Serial Fiction

I should have an online gallery to curate of ongoing serial fiction hitting different niches, with a three-quarters-in schedule for dead tree format.

Really.

The print industry is currently up shit creek. The economy, in general, is also up the river and possibly trying to use every available drowned or drowning body as an impromptu life raft. Strikes and other complications have temporarily hobbled the television and film markets (though we're drifting out of that one... sort of).

So, recreate the traditional text-with-spot-illustration serial anthology format, for an online venue. Free. Free is important, because entertainment is never product, but lure. The product is format, not content.

Three serials in widely differing styles, hitting very deliberately and shamelessly three alternate demographics. No genre-bending, no reinventing the wheel, just hitting all the buttons on each respective panel and being proud to do so. The exact opposite of aping the Silver Fork and pretending it's the only legitimate genre of literariness. Total different modes, different looks and speeds.

Have a forum for each, and a regular release schedule. Ask questions of the audience early on. Shift gears as necessary. Author, be not proud. Tailor and re-tailor the work release by release, excerpt by excerpt. Release blocks of excerpts via torrent every tenth of the way through. Collect each serial on its own around the quarter-mark of completion in serial form, released as Print on Demand.

The fourth block can be reserved for the periodic one-off piece. Short fiction, poetry, epistolary riffs, essays, what have you.

With an eclectic release on the done-in-one pieces, you can cycle in a new serial three or four releases before one of the others comes to an end. With an abrupt finish, a reader can comfortably drift off or stop cold, but with new serials, new threads, being stitched into the fabric of their habits before the old lines run out they have to come back.

Split the actual sales' money with the writers and artists, try to keep computery concerns to a minimum, to avoid hiring extraneous people, and if something stops working for more than a month, drop it like a hot potato full of horrible eye-bleed diseases.

*****

And, yes, Toy to the World is slowly coming towards something. And it looks very good. It's that intelligent twelve year-old variable market, which simply means it's appropriate for children if the children in question aren't idiots and you aren't the sort of adult who thinks of children as idiots. It isn't fun for adults because we are laughing over the children's heads, or behind their backs, either, but - hopefully - because there are incredible avenues of complexity in the simplest structures. Children aren't idiots, by and large, but they lack the knack for complexity that adults have cultivated over their lengthier stays on the planet. Toy, the story of a mad god who chooses a nebbish engineer to prove himself as his god's favorite and most deserving, sees us through drug abuse, child abuse, child slavery, sexism, the death penalty, friendship, trust, love, and politics. It has a fox, some horses, and a boat. There is dancing. And I promise you it won't pull its punches or telegraph its jokes.

I have no interest in writing fiction that treats anyone like the hobbled, slow sector of readership, be they young or old. Years don't make you passe, after all; that's something you do to yourself.

Right Brain, Clyde

Wonder Woman is a transsexual. We have no confirmation of her genitals, and she is a clay doll from a sterile superhuman race, brought to life through magic and hope. She is a woman only because she is responded to as a woman, and declares herself one.

The idea particle game, that ideas are flinging through the aether as sometimes they hit a brilliant brain and brilliant things are done with them, but sometimes they hit a less-than-capable brain and become… To apply it to reality is genuinely insulting, though; people generate their own ideas and executions. Credit creators.

It’s amazingly fun to not require a cane any longer.

Not sure which are worse: people who think if people exactly like them ran things, there would be no problems, or those who believe it should be people not like them.

My only urges in the direction of (working in) publishing, are a desire to share what I think is great work, and the possibility that I could resurrect the Julie Schwarz Apes Make it Better method.

If you are going to complain about the government money spent on the arts, think about the budget spent on destroying and isolating stuff (that would be, “What is the war budget, for four hundred, Alex?”).

Adult” is probably best being self-defined. “Love,” also. But, possibly not “enough.”

Biographical notes on Donatien Alphonse Fancoise, the Marquis de Sade, are often unintentionally hilarious.

If I am going to continue not recognizing people who know me, I should at least do the polite thing and perfect lying about it.

My optimism is pretty much driven by indignation. Bad things are going to happen, but, y’know, unfuck’em.

The only difference in my approach between writing for a general/adult audience and writing for the YA market (and, yes, one is a market and the other, audience) is that with YA stuff, I think a bit more attention should be paid to making sure no reader feels left out.

Shirley Jackson wrote The Lottery in two hours, waiting for someone to come home.

I actually prefer readings that have a gigantic number of people, each firing on all – but different – cylinders. So, to Orlando White, Heid Erdrich, Sherwin Bitsui, LeAnne Howe, Linda Hogan, Santee Frazier, Simon Ortiz, Allison Hedge Coke, and everybody else who made that Trickster Gallery gig work, thank you! Also, thanks to the audience, who were quite good as well.

If everyone can't come, it ain't worth going.

Blatant Hyping

My good friend, co-conspirator, and sometime boss, Daniel Louis Rappaport has a new site up to show his mad skillz, full of music and graphics and designy things.

And, speaking of incredible skillsets and budgets beyond yours truly, filmmaker Aaron Schiebner has managed not to turn me into a vegan or vegetarian, but to appreciate eating meat even more. Which, isn't quite his goal, but it is a testament to the passion and significance he brings out in his subjects.

While,general badass Carl Soto has made me appreciate meat (and blood, and entertainment... and cake) more than before with his giddy indulgence in projects like these:







And Mindless Ones is full of interesting stuff that probably shouldn't fill me with the passion and significance vibes it does. Comics are good for you and good comics considerations are few and far between, so Mindless Ones is like that supercool edgy but TV-friendly outpost at the brink of madness. Like DS9. And may be partly made of meat, blood, and cake - I haven't confirmed.

Here, There, and in Print

Just a reminder that I'm reading with Sherwin Bitsui, Kim Blaeser, Heid Erdrich, Santee Frazier, Diane Glancy, Allison Hedge Coke, Gordon Henry, Linda Hogan, LeAnne Howe, Patricia Lear, Lara Mann, Molly McGlennan, Simon Ortiz, and Orlando White during AWP in mere days! For free, even!

All those wonderful voices (and me) for free!

February 12, 2009, 6-8 p.m.


Chicago American Indian Center, Trickster Gallery
1630 W Wilson Ave Chicago, IL 60640, Chicago, IL


Trickster Gallery

American Indian Center - Chicago

Also, there is an excerpt from my ambient fiction Juliana in the new Many Mountains Moving, out now.