Beautiful day for walking. Near 60 degrees, blue skies. It's that wonderful Central Oregon weather that you usually have to wait for spring to get. It being a Saturday I expected hordes of ATV's, but ran into only one crew. Actually, they make so much noise that all you have to do is raise your hand as they pass.

I try not to be too judgemental--after all, I once had a motorbike and did the same thing and thought nothing wrong with it. (Though I hope they don't open up the Ochocos to this...)

My creative energies are reviving. I'm getting writing thoughts without calling for them. Figured out the rest of the "Ruby Red and the Robots" plot, as well as some sketchy plot points for my next Virginia Reed novel. Including the subtitle of "The Dragon of Hell's Canyon."

I'm going to hit February 1st running. Finish off Ruby Red and start on the next VR adventure.

All is well.

It's funny. This is the first time in six years that I've given myself a significant chunk of time to not write--over a month. It's the first time, in a way, I've come up out of the ground and looked around, blinking, amazed by how much I've written.

It reminds me of my first six years at the store. The same thing happened--I dove in and didn't look up. Unfortunately, with the store, just around this time, everything went wrong and I spent the next decade equally obsessed and barely hanging on.

With writing, I have no such pressures. Really, I accomplished my goal with the first few books. The more time passes, the more I'm willing to allow that "Led to the Slaughter," for instance, is a pretty good book.

All is well, Knock wood.

KNOCK WOOD

"How's it hanging?"

Peter loved Marie's English accent, especially when wrapped around an American euphemism. He wondered if his boss understood the schoolyard double entente of the phrase she was using.

"Things are great, knock wood," he answered. He gently tapped the table, low enough that she probably couldn't hear it.

"Knoock Woood," she repeated, and Peter melted. He'd never met his boss, so he was free to imagine his dream woman. Tall and willowy, auburn haired, blue eyes.  "Well, keep it up, Peter. You're doing great. Are you coming to the convention?"

Peter was stumped. Crowds made him panic--he avoided them whenever possible. "I've got a wedding to go to that weekend," he lied.

"Pity...I was hoping to see you." She said it softly, not in boss mode at all.

"Me too," he blurted mindlessly.

She hung up before he could say anything else stupid. He stood up, put his computer in his backpack, grabbed his hat, and headed out for his walk. Even though it was late January, it was a beautiful day, 60 degrees and blue skies, the kind of weather that usually only came around in Spring.

The path was slightly muddy from the rain and snow of the previous two weeks, but he walked on the beaten down grass to the side of the trail, asking himself the usual question: How's it going? The phrase was a prompt, to get himself thinking. He smiled to himself. I need to change that to, "How's it hanging?"

Things were going really well. He lived in the best part of America and he had his dream job, using his computer skills at home. Everything would be perfect if he wasn't such a loner. Sometimes he wished...

But no, things were going great.

Knock wood.

He stepped over to a large Juniper tree. It was low and and wide and scraggly, which meant it was old. The taller straighter trees were younger, from what he read.

He tapped three times on the scruffy bark of the tree, then...after a moment's hesitation...tapped one more time for good measure.

"What do you want?"

Peter whirled around with a shout. He always kept his ears open for ATV's, which he could hear a mile away, and/or barking dogs. He rarely ran into other walkers who were alone.

The little guy was brown and knobby, his skin folded like bark, his dark eyes gleaming with...alertness?

"Hurry up and make your wish. I ain't got all day." The voice sounded like two sticks rubbed together.

I get my local news from the Bulletin.

So I get my local news from the Bulletin.

Which for some reason didn't report that they've recently entered into bankruptcy proceedings. (This is apparently the second time.) They owe a bunch in taxes, apparently.

UPDATE: Apparently, they did report this and I missed it.

I'm in no mood to pile on. I've always liked the Bulletin, if not their editorial slant. I was not aware of their financial difficulties except in seeing their Incredibly Shrinking Paper. But I attributed that to the woes that all paper publications are having.

I will say this: I suspect the root of their problems--besides what is affecting everyone--is that White Elephant of a building, their castle on the hill, that they built in 2000.

So here's the thing. The Bulletin has always been a booster. It makes sense that they would be. But even if you're a booster, you need to know the underlying reality. In the early 2000's all you heard was boosterism, from businesses, to media, to real estate people.

But having grown up in Bend, and seeing no real new industry arriving in town besides retirement and tourism (which create large numbers of minimum wage jobs) and seeing rents and housing prices steadily increasing--well, it just didn't feel right.

I've often brought up the notion that at my store, Pegasus Books, I'd gone through a bunch of booms--sports cards, comics, Magic, pogs, Beanie Babies, Pokemon, etc. I'd learned my lessons about bubbles the hard way. It may seem strange to equate pogs to houses, but the dynamics of all bubbles are amazingly similar.

So when real estate prices took off--and with it the rapid development of subdivisions and the massive influx of chain stories and restaurants and fancy businesses--it seemed very clear that it was a bubble and wouldn't end well.

But almost no one was seeing it that way. That's about the time I discovered a couple of other people online who were talking about a "bubble" and I joined in. We called them "Bubble Blogs."

But the boosters in town continued to believe the party would go on forever. "Bend is different" is was what I heard over and over again.

Expansion is always a risk, and you can't fool yourself into believing that just because you've been successful at one level you'll automatically be successful at a higher level. It's like the Peter Principle: You'll expand to your level of incompetence. I'm not trying to pile on the Bulletin here--It happens to ALL of us, at some point. The salient point about bubbles is--you don't know it's a bubble because you're inside the bubble.

Then the Bulletin ran into the buzzsaw of the Internet, which is like a double whammy. That's the thing about "whammys." They rarely arrive alone.

"Deadfall Ridge" BookBub long-tail.

I haven't wanted to jinx it, but "Deadfall Ridge" keeps selling at a very moderate rate. When I say moderate, it's like 20 times what I usually sell. This is after the first 5 days, which were way, way higher than normal. (That sounds impressive, but I'll reiterate--moderate.)

I'm sort of obsessive about checking my Amazon rankings, which probably doesn't help much. I wish I'd thought to write down the titles of other BookBub offerings in the weeks surrounding the release of my book so I could do some comparisons. The rankings don't always make sense to me. For instance, there are about a dozen books that I know came out in the same month as mine which are higher ranked but every time I check, my current ranking is higher. (There is a current moment ranking, and then a more long-term ranking that accounts for all sales up to the moment.) All I can think of is that these books had much higher sales upon release--which make sense if they already have followers or their book is part of a series.

Anyone still buying "Deadfall Ridge" now is probably discovering me for the first time. BookBub only keeps the listings up for a month, so I dropped off the list on Jan. 18. So I'm not sure how people are finding my book now. Possibly because enough copies sold to put me within hailing distance of discovery by being higher ranked.

The reviews of "Deadfall Ridge" are good overall, but not quite as good as usual--and I don't think it's because of the book but because of who is reviewing. For instance, my overall rankings are probably better than someone like Stephen King--not because I'm a better writer but because the better you do the more people knock you down a peg.

I'm now in my longest writing lull in 6 years. After my current WIP (work in progress) petered out, I decided to take a step back and figure out where I stand.

It feels very weird not to write every day. I mean, I feel like I'm being extraordinarily lazy. At the same time, I have over 20 books up for sale--so, you know, not too shabby.

I worked at Pegasus Books on Tuesday and sold a copy of "Deadfall Ridge" each of the first three hours I was there. Since I only had 4 copies on hand, I stopped pushing it (so that someone coming in actually looking for it could find it.) Then sold a copy of "Led to the Slaughter." Once again, I realize that I could easily sell at least a couple of copies of my books per day. If I worked 300 days a year, that would be 600 copies. My average profit on a paperback is about 8 bucks, so--that would be significant.

But I'd be done writing. The store wears me out. I was utterly exhausted on Tuesday night even though it was a relatively slow day. The business just takes up so much psychic space that writing becomes impossible. A real Catch-22.

I've been reading "Eden's Return" at writer's group. It looks like I'll be able to finish the entire book this time. Usually they only hear the first third of a book or so before I'm onto the next book. They seem to like it.

"Fateplay" is in the pipeline, so "Eden's Return" will probably be the next book after that. I'd like to get a book or novella released every 3 months or so, but that depends on the publisher doing the editing and covers in time. (3 months between releases is the sweet spot, apparently, for keeping a writer visible. I don't write at the pace currently, but I still have books saved up from when I was writing faster and books were being released slower.)

As I said,  I'm trying to figure out what to do next--but really, I know I need to do another Virginia Reed book. I owe Amber Cover Publishing that much. And really, I'm kind of excited by the prospect and somewhere intimidated.

And I'd still like to finish off the "Faerylander" series of books, as well as the 4 novellas of the "Tales of the Thirteen Principalities.) So that's a lot of work right there.

Sorry about the info dump, but I haven't written on this blog for five days so there is some pent up energy.

This month went by extraordinarily fast!

Human-sized success.

The one thing about owning a Mom and Pop-sized bookstore is that it is human-sized. It provides a modest living. It requires a fair amount of work and diligence, creativity, and persistence. But it can be done.

I don't think I ever considered owning a business growing up, though if I did, it probably was something like owning a bookstore. If anything, I wanted to be a writer--though I had no idea how to go about it.

I sort of fell into owning a business--because I didn't seem to have any other options.

As it turned out, being in charge of a business was exactly the path for me to take. I was never going to be an organizational man. I feel as if I have good ideas, but no ability to try to convince others of the viability of those ideas. Owning a small business meant I could make decisions without conferring, without compromising.

Of course, I did have to deal with others, but there were enough filters and options that I could pick and choose about how to go about it. I could shape my surroundings to accentuate my strengths and minimize my weaknesses.

All these efforts were enough.

Being in the writing field is different. The above levels of "work and diligence, creativity, and persistence" are in no way enough to reach even a basic success at writing. Success depends on others, more on "luck, on timing, and who you know."

In other words, reaching success is more than human-sized. It has to tap into much larger schemes and structures. Success is a matter of levering, instead of basic skills. It can't be accomplished simply because you want it to happen.

That isn't to say that there are people who don't do it. But even more than owning a small business (which, though human-sized, probably requires an outsized effort), it can't be usually be done simply by putting your nose to the grindstone and gutting it out.

I'm not complaining. It's just interesting the difference in scale. Human-sized, Mom and Pop writing is possible, I suppose. Perhaps if I were able to bring the same level of effort as I brought to the business, it might be possible to bring the huge scale of publishing down to a personal level.

But it seems to me that there are so many other writers, few of who make an actual "modest" living at it, that it crushes mere human-sized effort. It is much more difficult to carve out a middle ground. Anyway, that's how it looks to me.

The writing itself is human-sized. That's the attraction to me. I can do it without "conferring, without compromising."

But leveraging that human-sized accomplishment requires an entirely different set of skills, and requires tapping into much larger scales. With the store, I don't have to do any promotion. I just have to keep doing my job. The job itself is enough.

Writing a book--that's just the beginning.

Listened to first audio chapter of "Deadfall Ridge."

Listened to the first audio chapter of "Deadfall Ridge" and thought it was great.

So bear with me, but I get a kick out of this. It sounds very, very professional--not just the narration, but the underlying text.

I wrote that!

I mean, it sounds good to me--to the point where I'm a little surprised that it is that good. I can't decide if this is egotistical or the opposite. I remember shortly after I wrote "Led to the Slaughter," my first book out this time, I said to a lady who complimented me, "I'm almost feeling like a writer."

"Oh, you're a writer," she said firmly. "Don't have any doubts about that."

The difference between this career and my former attempt is that with Star Axe and Snowcastles/Icetowers, I constantly see where I could have done it better. With these newer books, I'm not taken aback so much. It pretty much reads (and sounds) the way I intended.

Not bad, if I do say so myself. Pretty good even. 

The Roaring Twenty/Twenties

Or maybe I should say, "The Roaring 2020s."

Every once in a while, I think I've coined a phrase only to find out that someone else thought of it first. So anyway, here's my claim on "The Roaring Twenty/Twenties," which begins only a year from now. I am not Googling to see if someone beat me to it.

Meanwhile...I'm still not writing. Still waiting for that moment when I absolutely know what I want to do.

"Deadfall Ridge" just keeps bumping along--at a much higher level of sales than before the BookBub, if nowhere near the heights it reached on the first two days.

Interesting thing happened: I reached my lowest author rank on November 27, 2018 and my highest author rank on December 26, 2018 so within the month. Obviously, I needed a bit of a boost. Some of my other books have sold during this last 3 weeks--not a whole lot, but probably double the pace previous to the promotion.

I don't know if I'll ever get another BookBub--in some ways, it's as hard as getting a traditional publisher--but if I do, it is The Great Equalizer.  It literally pulls you up to the levels that only known authors get--if only for a short time.

It's funny, but my entire writing "career" has been one little boost just when I need it at a time. I keep expecting that to stop, but something unexpected always comes along just in time. Knock wood.

The Inspiration Well

In my earlier efforts at writing, I used to have a mental image of a well, an "Inspiration Well" that I monitored constantly. I could tell just going to that image whether I had the inspiration to write something or should wait.

If the well is half empty, I'll run out of ideas mid-story. If the well if full, I can draw from it liberally. If the well is overflowing, I'd better get to writing before all that wonderful inspiration was wasted.

This internal gauge seemed to work.

(There is a school of thought that you shouldn't wait for "inspiration" but that sentiment is somewhat disingenuous. Of course a writer needs to have something in the well to write--it's when you don't cultivate that well, or ignore it, that you get in trouble.)

In this latter day writing period, I haven't had to worry about it. I was so full of creative energy those first three or four years that I almost always finished what I started, sometimes at full speed.

There were an occasional story I started and then stopped--but mostly because some other story took precedence, often because I needed to fulfill a commitment. When I'd come back to the story, I'd realize it wasn't strong enough and move on.

In the last year or so, I've had three stories that I didn't finish. One about halfway done, one about a quarter way done, and one three quarters done. Now... I'd be more concerned about this if I hadn't also written "Fateplay," "Shadows Over Summer House," and "Eden's Return" in the same time period.

But after taking December off from writing, I'm finding myself without creative energy. So I went to my "Well of Inspiration" and realized it was half empty.

I have zero doubt it will fill up again. But I think it best to wait.

I've got one book completely ready and already at the publisher. One book that needs a quick rewrite. And another book that needs a bit more of a comprehensive rewrite. So I've got material in the pipeline for a while yet.

I also have my three completed "Tales of the Thirteen Principalities" novellas that I'd like to plunk out there one per month (and very near completion on a fourth) that need a bit of continuity work.

So really, I have a year's worth of material almost ready for publication.