underWater desert Blogging

shooter the movie...?

i don't remember authorizing this under our non-existent creative commons limited release license, but i laughed nevertheless.  i was especially happy when the director thanks his trusty pellet gun.

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happenings

chapter 5 is up on wading.  it is now starting to develop.  that is the last chapter i'm going to write before submitting the proposal.  next step will be to develop the narrative outline, then i need to write the summary section, and finally i need to revisit some of what is written to refine some of the themes and clean it all up.  then it is off to the agent. 

also will be working on a few pieces i'd like to publish in some online magazines.  i'm planning four pieces in a series i'd like to title: How International Law is Like My Yoga Studio.  we'll see how they play out, but I'll be working on them over the weekend. 

it will be a writing weekend since i'm working on my piece of a long paper we're working on for my international live client lab that should be pretty decent stuff. 

enjoy life

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OK

things are settling down, post white house fiasco, post ACL, post-just-post.  its 6:20.  i'm still up.  i've been writing and editing.  cam did some fantastic work on dudes.  i spent a bunch of time with that tonight. 

then, finally, i have a rough of chapter 4 for wading.  feel decent about it.  the narrative and the voice and the style is beginning to coagulate -- for better or worse.  tell me of your opinions.

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spring cleaning a few months late

i have made some changes round the ole' site.  i have mostly added a few things that need me to go back and add flesh so that they will fill out.  it will happen soon enough. 

the main thing that i wanted to point out is that i have added links to the working section of the book:  Wading Into a Khacki Sea.  it will be my 1L memior book and i will be posting many of my working documents online, until and if it gets sold.  feel free to comment on them, actually please give me feed back when they start popping up since that is why i'm putting it up.

in denver now.

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unable to wiggle from under the shadow of my failed writing career

so the book world is weird.  we finally got our royalties statement today.  it came 4.5 months after the royalties period ended.  what takes them so long i do not understand.  then when we got it they took the amount of books that they had sold to booksellers and discounted that amount by 34%.  that means that SMP has sold 65k books to booksellers and they think that 34% of those may come back to them.  booksellers are free to return books in that it is basically a consignment industry.  that means that only 66% of what SMP sold to booksellers went towards my royalties statement.  that was not enough to cover the advance in that period.  the kicker is not that they withheld 34% of what they sold to booksellers.  that i can understand.  they are covering themselves.  what i do not understand and cannot even comprehend is why it took them 4.5 months to tell me this.  how hard is it to ask the fucking warehouseman, "hey jim how many shooters have we shipped?"  then jim looks it up on his green and black terminal and says, "looks like we shipped 65k of them boss."  then they do the math and send me the fucking report.  does that really take four months?

if they were going to take four months wouldn't it make much more sense that they would be accounting for what the booksellers sold to customers.  and if that was the case then they wouldn't really have a leg to stand on with regards to the withholding of 34% of the books in that they would know exactly how many books went out the doors in customer's hands and then what remained with the booksellers they could withhold so when they return.  that is what would make a hell of a lot more sense to me.

furthermore, why can't they know how many books have gone out the door, at least for the big sellers:  amazon, bn and ingram (the supplier who pushes books to borders and many independent booksellers and who i can call right now to have an "as of yesterday" update of how many books i've sold year-to-date or whatever).  that most likely represents at least 75% of our sales.  if they had an accurate accounting from those companies of how many books out the door they could discount by 5% or something for customer returns to booksellers and then the remaining 25% of independent booksellers who it wouldn't be so easy to get accountings from, you just discount those by 34%.

i'm sure that there is a reason why they do this.  i'm sure that it is something akin to "it's always the way we've done it."  i don't think that that will continue to work.  there are so many things wrong with the book world.  today's fiasco really, truly reinforces my desire to start my own publishing house in the future and do things correctly. 

however maybe if i'm on that side of the aisle i will not be so rushed to push the $ out the door, and will probably like the fact that i can let it sit in my hedge fund for 4.5 months accruing interest for me....and that is what it all boils down to ladies and gentleman.

the significance of the ruling is that i will not really get to travel this summer.  it also means that i'm going to need a decent amount of $ from kay to be able to work for her and that i will have to work for her first and then go to austin.  that isn't really that big of a deal, but at least i can really plan my summer now.

if only i could pay my taxes i would be really OK....but alas that would be too easy. 

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Denied

Well our editor at SMP has passed on our next book.  "There isn't a market for that type of thing."  Although in yesterday's NYT's there was a big piece on the op-ed pages about the very thing we are talking about.  But they want to do another book with us.  But they don't know exactly what they are looking for.  But they haven't officially passed on the book.  That is a lot of flippin' butt's.  So we will talk with our editor next week and I'm not sure what we will get out of the conversation.  Are they looking for a different non-fiction book?  Are they looking for a fiction book?  Not sure.  We will take the proposal we have to the street next week after that conversation and see what becomes of it. 

All I know is that I'm going to law school and for the first time in a year and a half I have focus and direction.  For all my talk of embracing the ambiguity of the situation I didn't and I do feel better now that I have some direction.  Honestly, it isn't the direction that I would have liked, but it is still direction.

The movie deal is still out there.  Not really fretting about that.  In fact right now I'm not really fretting about anything.  I'm just focussing on getting everything established for school.  Then we'll take it from there.

Life is funny how it takes you by surprise, even when you feel you have prepared for things in the most complete manner possible.  It is just too complex. 

Families are funny.  Mine especially.  So proud of me in some arena's, and so not proud of me in others.  But always accepting and loving.  Strange conglomeration of people and group relationships and interactions and personal relationships and intereactions.  All different backgrounds, but the same backgrounds.  What holds them together?  What molds them into a "unit"?  Why do they act (collectively) the way that they do?  All this is the basis for a novel that is slowly forming in my head.  Along with some light that has been shed onto the first novel....the fidelity one.

Maybe this will all work out well.  I mean if they real point is to write the literate novels then if I take a different route than the one that I had originally projected for myself then that is OK.  As long as I can maintain that as a lighthouse then it doesn't really matter if I take the southerly approach or the easterly approach.  As long as I can reach the lighthouse and share with the world what it is I "really want to share" then that is that.  I mean, were I to refine my craft and voice over the course of some non-fiction and fiction crap pieces then that is fine.  I would be able to live OK while really heading towards my true and singular voice, and that would have been fine.  If I take a different tack there then that is fine.

So I'm dissappointed but don't really see it as a failure on any level.  Dealing with rejection is a good thing.  It just would have been nice to be able to live the dream a little bit longer.  But then nothing worth achieving is achieved easily, or so I read on a loudly colored, saturated photoshop stock photo surrounded by a bold, piercing black boarder with squared lettering, hung in a mirrored $25 target frame hanging in the waiting room of a orthodontist's office surrounded by those little wood rollercoaster things where the little things slide down and then you have to push them around and up only so they can slide down another little deal as well as outdated issues of some bible stories quarterly and a few ancient time magazines.

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