The Rebirth of Literature

The word "genius" is tossed around lightly these days.  And perhaps nowhere more so than in the ever hyperbolic world of contemporary fiction.  It's the literary equivalent of academia's "grade inflation" and it sickens me.

After all, once we start referring to the rank amateur work of "writers" such as James Joyce, William Shakespeare, or Homer as genius, we devalue the very word itself.

Which is why I've decided to refer to my new novel Die Like a Girl as ultra-premium genius.

It's the story of...

Who the fuck am I kidding?  It's not a story, it's the freakin' divine reanimation of the bloated adverb-ridden corpse of American literature.  Die Like a Girl doesn't just transcend genres, it humiliates them.  With extreme prejudice.  Chuck Norris-style.

Now you might think that I'd charge something like $9,999,999,999.02 for such a work.  And I would.  Except, then you wouldn't buy it.  (At least not as an ebook.)  So instead, I'm going to give it away for FREE.  Actually, I'm giving it away for BETTER THAN FREE.

And by "better than free," I mean $2.99.

How is that better than free?

Imagine you have a coupon for a free latte at a local coffee house in your pants pocket.  The coupon expires today, but you still have seven minutes until closing, so you should be fine... Except, on the way to the coffee house, you happen to stroll across the International Date Line, and suddenly it's not Tuesday anymore, but Wednesday, and the coupon in your pants is expired.  Worse yet, the giggles of the cute barista behind the counter as you enter the store cue you into the startling fact that you're not even wearing pants.

So, in summary, if aforementioned latte costs $3.57, and my novel costs $2.99.  You just made 58 cents.

Do the math, bitches:

(Don't forget to carry the remainder.)

Anyway, here's the blurb:

Fiona Blacklock sells drugs.  Not the hard stuff, but a rare hybrid strain of thousand-dollar-an-ounce marijuana called Biodiesel.  Given that she lives in the left-wing Mecca of Portland, Oregon, the cops mostly just look the other way—if they're not looking to score a little herb themselves.

Sure, she's fifty grand in debt to a psychopathic loan shark named Barry the Hippie, but other than that, it's really not a bad gig… that is, until she agrees to take emo pop star Finn "The Well-Coiffed Penis" Jameson along on a drug deal so that he can research a new indie film role.  A drug deal that goes very very wrong.

Now Fiona has to figure out who set her up, who's blackmailing who, where to environmentally dispose of a disemboweled corpse, how to seduce the single most attractive man in Hollywood… and, most importantly, whom to kill next.

(Praise for Jonathan Selwood's first novel "The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse"):

"Read this book, because laughing yourself to death is the second best way to go."—Arthur Nersesian

"Selwood's laugh-out-loud madcap debut mocks today's digitized, hard-sell, sex-obsessed world as it teeters 'somewhere between carnival and riot.'"—Booklist

"[Selwood] could be the next big kinda underground but still really marketable Chuck Palahniuk-type author."—Bookcritics

Where the F#%k is Godot?

Crocus in my yard saying "fuck you" to winter.

I'm done waiting.

Like most authors, my life has been utterly defined by waiting.

From the early years sending out short stories to lit mags and waiting up to TWO YEARS for a rejection (cough, Zoetrope, cough cough).

To sending out queries and sample chapters of my novel month after month trying to get an agent.

To submitting to publishers and waiting a year for my first novel NOT to sell, and then another eight months for my second novel to finally sell.

Of course, once the novel did sell, I only had to wait another 18 months or so for it to actually hit bookstores (and even then, they arrived late).  And once the month or two of promotion for the new novel was over, I went back to... waiting.

If you were to ask me what the worst part about being a writer is, I'd have to say it's the waiting (and obviously, the worst part of the waiting is the waiting to get paid).  And while there are some significant downsides to the new ebook revolution, the biggest UPSIDE is that the waiting is over.

I can put an ebook online any time I freakin' want to (instead of waiting 18 months for a publisher to put it out) and get paid with each individual sale (as opposed to waiting for years to see if royalties will ever appear... which, due to creative accounting, they won't).

The waiting is over.

Fuck Godot.

Paper is the Tool of the Tool

A Lovely Clearcut

Fuck paper.

There.  I said it.

Whenever I tell people that I'm switching to e-books, they either:

A) Blather on for a good ten minutes praising the miracle that is the Kindle.

or

B) Tell me that while they've never even TRIED a Kindle, they just love the feel of a real book and could never imagine switching.

(Actually, there is a "C) With Netflix streaming 24/7, who needs a book?," but we'll ignore those ignoble people.)

In any case, if you've never tried a Kindle, how can you so vehemently defend print?  I mean, I'm sure when electric light came in and replaced whale oil lanterns as a source of illumination, there were plenty of people who challenged the change--waxing nostalgic about the stench of burning rancid marine oil or lamenting the decline of the lucrative whaling industry.  But once they TRIED electric light, they quickly changed their minds.

And really, when it comes down to it, how good are print books as a reading format?  I personally hate reading hardcovers, because they're just awkward.  And while there are a few "acid-free" books coming out that will last awhile, most books are starting to decay before you even bring them home from the store.  (That "smell" of a book that whale oil-lovers are always going on about is really just the stench of literary compost).  And as for the environmental angle--just look at the freakin' clearcut picture.  Most readers don't understand that with the current publishing system, it's not just the paper books you buy contributing to the environmental apocalypse, but all the millions of copies that don't sell and get "pulped" (or half-assed recycled).

Sure, there will probably always be a romantic soft spot for paper books, just like there's still a romantic soft spot for ye olde timey oil lamps.  But for the most part, the paper book is dead.  And anyone who defends it hates whales.

Too Many F#%king F#%ks

Sexy Pictures Increase Blog Traffic

My soon to be self-published new crime novel is about a low-level marijuana grower here in Portland, Oregon who is almost killed in a drug deal gone horribly wrong.  She subsequently manhandles, maims, and murders a staggeringly large number of people in an effort to figure out who set her up.  It's filled with graphic violence, torture, excessive illegal drug use, and, yes, even a (tasteful) male mouth-rape scene.

There may have been a time when such things were shocking, but these days, crime readers have been primed to expect and accept the most disturbing (not to mention disgusting) situations imaginable.  Hell, even prime time television is showing torture and male mouth-rape these days (C.S.I., The Shield... etc.)  But you know what mainstream television and modern crime novels are not showing?  Profanity.

If you've ever spent any time hanging out with real criminals, you noticed rather quickly that they f#%king swear all the m#th%rf#%cking c#%$ksu#$ing time.  It seems like most crime novelists (and crime TV show writers) spend all their "research" time hanging out with cops and lawyers.  Given that I spent most of my slightly wayward youth trying to avoid cops and lawyers, I took another route to my research.  I hung out with honest-to-God criminals.

And you know what?  They swear like a m#$therf#%king #$%@&#$%s prolapsed @$%@#$ Tijuana donkey @#$#@@$% Cincinnati soft-serve @#%#$##@ #@$ #$^#^# SpongeBob Squarepants.

So when I wrote my soon to be self-published crime novel, I went ahead and left in the profanity in an effort to be "authentic."  And the #%$@$$@$% hell if I'm gonna take it out...

...Except, I am going to take it out.  Or at least 80% of it (there really is a pantload of cussin' in there).

It was actually my sister who got me to see the light with her wise words: "There's too much profanity in your novel."  If it had been anyone else, I probably would have dismissed the criticism and kept on #$%#$%, but not only is my sister a huge crime fiction fan, but she... Well, she's my sister.  So I went back through the manuscript and underlined every word of profanity, only to find that conjugations of the (ever conjugal) word f#%k appear at a rate of over four per page.  And that's just f#%k.  You should have seen how many times I used #$^&#%%#$%.

Rereading the book with non-#%$#%^*$ eyes, I can see that all this f#%king is just too much.  It's a case where the "truth" (i.e., the verbal practices of real drug dealers) fails as fiction.  It's too $%#$^# monotonous.

So, long story long, I'm taking out at least 80% of the profanity.  Not because the publishing house "Man" is making me, but because my sister told me to.  And she's right.

You got a f#%king problem with that?

Self-Publishing: Step 1

Buy a Kindle.

Duh.  If I'm gonna publish my work on Kindle, I need to actually use a Kindle.  I've played with the Kindle app on my iPod and briefly looked at my mother's old one, but Amazon is betting their new line of affordable Kindles will be the tipping point in e-book publishing.  I think they're right.

Of course, the new Kindles aren't actually out yet, so I still have to wait for mine to ship.  I went with the $99 Kindle Touch e-ink one, because I hate reading on a backlit screen (I spend all day on my laptop, anyway) and Gizmodo recommended it.

Why Kindle?  As far as I can tell, it's the easiest way to electronically self-publish as well as the most popular.  Plus, anything I publish on Kindle will show up on Amazon right next to my "traditionally published" novel The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse.

Wuh?

I'm changing my website to more of a blog format, and figured I might as well import the old blog posts from terminalalienation.com.

Mostly, because they're sheer genius...

Literary Hypertrophy

As this rare 1926 photo of James Joyce on his way home from the local Zurich gymnasium shows, literary mastery and muscular hypertrophy were once considered inseparable traits.

In his non-fiction work The Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway not only defends his (at the time) controversial decision to join PETA, but states unequivocally that "any writer worth his salt should be able to wrestle a full-grown cape buffalo to the ground and bench at least twice his body weight."

Sadly, gone are the days when fifteen hundred pound bench/squat/deadlift totals were a requirement to win the Nobel.  I mean, just take a look at this Swedish National Archive photo of poet Pablo Neruda pulling 650+ pounds in Stockholm...

These days it seems like every writer is just sitting on their ass or (worse) running marathons.  Sure, Michael Chabon still brings his A-game to the gym...

 

But what about the Jonathans (i.e., Lethem, Safran Foer, Frazen, Selwood)?

Maybe if we can all stop Twittering on our iPhones and get back to the basics--to the 22-inch biceps of writers like Mark "The Machine" Twain--we can make literature MATTER again.

Hell, look at this recent picture of J.K. Rowling.  It sure worked for her...