into gooey rivers of silicon as you e-readers download it by the hundreds of millions, enough for me to build my mansion on the highest hilltop on Mars).

Cathi Stevenson’s cover--the snare that will grab your eye in the bookstore--is a sensation far beyond my original, clichéd expectations, an illustration so close to a scene in the novel—one she knew nothing of--that I tweaked the episode once more so cover and moment would entwine to shiver and twirl down your spine: His face, his eyes, hungry on you, a moon watching coldly as you scream, trapped, knowing it’s over, that it will be horrible and the only afterlife will be your screams. Joel Friedlander’s interior design is perfect for a story like this-elegant font, well-spaced, seems error free but for my own oversights. They both make me look so good, I almost want to write the whole damn thing one more time, but I can't.

I gasp and sprawl on my back upon the cold terra-cotta tile floor, struck down by the reality of my actions. Fear and Thrill roust about like monkeys around my heart, as though it were the highest tree in the forest.

Everything can go wrong. Nothing can go wrong. The book is great. The book is terrible. The book is everything in between, gray and forgettable. The book will sell a million copies and be despised. The book will sell zero copies and be loved. All possible movies reel through my mind, except Oprah, the Pulitzer and a visit from Homeland Security.

My wife’s fine pretty face shines upon me where I lay: “Come, Thomas, come! There is much left to do! The hunt must go on!”

The hunt for the reading world’s attention; the hunt for readers. I hunger for them. I'm looking at you. See my eyes glitter with hope?


And remember: even if I was with Random House, I'd still likely be doing this all myself.

That Saturday morn we tuck the box into the back seat of the RAV4. Elizabeth chauffeurs me to five bookstores scattered around Oakland-Berkeley, all indie stores, cozy enclaves where beloved antiquated objects still thrive.

A long line stretches along the street outside the first store. I ask someone in line the score. “Cookbook signing” and a name and title not Amanda Hesser, not The New York Times.

“Let’s go,” I growl like Parker. “They’ll look right through me, resent the interruption and forget me like flat beer. Come back later.”

But as we leave the line behind, I wish I had my postcards to pass along the row while I slap their surprised faces with the novel. Maybe it wouldn’t get me more than a shove on the beezer, but there’s no bad publicity. Not now. Not until I throw up and pass out at my first public reading (if I get a first reading; if every Bay Area bookstore doesn’t lock its doors and pull the shades against me: NO BOOKSTORE HERE!).

The next bookstore goes bingo. They’d just moved to a new spot, I haven’t shopped there in years and the place looks swell though still unpacked; the owners, friendly and interested; their duo of cats bow before me. My gut clenches when I hear I missed an event on vampire fiction the night before, the kind of happening I need to know if, to be at. I buy a John Dickson Carr novel as a token (tokens are all I have to pay in return).

On the way out, I say hopefully, “At least you’ll find me a competent writer.”

“Already looked inside.” Owner smiles. “Yeah, you are.”

Another solid drop at the next store, another famous genre shop and the most book-jammed of them all, so booked up, I tremble. What if my single effort drowns beneath the roiling paper-and-board sea of stock, like a small child in a big swamp? Oh well. I buy Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts.

Store number four, late afternoon, rain low across the sky. I walk in, start my spiel: “ . . . and it’ll be out in March 2011 and it’s available through Ingram—”

“Ingram” is a black magic word. The store owner’s head balloons and explodes the second it’s spoken, a match to a short fuse  Bone, blood, and gray everywhere, windows shatter, shelves topple.

I stagger out the smoking door, my garments charred and shredded: “Mmm. Guess not everyone gets their books through Ingram.” Can’t know everything, can I? I say, my chin aloft, chipper with hope. Onward, Jeeves, onward!

By the time I cross the street to the next, last store, I’m miraculously cleaned up. It goes so smoothly, I now remember nothing of what I said, probably a good thing. By now I’m out of money, the only real book I want is Le Carre’s latest, but I must walk out one book less and pray I haven’t left a retailer’s resentment behind with my creation.

On Thanksgiving, I drop a copy at an excellent store in Burbank and later, back up here, leave one at my favorite independent local store, then another at a store in downtown Berkeley, which may not work because the store’s new fiction section is a small, discrete, huddled, facing away from the
waves and walls of used books rising behind it.

You try this, you try that. If something works, you try it again. If it doesn’t, try something else. It’s not the falling down, the slammed doors. It’s the not getting up, not knocking at the next
door. Sometimes they say yes. Nobody loses all the time.

Checks from my business haven’t arrived in for awhile, so spending is a frozen stream, but the hunt goes on, the free things I can do, whether by strung-together tin cans or Internet.  Bloggers and bookstore sites, each gets the news release, then is placed on two lists, one in Word, the other in the e-mail address book. I receive my first blurb, into the news release it goes. I sit at a bar, my book and cards displayed. Like the hunter, I watch for movement, my ears open and perking: “Say, pal, what’s that you got there?”

Maybe you’ll see me, my eyes fevered and focus, my hidden tale curling a grin my face, eager to be told. Maybe you should ask. Many have. Get in line. Maybe I’ll buy you a beer.

(re-edited 12/11/10)





Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by Author


Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 15, 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. Other essays and postings can also be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.