Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Me, Steve Perry, Fritz Leiber and why I won’t write about kids on bikes in the 80s

This is a weird post (maybe the title could have forewarned you) and it is a part of something larger I’ve been trying to put into words these last few months. It has to do with marketing, platforms and brands, and writing for a living – indeed, it is the sort of post I usually write once or twice a month for my Patrons, under the header of Nuts & Bolts.
But I’m doing it open because… well, because.

We were discussing nostalgia and exploitation, yesterday, with some friends that have been binge-watching the third season of Stranger Things. The series has been called exploitative and manipulative by some. It ticks all the right boxes, and it settles in a general trend that builds commercial success on the nostalgia for the ’80s by people that are too young to actually remember them.

And as we were talking, a song started playing in my mind…

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Walking back from the carnage

I was talking about walking and hiking with some friends, today. It all started with the fact that a newspaper published an article claiming “walking is for the middle aged, hiking is cool”.
As I never had a problem with being uncool, and indeed I was not cool back when not being cool was not considered cool yet, I accept my role as a walker, and said as much.
From there we went on talking about how walking (or hiking, if you’re cool) is an excellent way for coping with trauma.
I walked miles and miles after my mother’s death, and after my father.
I find walking a good solution to recharge my batteries, and react to those periodic bouts of depression that sometimes come.

And there’s science behind it!

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Discussing mummy resurrection practices on the devil’s radio

One of the things that will never cease to surprise me about living in a small community, is the way in which news and (mostly) gossip travel fast.
Maybe that’s the reason why you can’t get high-speed internet connections here: they are superfluous, as gossip travels faster than your average fiberoptic cable, and does not need servers of platforms except for the bench outside of the local bar, and the doctor’s waiting room.

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Forty in twenty-eight

I have just posted my 40th submission of 2019 – a 3000-words science fiction story. This being the 28th week of the year, it means I’ve been submitting 1.4285 stories per week. That’s a lot.
And yet I’d like to write more, and submit more.
My current bounce rate is pretty high – of the 40 stories I submitted, I sold 9 and have six still out waiting for an evaluation.
It’s not bad, but there is ample space for improvement.
I have no illusion of ever becoming a 100% sales writer, but it would be nice to sell more.
I’ll work on it.


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Who are we writing for?

I caught a snippet of a discussion in which I was not really involved, yesterday, about the two souls of fantasy fighting each other.
The crux of the contention was, should writers play for the high-brow, sophisticated readers, or should they be down-and-dirty, catering for the lowest common denominator?

Which is a nice conceptual framework, and I guess an interesting topic for discussion while we wait for the takeaway delivery boy to bring us our Szechwan dumplings and our fried rice. But once the food is on the table, the discussion becomes irrelevant.

This is an important thing to keep in mind – we that write do love talking about our craft. The tricks of the trade, the stumbling blocks and the shortcuts, that time I wrote 8000 words in a single night and the editor loved it… it’s part of our tribal practices, like dancing around the fire and throwing the kids through the jaws of a shark to signify they are now men.
Rituals.

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