Last Word & Park City Peaks

ByJohn Brown

LastWordGameMy youngest’s birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year. We asked her what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to go to a hotel to swim and then play a game as a family, so Nellie and I went to work. Nellie got the game. I got the hotel. Both were great.

The game was Last Word by Buffalo Games Inc. It’s fairly simple. There are subject cards with categories on them like “vegetables,” “breeds of dogs,” or “places you find water.”  Then there are letter cards. Each player gets a subject card.

The round starts when someone flips over a letter card. If you can think of a word that starts with that letter in your category, you shout it out, slam your subject card down, and then everyone else tries to come up with words that start with that letter and fit the category.  Or you try to think of words in someone else’s category if they beat you to it.  There’s no order to it–you just shout out the words as they come to your head.  The last one to come up with a word before the timer buzzes wins that round. The twist that makes it so fun, however, is that the timer is random.

You can play individually, in teams, or some mix (our youngest and I teamed up). Because of the random timer, anyone who can think up a word can play, which means our daughter who is eight could compete with the one that was seventeen.

We had a great time. One of the funniest things about it is that everyone is desperately trying to come up with words. Some fit, some don’t. Some don’t even exist. For example, when we did the category “male names,” number 3 shouted out “Mancake.” We couldn’t stop laughing. I think that one is going to enter the family vocabulary.

ParkCityPeaksHotelWe also had a great time at the Park City Peaks hotel. As far as rooms go, they were good rooms. The bed was a bit too soft for me, but perfect for my wife. We got them for $65 a night, which isn’t bad at all. But it was the pool that made the experience. 

The pool is an actual pool, not the big bathtubs some newer hotels offer. For example, the deep end is six feet deep. But the cool thing is that half of it is indoors and half of it is out. And the outdoor portion is heated. There’s also a large heated hot tub outside as well. In the picture it’s the thing producing the long row of steam in the back.

It helped that we didn’t have much snow so the place wasn’t crawling with skiers. In fact, we had the pool mostly to ourselves. So imagine: there we were on a November night in this alpine setting, the steam rising off the water, swimming and horsing around underneath the winter stars. It was marvelous. You can be sure we’re going back.

BTW, we had Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. Let me recommend this to you. It makes the day a breeze. You can still have your homemade turkey dinner, but picking up the turkey  a few days after the holiday allows you to get them for cheap, cheap, cheap.

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    The average American reads 17 books per year

    ByJohn Brown

    Americans and Reading

    The Pew Research Center has just published their findings on reading in America. It’s called “The Rise of E-reading“. There’s a LOT of fascinating information in the report. Here’s a taste:

    1. Americans 18 and older read on average 17 books each year. 19% say they don’t read any books at all. Only 5% say they read more than 50.
    2. Fewer Americans are reading books now than in 1978.
    3. 64% of respondents said they find the books they read from recommendations from family members, friends, or co-workers.
    4. The average reader of e-books read 24 books (the mean number) in the past 12 months; the average non-e-book consumer read an average of 15.

    Building an Audience

    I also want to recommend this week’s post by Kris Rusch on Audience. She has a number of interesting things to say about the dream of being a best seller and building an audience. The money quote comes as she refers to a post by Tracy Hickman:

    “The point here is that you do not have to feel as though you are in competition with the entire world. You don’t NEED the entire world to be a successful writer. What you need is an audience—just enough of an audience, mind you—who reads your words, is changed by them and wants to come back for more.”

    An audience. More importantly, an audience that reads and “is changed by” your words. Not an audience who loves them, not even an audience who likes them. An audience who is changed by them, and because of that experience, “wants to come back for more.”

    Simple. Important. Usually forgotten.

    She talks about lots more. Read the whole thing.

    My thoughts?

    First, there’s no need for authors or readers to worry about wading through “crap.”

    According to Pew, readers only read 15 or 24 books a year on average.  That’s not a lot of books.

    More importantly, it takes about 3 seconds to get a lead for a good book.  You hear something from a friend or family member, you look at the USA Today best sellers list, you browse a few books at a store or online, you read a blog and suddenly you’ve found a book. 

    Readers fill up their book reading slots much more quickly than they can ever empty them.  That’s why we all have years of reading in our queues.

    It doesn’t matter that there are millions of other books out there, a good majority of which might have been written by monkeys. There’s no need for authors to worry that readers will have to wade through a mountain of crap to find a good book. They don’t need to because they have leads for good books coming out their ears.

    Second, people purchase books that friends, family, and co-workers love.

    Which means that when you deliver a great experience to one person, it’s going to ripple out. It’s probably not going to be linear. It’s probably going to ripple out like viruses do into different population pockets. Or seeds do into different environments. It will run through one pocket, make a jump to one or more others, or it may not jump at all. Some pockets are big, some are small.

    The way to keep a virus going is to release it in a lot of places where it’s likely to thrive or in places that a lot of people travel through. And as Kris points out, writing is all about repeat business–making sure you have a stream of good product (something I hope to rectify with my own writing this year).

    Bottom line: the best way to build your writing business is to simply write the best book you can, and keep them coming.

    Third, the market is BIG. 

    If you read Rusch’s and Hickman’s articles, you’ll see that even the mega sellers only reach a fraction of those who read. This is reinforced by the statement made by Thomas McCormack, former CEO of St. Martin’s that you can read here. So just because 100,000 people read one book doesn’t mean 100,000 others won’t read mine.  

    Moreover, e-books and online shopping are broadening distribution. Brick and mortar stores only have so many slots for books. Every 8-12 weeks they rotate the old books out (like 12 weeks is old) and replace them with the new ones, unless, of course, your book is selling very well and gets “modeled” at the store.  The point is: when you only display a few books at a time, those books will get bigger sales numbers. This happens because there isn’t anything else to purchase.

    But you don’t have that limitation with e-books and online shopping. Nothing rotates out of the store. Sure, things rotate on and off the best seller lists. But the books are always there. With an ever growing selection, there won’t be as many mega sellers.  Publishers Weekly discusses this trend in their 2011 Facts & Figures articles, which list best-seller numbers (make sure you click through to the Trade Paperback article as well). The same thing has happened with TV station viewership with the explosion of channels, DVDs, and online streaming. Same thing happened with music.

    What this means is each author has a better chance of getting his or her books to those who will love them. We’ll still have best-sellers. But we’ll also have a lot more medium sellers as well. And that’s great for authors everywhere.

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  • The Road by Cormac McCarthy

    ByJohn Brown

    If I’d known Cormac McCarthy’s The Road had won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007, I might not have picked it up. So many books that have won the award just bore my underpowered literary sensibilities to death. Luckily, I’d listened to McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses a few years ago and enjoyed it. So when I saw the audio book, performed by Tom Stechschulte, in the library I checked it out. I’m so glad I did.

    The story is set in the Eastern US (although you don’t learn that into well into the book, and then only by one reference to them traveling through “the Piedmont”) years after a holocaust (meteor, nuclear, a caldera–it’s not ever really confirmed) and the resulting choas that turns America in a bleak place of ash and death. A father and son travel a mostly deserted road south to warmer weather, pushing a grocery cart with their few belongings. The father’s sick; he might be dying. And if he dies, we know the boy will die too because there’s nothing to eat but tins of what they can scavenge from houses that were ransacked and abandoned years before. And because others who survived have turned to hunting and eating people.

    This is an incredible story about the relationship between this father and son and the dangers they face. McCarthy tells the story in plain detail. In fact, his understatement and attention to detail in this terrible landscape make it all the more powerful. Stechschulte’s reading is perfect.

    The film is due out in 2009 and features Viggo Mortensen. But I wouldn’t wait for the movie if I were you. I’d get the book now. Or the recording. I couldn’t put this tale down. I’m betting you won’t be able to either.

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    Jon Ronson, mild-mannered pal of extremists

    ByJohn Brown

    Take a guy who does humorous journalism, but not in the sneering sort of way, and send him out to find out more about extremists (KKK, Islamicists, etc.) and conspiracy theories (he didn’t really believe in the Bildeburgers…until he was followed), and what do you get?

    Well, you get British journalist Jon Ronson.

    I just listened to a wonderful interview with him on Radio West.

    Don’t miss it.

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    One of Orson Card’s best essays

    ByJohn Brown

    Scott Card recently wrote “Marriage needs lots of humor.” It’s an awful title for one of the best articles of his that I’ve ever read.

    I’m not going to spoil it for you. But I will say that I’ve found that it’s the small things that seem to make the biggest difference in relationships. And this is one of those small things that packs a HUGE punch. But not until this article did I realize it.

    And for you writers who are wanting insights on what makes characters interesting and sympathetic–there’s a little treasure trove here for you as well.

    Enjoy!

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  • “Somewhere My Love” by Stephen Mark Rainey

    ByJohn Brown

    The latest issue of Intergalactic Medicine Show just hit the net. Of course, I don’t have time to read. But how can I help myself when Mark Rainey’s “Somewhere My Love”  starts with this line: “She lived in our town’s one and only haunted house.”

    What a hook!

    And soon I found myself reading a wonderful story about a boy and a teacher, who happens to be a witch.

    But the kind of witch Rainey writes about is not some gal with warts and a black hat. Nor is she some kind of Alice Hoffman Practical Magic type.

    She’s a Rainey witch.

    And this tale is about a boy caught in her class in school. I loved it. It evoked perfectly how some teachers affect us boys. I haven’t read any of the other stories in this issue yet. But I can still say the measley $2.50 subscription for issue 12 is worth it if only so you can read this one story. Besides, even if you don’t have time to read it, scroll down on the TOC and you’ll see you don’t have to–you can listen to Scott Card read the thing to you.

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  • No. I’m Fine by Howard and Sandra Tayler

    ByJohn Brown

    Robison_Wells____Green_Hills_Photography_0-201x300Sometimes it’s the small things that make the most difference.

    Like sharing an issue you might be dealing with.

    I was once at a writer’s retreat at a home above the Sundance ski resort. I’d be asked to present to some of the other writers there. Robison Wells, who writes awesome YA,  was also presenting. He talked about marketing and plot, but the presentation that was probably most memorable was the one he gave on the obsessive compulsive disorder he deals with.

    He started off by telling us folks really didn’t know what they were talking about when they talked about obsessive compulsive disorder. He described it this way. He said he and his wife were sitting on the couch watching TV one evening. She said she was craving some ice cream, orangesicles, I think. He replied that he was craving banging his head into the wall. She anticipated some delicious ice cream. He anticipated some delicious head whacking. He then pointed at the wall behind all of us and said that it would feel so good to bang his head on the corner of the wall behind us. Needless to say, he had our attention.

    He went on to explain more about this condition and mental illness in general and urged us, when we wrote about it, to get it right. To be accurate. To not turn such conditions into happy-happy super powers, nor to make them into things to be feared.

    By the way, Robison had a fine little dog with him. Not some yapper to carry about in a purse, but a nice little companion. I keep wanting to call her Abby, but I know that’s not its name. We learned that his dog was trained to watch him and remind him to take his meds. It appeared that Robison would sometimes rationalize away doing that.

    Robison isn’t crazy. We didn’t have a dangerous wild man among us. He’s just a guy who has to deal with some kinks in his hoses.

    HowardTayler2So what happened next? Well, nothing. We had a great retreat and went home. But the story doesn’t end there. See, if an issue is taboo, it becomes very difficult to deal with it. As an individual, a couple, a family, a community. In fact, hiding something like this only creates more problems. For example, if Robison ever says he’s going out to pick up some hammers, we  now know that we probably ought to have someone go with him (grin). So Robison not only wanted to educate us, he also wanted to help bring mental illness out of the dark. And he’s talked about this issue in a number of different places.

    Howard Tayler, the cartoonist, heard him talk about the self-harm once. He saw the good being open did and decided to write a bit about some things he has to deal with. Howard’s got a tricky bit of depression he has to manage. Sandra, Howard’s wife, decided to add to it what it was like being married to someone with such an issue.

    Now, I didn’t know the Taylers had written anything up until last week at Comic Con. During the event a woman talked to me. In our conversation she indicated that she’d been wrangling with some mental crap, but that Howard’s comments about his had helped her. We continued with our discussion, and she left. On Friday evening after the expo for the Salt Lake City Comic Con had closed, I walked around the event floor, chatting with some folks I hadn’t had time to visit during the event. I stopped at Howard’s booth and said hello to him and Sandra. They were busy, and I didn’t stay long, but as I went to walk away, I thought I should pass on what the woman had said. So I did. I didn’t know what comments she was talking about. All I knew was that Howard had helped her. And I wanted to make sure he knew it.

    SandraTaylerWe talked some more as they tried to clean up their booth before Howard had to run off to a panel. Then Howard handed me “No. I’m Fine”.  It’s a little 15-page booklet that contains the title story, written by Howard, plus the essay “Married to Depression” by Sandra, his wife.

    The story is an excellent short that gives you the feeling of what’s it like to be dealing with one form of the bugger. The essay reveals a bit of what it’s like as the spouse and recommends some action. But the thing I found so wonderful about both the story and the essay was the example of tender love in the midst of adversity.

    I’m a writer. I can’t help but be drawn to potential characters and stories. The view we get of these two in this booklet is good stuff to build some characters on. Of course, that’s not the reason to read the booklet. The reason is because what they share is fascinating and tender—it’s good drama—and, if you or someone you know is dealing with these issues, it just might help.

    Go read “No. I’m Fine” and “Married to Depression”. You’ll be glad you did.

    While we’re talking about this, those of you who have been following this blog know that I’ve had a few dust-ups with depression myself. I wrote about it and the tools I used to deal with it then and when it tries to come back to town. After reading the Tayler’s stuff, you’ll want to look at it as well.

    Edit 9/14: Addeded links to “Married to Depression”

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