Three Reasons Why SOPA Must Be Stopped (and why something like it is probably inevitable)

Tomorrow is the day that a sizable portion of the internet is going black in protest of the egregiously bad, supposedly anti-piracy legislation SOPA. I thought I’d throw my thinking on the subject out there to kick off the much-needed protests.

There are three main reasons why I believe it’s imperative that SOPA, and its Senate equivalent PIPA, be stopped dead in its tracks. Just to be clear, my reasons have nothing to do with so-called piracy. For one thing, as I’ve repeatedly asserted, what’s being defined as piracy by the various media industries is anything but and, secondly, this legislation does absolutely nothing to prevent the real thing. Unless, of course, you consider making the whole of the web totally useless to the vast majority of people a means of fighting piracy. In that case, it’s certain to be wonderfully effective.

Reason 1- SOPA epitomizes the reality that Americans are no longer represented by our government

There is absolutely nothing in SOPA that benefits your average American at all. It is a bill who’s entire purpose is to shelter the media industry at the expense of the whole of the nation. It will cost jobs, it will stifle free speech, it will wipe out competition to legacy monopolies and directly lead to higher costs for just about everything. About the only thing it won’t do is stop piracy. No one outside of disrupted media companies thinks this is a good idea. If this bill were put up for a general referendum vote, it would lose by a landslide of epic proportions. On top of all that, the entirety of the tech industry is virtually unanimous that SOPA will threaten the very fundamental foundations of how the internet functions.

So, with so much destructive possibility and so much united opposition, how is this bill even still alive? One word–graft. Our legislative process is horribly compromised. The one and only reason SOPA exists is because media companies and similar entities have dumped millions upon millions of dollars on representatives’ doorsteps through lobbying and campaign contributions. The will of the people has become almost totally meaningless in the face of this kind of obvious purchasing of government favors. This detatchment between the interests of the people and the legalized bribery of the U.S. Congress is, alone, reason enough to stomp it out.

Reason 2- SOPA provides a framework for media companies to reconstitute their monopolies and eliminate wide swaths of independent competition

One of the worst aspects of SOPA is that is puts the onus for monitoring potentially infringing content on the host sites. This means that sites that use significant user-generated content will have to either pre-scan virtually everything posted there or face severe consequences if so much as a bad link slips through. The cost of this requirement will be prohibitive. But then, I suspect that’s the point. There’s even been several venture capital firms who have come out and said, in no uncertain terms, that if a bill like SOPA becomes law, they will no longer put so much as a dime toward any internet startups. That’s sure to do wonders for our struggling economy.

This imperative will make it significantly more difficult and expensive to operate social networking sites or any sites with independent content from users. It could, conceivably, kill popular services like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, blogging hosts like WordPress, even self-publishing options at sites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble would be at risk. Eliminate or significantly increase the barriers for entry for independent content on the web and guess who benefits? The very media companies lobbying so hard for this bill.

The consequences of being linked to infringing content could be expensive and severe. Worse yet, there’s almost no due process in the proposed system at all, and the entire burden falls on the host to prove innocence after the penalties have already been handed down. Given that some media companies barely admit fair use even exists (at one point, the Associated Press said that quoting as little as four words from one of their articles required a license fee) this is a system that seems almost designed for abuse.

Nothing threatens the future of media companies more than the new-found capacity of independent content creators to market and distribute their work. Eliminate or severely hamper the sites or services they use, and traditional media companies effectively wipe out that threat. SOPA has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with stifling or outright eliminating competition.

Reason 3- SOPA provides a legal framework and process for goverment to stifle opposition and dissent

The past year has seen several remarkable developments in the capacity of citizens to organize in opposition of their governments. The Arab Spring, protests in Europe and the Occupy movement here are all clear examples. It is significantly more difficult for propoganda to go unchallenged than at anytime in history. If you don’t believe these developments are of the utmost concern to governments around the world, including our own, you’re kidding yourself.

The same provisions of SOPA that benefit media companies by squashing independent content also benefit any government looking to deceive or control its people. This bill would provide effective legal cover for our government to stifle dissent and make it much more difficult for citizens to exercise our Constitutionally guaranteed rights of free speech and assembly.

And consider, when the legacy media once again controls the message, how we are informed, or even if we are, comes into question. If you need any proof of the dangers of allowing legacy media to control the conversation solely once again, look no further than their performance on SOPA itself and the equally questionable NDAA act recently signed into law. These are enormously important issues that threaten the fundamental nature of liberty and our nation yet they have both been largely ignored by the mainstream press. And once the media is given that control back thanks to this government regulation, what are the chances that they’ll significantly challenge anything it does in the future? Their very existence would depend on government stifling legitimate competition. Not only would the media industries be corrupting government by buying this legislation, they’d be compromising themselves by becoming dependent for survival on government regulation.

I can’t imagine a worse turn of events. Freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly all hindered dramatically and further cementing in place a system representative of the highest bidder over the best interest of the people.

Any one of these three reasons would be ample justification to kill SOPA and anything like it. Taken together, there can be absolutely no doubt that this effort needs to die a quick and dirty death.

Unfortunately, these very same reasons are why I’m almost certain a version of this will reach the President’s desk at some point, my guess being after the November election. The media companies will continue to throw massive amounts of money at representatives. Their only alternative is to adapt and compete in the current atmosphere, which many of them have already proven unwilling or unable. Their very survival may depend on changing the nature of the game, consequences to the rest of us be damned.

Government will continue to have a double motive. They will suck up all the money they can in lobbying and contributions. And as people get louder and louder in their discontent with the status quo, as is sure to happen, their motivation to stifle organization and dissent will only increase.

No, it will take a massive sea change in our government to prevent something like SOPA from becoming law eventually. Of course, this kind of far-reaching, self-serving and imminently destructive legislation may be the final impetus that spurs that much-needed change. We can only hope.

The Decline and Fall of the Publishing Empire

After three years of closely following and writing about the trials and tribulations of the publishing industry, I decided it was a good time to do a bit of a wrap-up on the changes I’ve witnessed.  I’ve collected together some of the writings I’ve done on this site, added quite a bit of context and produced a book telling the story of the upheaval of the industry through my eyes and experience.

Perhaps most interestingly, the book has been published through my imprint, Watershed Publications, and is now available as an ebook through Amazon.  There will be a print-on-demand version coming along in a while, as well.  I thought it extremely fitting to tell the tale of the downfall of traditional publishing by using the very mechanisms of its disruption. 

To kick off the book’s run, it will be available for free from Amazon starting Christmas Day until December 29.  After that, it’ll be priced at the very reasonable figure of $2.99.  Check it out, if you like, by clicking at the bottom of this piece.

Merry Christmas to all, and I look forward to a grand New Year for publishing as the times keep rolling forward.  With change as big as those the industry is currently undergoing, some long-standing institutions will inevitably fall, but every ending for one marks a new beginning for another.

The Watershed Chronicle:
The Decline and Fall of the Publishing Empire

The publishing industry is currently embroiled in a state of flux never before seen.  It’s a battle for the very life of the industry, with forces from both inside and outside jockeying for position.  Technology has undermined many of the things that once made publishing the long-standing giant it was.  More than that, the same technology is allowing more and more individuals and smaller entities to forego the traditional routes to publication entirely.  It’s an all-out assault on what has been one of the most successful, profitable enterprises of the past century.

Author Dan Meadows has followed the past three years of this battle very closely, not with the eye of a pundit so much, but as a member of the industry just looking for some path to find a viable future for himself.  After 15 years working within publishing, he found himself suddenly on the outside looking in, with no clear path back.  With disruption everywhere, and experts on all sides of the fight speaking in sweeping proclamations, it’s sometimes difficult to tell who’s right and who’s wrong, or which way the future leads.

Over two-and-a-half years, Meadows followed and wrote about the changes sweeping through the industry on his website, The Watershed Chronicle.  This book is a timeline of that writing, and a description of his journey through exploring traditional work after the disruption, trying out new online alternatives and finally settling on what he believes is the best course.

The publishing industry has changed in the past five years in more ways than it had in the previous century, and it’s not over yet.  This book chronicles one of the most tumultuous periods in the industry’s history from the eyes of someone in the middle of it, one that has seen massive revenue losses, layoffs and a dynamic shift in the attitudes and reading habits of the public.  It is a period that may well be looked back on as the beginning of the end of the traditional ways of doing business.

Buy From Amazon

Looking Ahead: Predictions for publishing in 2012 and beyond

This year saw the emergence of several factors that could have a profound impact on the publishing industry in near future.  Newspaper revenues backslid into more losses, increasing through the first three quarters of the year, and digital revenues, while improving somewhat, are still far short of making up the difference.  A few papers found some success with semi-porous paywalls that encouraged more of their brethren to make the leap into subscription based sites, for better or for worse.  Ebooks moved up to nearly 20% of the overall book market in the U.S. and all signs point to a steady upswing in that sector.

Amazon encroached further and further into traditional publishers’ domains, and started a drive to lower prices and increased saturation in the tablet market.  Millions of new digital customers are set to enter the ebook market after Christmas thanks to robust pre-holiday tablet sales.  Traditional publishers, in conjunction with Apple, forced the agency pricing model on ebooks, driving their prices up 50% or more in many cases.  That effort also brought some backlash in the form of civil lawsuits and antitrust investigations in both the United States and Europe.  Finally, self-publishing and independent publishers made great strides toward establishing themselves as a viable player and overcoming long-standing industry bias.  All in all, 2011 was a year of great transition, and one that has served to set the stage for what’s yet to come.

Following the industry as closely as I have this past year, I’ve reached a few conclusions about what will happen now, and where the industry as a whole goes from here.  It’s nearly impossible to accurately predict the future, even the most educated guess is still just a guess.  All it takes is one new technological break-through and everything is thrust right back into a state of flux.  Some people don’t like that kind of uncertainty but, for me, I find it invigorating.

Newspapers Are Finished

I’m still amazed that there are people out there who believe that print newspapers have any kind of future at all.  I’ve even come to seriously wonder if news websites really have any kind of future, either.  The primary problem, as I see it, is that they are entirely too dependent on advertising revenue to support their business model.  We are only one more advertising shift away from this entire industry segment getting wiped off the face of the Earth.  I believe that shift will come soon, and the era of advertising supported newspapers will end abruptly.

There is not one single trait of the physical newspaper that gives me any belief that they have even the slightest capacity to survive long-term.  They are expensive, inefficient and extremely limited.  In short, they are an anachronism.  The most recent surveys I’ve seen indicate that the percentage of people in this country who get their information from newspapers is down to 14% and falling precipitously.

News websites are also at severe risk of obsolescence.  Paywalls, ultimately, won’t be anything more than a temporary block to stave off the inevitable.  I’m just guessing here, but I suspect we’ll see a combination of elements pick up the slack when the inevitable finally happens, including mobile apps, easily accessible streams and standalone digital publications.  All of this will be dependent on finding customers to pay for the actual content, and the innovative and best quality content will win out in the end.  It’s a shift that will decimate the larger industry players because total revenue numbers will plummet with the loss of advertising.  I also anticipate that we’ll see the rise of truly independent journalists producing and selling their own wares under their own banners rather than working for a New York Times or a Wall Street Journal.

I believe the long-view will see a reversal of sorts of the consolidation run that happened in the last few decades of the 20th century.  The industry will fragment back into many smaller and even individual entities that will create an extreme diversity in viewpoints, products and delivery mechanisms.  I suspect the small local newspaper will likely have a slightly longer shelf-life than the large metros or nationals, but even they will be on the clock eventually.

Basically, my belief is that, as bad as things have been for newspapers over the past decade, we haven’t come close to seeing the worst of it yet.  But out of that Armageddon will emerge the potential for a far greater, more independent, more democratic news and information ecosystem.

Print Books Aren’t Quite Finished, But Close

The way elements are lining up heading into 2012, if I were a book publisher who depended on 75% or more of my revenue coming from print sales, I would be scared to death.  Digital reader sales across all devices are up 200-300%.  Amazon alone has been selling over a million new Kindles every week leading up to Christmas.  Ebook sales were in the miniscule single digits as a percentage of the overall book market just two years ago and now, some estimates have that up to as high as 20% in the U.S.  Through agency pricing, major print publishers have pushed the prices of their ebooks up to three or four times that of the growing self-published sector and, simultaneously, brought antitrust investigations and civil lawsuits in both Europe and America down on their heads.

The big-box retailers they used so effectively are gone (Borders) or at risk (Barnes & Noble) after having weakened independent bookstores to the point that a rapid drop in print sales could be the final straw in wiping most of them out.  Christmas of 2012 is poised to see literally 15-20 million new ebook customers entering the retail market.  And none of this even speaks to the digital expansion into foreign markets that is coming but yet to really kick into high gear.

I suspect that losses in the print book sector will happen quicker and more severely than those of newspapers.  They won’t have 8 or 10 years to map out a gradual digital transition; more like 2 or 3 years, if they’re lucky.  All this being said, print books will not vanish entirely.  I expect there will continue to be a high-end boutique market for very high quality printed material.  The overall market share, however, will be miniscule in comparison to traditional levels.

What we have here is the beginnings of a vicious downward cycle.  Declines in print book sales will cause a loss of book stores and physical retail outlets which will cause more losses in print book sales which will cause more losses of bookstores which will cause more losses in print book sales, etc., etc., until this segment of the industry is virtually unrecognizable.  In the end, I suspect bookstores will be winnowed down a great deal, 80% or more forced to shut their doors.  The ones that are left will cater to the boutique end of the consumer spectrum, and will convert to more of a literary cultural gathering place generating revenue through principle means outside of strictly print book sales.

At the end of the day, I believe that we will end up with the creative destruction of the long-standing print book industry replaced by a much larger, vibrant, much more independent industry that exists principally in cyberspace.

Amazon Won’t Be The 10-Ton Guerilla For Long

Read any blog, news site or publishing industry pundit and you’ll hear all about how bad Amazon is.  I, as an independent writer, am perplexed by other self-pubbed writers frequently ripping Amazon and their business practices.  They have done more for us than any other entity in recent memory, possibly ever.  The argument that self-published writers should somehow support traditional publishers in this perceived battle with Amazon simply defies logic.  If traditional publishers could squash all of the developments and advancements Amazon has brought about for us in the past few years, they would do it in a heartbeat, make no mistake.  To now turn and ridicule them for continuing to press their advantages against traditional publishers is not only hypocritical, it’s short-sighted and potentially self-destructive.  Big Six publishers aren’t really our friends, and they don’t deserve our unquestioning support in this conflict.

Amazon itself, no matter how large or powerful they get, is not any more immune to the disruptive forces that exist than the traditional publishing industry.  This isn’t simply an age marked by a sudden dramatic shift from one paradigm to another.  We’re at the very earliest stages of an era of constant, ever-present disruption.  No one in the internet age is too big to tumble.  Long-term monopolies, like the traditional publishing industry maintained, may well be nearly impossible to establish in this new era, and the only way in which they would keep that control and influence is to represent the values of the people they aim to serve as best as possible.

I believe that retail alternatives will emerge as the ebook market continues to expand and mature.  Formats will become more standardized, or at least easily transferable from device to device.  They will have to; customers will ultimately demand it to be so.  I expect we’ll see some specialized, genre specific retail and self-publishing outlets emerge over time.  Take romance fiction, for instance.  Imagine a retail site that caters specifically to readers and authors in that genre.  Or mystery.  Or horror.  Or science fiction.  Or historical non-fiction.  Or journalism.  The possibilities are endless.  As long as writers and publishers maintain the ability to publish across all retail outlets and platforms, there truly are no limits to the retail alternatives that could and will come about.  Today, they may well be the dominant player, but the history and nature of the internet itself suggests that will not always be the case, especially if they get too large or too onerous in their business practices.

In the end, I expect what we’ll see is a few large retail ebook stores in the vein of Amazon, and many, many smaller, very targeted retail options all over.  I also fully believe that, as authors themselves fully realize the potential of maintaining connections to their own fan bases, there will be an array of direct sales possibilities developed, as well.

Following “The Rules” Will Be Even Less Important

If you read enough online about publishing on any side of the spectrum, you will see that nearly everyone is going to tell you about “the rules.”  There are rules for breaking into the traditional side and rules for breaking into to the independent side.  There are rules for how you should write, what you should write and what you should do with your material afterwards.  The main problem is that if you read enough of those, you’ll find most of the rules stated out there conflict with other rules somewhere else.  The thing is, we are well on the way toward a time when, basically, there are no rules.  There are an ample variety of ways to go about getting what you want done, and the only thing that matters is what you find works for you.  And even then, things are changing so rapidly that something that works today may not work tomorrow.  Hard-and-fast, overly rigid ways of thinking can hang about your neck like an albatross, wherever you stand in the current publishing ecosystem.

As I said earlier, we now live in an era of constant disruption.  Flexibility, adaptability and experimentation are today’s ultimate keys to success, and that will only get more important, whether you aspire to traditional print publishing or independent digital publishing.  The great thing is that writers are generally pretty creative people.  Who could be better poised to take advantage of a circumstance where all the lines have been blurred and there are multiple paths to your desires than the creatively minded?

The next few years will likely see the final death of the old, established ways of doing business.  The transition will continue and we’ll eventually have a system that is very different than what we’ve been conditioned to expect.  The future, in many ways, is very bright.  Change can be frightening, but it can also be liberating and exciting.  Don’t weep for the things lost to the shifting sands of progress, revel in the new and innovative possibilities instead.

Read more about the digital disruption to the publishing industry and what all the changes mean for the future with author Dan Meadows’ new book The Decline and Fall of the Publishing Empire, available now.

Start the New Year Off With Some Quality Fiction

With the post-Christmas shopping rush about to kick in, I thought I’d make a few suggestions for all of you out there looking to add something to your new holiday toys.  Below is a list of my fiction work, available at Amazon and various other online retailers.  Nothing beats a good book to kick off 2012.

Bad Timing

Life is hard. We’re all broke these days, struggling to make ends meet. Our money is burning through us faster than we can earn it, eaten up by our credit card interest, balloon payments on the mortgage, or upwardly spiraling gas prices. Then your car breaks down.

You’re girlfriend is cheating on you with the guy she met at the gym, or you’ve caught you’re husband fooling around with his secretary. The kids just got suspended for something they put on their Facebook page, and you’re dog got sick and died, but not before ringing up four grand in vet bills. Then next week, the company you work for is set to start downsizing.

We’re all living through the 21st century version of the Great Depression, and you have to take off your shoes to get on a plane. But here are twenty-five stories about people who, whatever your problems, are much worse off. There are bodies to hide, ghostly Indians out for blood, cannibalistic homeless people, ever-present blizzards, soul-crushing isolation, loneliness, man-eating trees and much more.

So the next time you start complaining about your cell phone bill, or the dent left in your car door at the grocery store parking lot, remember that you’re not one of these folks. Life is still hard, but it could always be worse.

Buy in print from Amazon

Buy in print from Create Space eStore

Buy for the Amazon Kindle

Buy for the Barnes & Noble Nook

Buy for the Sony eReader

Buy from the Kobo ebook store

Buy from the Diesel ebook store

Buy in various digital and mobile formats from Smashwords

Buy in the Apple iBook Store

Devil’s Dozen

Obscure (adj)  1. Lacking light, dark  2. Not easily perceived  3. Undefined, ambiguous, cryptic, hidden

Most of us dwell in the occasional bright places between the shadows, trying to find a few rays of light to lead us out from the darkness.  But all too often, the undefined gloom becomes as a black hole, so dark with such a gravitational pull that no light can break through the veil, leaving us to only stumble around without clarity or vision.

And once we become trapped, unable to see the way, we discover that there are other things in the dark with us.

Strange (adj)  1. Of another place, foreign, alien  2. Not previously known or experienced  3. Quite unusual or extraordinary  4. Peculiar, odd  5. Distant, cold in manner

Some of these things in the dark with us are benign or even friendly, fellow travelers just searching for the path home.  But there are the others, malignant and evil, that use the dark to prey on the lost and helpless.  Those are the ones you need to watch out for because, sometimes, lost in the blackness, you can’t tell the difference.

This book is a collection of 13 tales of people getting caught in the dark, and whether or not they can find light enough to escape it.  Violence, madness and death await those that fail, and sometimes, they’re the lucky ones.  Being trapped in the dark can be terrifying, you can pull yourself together and find a way out or you can collapse in on yourself, lost forever.  These tales are like guideposts, a path through the dark where some have fallen by the wayside.

But before you start reading, you have to ask yourself one simple question, are you afraid of the dark?

Buy for the Kindle at Amazon

Buy for the Barnes & Noble Nook

Buy for other devices or formats at Smashwords

Buy from the Apple iBookstore

Buy from the Diesel ebook store

Buy from Sony ebook store

The Watershed Chronicle’s 13 Days of Halloween

Halloween is my absolute favorite time of year!  It’s so much fun that I had to stretch it out into a two-week long celebration of all things creepy and frightening.  Every day for 13 days leading up to Halloween, there is something scary good to do.  In The Watershed Chronicle’s 13 Days of Halloween, there is a little something to entice even the most hardcore horror fan.

Horror is such a pervasive genre in our culture, and it’s all covered here.  From the spookiest author ever, Edgar Allan Poe, to the most terrifying actor, Vincent Price, to the most ghoulishly brilliant director, Alfred Hitchcock, their best and most horrifying works are covered.  There are real-life ghost stories, a look at where some of the most popular rituals of Halloween originated, and rundowns of the best movies, books and television horror stories ever devised.  To top it off, there’s even some ghostly fiction, culminating in a never-before-published short story by yours truly.

October is a time of year like none other if you enjoy being scared out of your wits.  But what happens in October doesn’t have to stay in October.  Halloween is the best of all holidays, and there’s no reason you can’t celebrate year-round.  This book can help.  Happy Halloween!

Buy from Smashwords

Buy for Amazon Kindle

Watershed Tales

This is an ongoing series of individually published, longer-form (5,000+ words) short stories available for sale.  Each tale is an independent, stand alone story for only 99 cents. 

The Long Walk

What happens when your conscience is over-ridden by your orders?  Is it better to simply do as your told, even when you find the actions abhorrent?  And if you do, despite your better judgment, what kind of consequences will follow, if any?

In The Long Walk, a young cavalryman gets assigned the duty of escorting some particularly violent prisoners to their place of execution.  The manner planned for the  deaths of the condemned is particularly horrible, but no one questions their actions or orders until it’s far too late.  Honor doesn’t supersede duty in the unforgiving desert, and the results are severe.

Buy from Smashwords

Buy for Amazon Kindle

Kingdom of the Sick

It’s often been said that money can buy happiness, but that’s not always the case.  Sometimes, great wealth can create far more problems than it solves.  For Ashley Blair, daughter of wealthy businessman Charles Blair, trouble and torment has been the story of her life.

The family home, and an almost ethereal garden hidden on the property, has been the one constant in her ever-shifting existence.  Now that her father is nearing his own death, and the vultures of her siblings are circling to pick his bones for their inheritance, Ashe needs the solace of her childhood secret more than ever.  But will she find that peace she desperately desires?

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Faded Summer Leaves

You hear so much about the innocence of youth, but in truth, youth isn’t all that innocent.  The same mean-spirited viciousness, rage and emotional trauma adults suffer through exists for the young, as well.  And often, the lack of experience of youth amplifies the problem.

Growing up is a hard row to hoe sometimes, and for a small, scrawny little kid like Tommy, it can be even tougher.  But everyone has their limits, even someone who you wouldn’t think could ever stand up for themselves.  A group of young boys on an afternoon fishing excursion is the stuff of sweet anecdotes and quaint paintings.  That is, until things go sour.  On this particular day, Roy, the town bully, really should have kept his mouth shut.

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Journalistic Integrity

Reporters and war correspondents regularly put themselves in harm’s way all in the name of journalism, ratings and informing the people.  Most times, things work out; sometimes they go horribly wrong.  When a military madman rises to power in a former Russian province after the collapse of the Soviet Union, threatening Moscow and London with some old Soviet nukes he’d managed to get his hands on, it looks like the story of the century.

A bevy of reporters from all the major news agencies in the world make their way through the war-torn countryside in pursuit of an exclusive.  But when they find what they’re looking for, these newsmen discover that instead of covering the story, they are about to become it.

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The Garden

Isolation can do strange things to a person, and there can be no place more alone than the depths of space.  Duane’s an astronaut on a 20-year mission to test technology for mankind’s greatest exploration ever.  His ship, being fully automated, leaves him with lots of time to fill.  The large garden that provides his food, water and oxygen for the journey is his only distraction from the tedium.

But several years into his mission, he loses contact with Earth.  The constant loneliness begins to dredge up memories of his unhappy past, and the garden that provides not only the elements for his survival but also his sanity, is threatened.  Will Duane find within himself what it takes to survive and make it back home or will he be lost forever?

This edition of Watershed Tales also includes a short bonus tale, Travis Walton Never Had It So Bad, a story of planetary exploration and how very wrong things can go.

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Quit Complaining! All the arguing in the world’s not putting the self publishing genie back in the bottle

In a not altogether unexpected development, there seems to be a backlash brewing over the growing self publishing trend.  I say not unexpected because it was, in fact, very predictable.  Disruption in any industry goes through this same process, and in an industry as long-standing and entrenched as publishing, one can only expect that it will be worse before it gets better.

Coming from newspaper and periodical publishing as I have, I’ve already been down this road once before.  When independent blogs and online-only news alternatives first starting gaining traction a decade or so ago, they were readily dismissed within the industry.  Bloggers were portrayed as jobless losers spouting off meaningless drivel from their mom’s basement.  News sites were called out as thieves and opportunists who simply rode the coattails of the established press.  And most of all, this new development in mass communication was meaningless because the legacy industry was self-anointed to be obviously far superior, and it was only a matter of time before these two-bit pretenders shriveled up and blew away.

Well, newspaper publishers, with all their elite, high-minded proclamations and arrogant superiority complexes, woke up a few short years later to discover that the interlopers hadn’t faded away, but had grown exponentially in both numbers and sophistication.  And they also found that 50% of their annual revenues had vanished in a matter of less than five years.

The book publishing industry was largely immune to that disruption cycle for one primary reason; they still maintained a monopolistic access to the market and no true, viable, mass market alternative yet existed for their principle money maker– the printed book.  But now, with the proliferation of affordable and increasingly popular tablets, that barrier against the crashing tide of digital disruption is washing away more and more each day.  To make matters worse, for newspapers, there was no simple means for the writing talent in their employ to generate comparable revenue online.  With ebooks, publishers’ pool of writing talent has a vast network of possibilities at their disposal to do just that.  Uh oh.

Lately, I’ve engaged in a few such discussions on various industry-related blogs, and I’ve seen three main arguments made against the self published barbarians at the gates of traditional book publishers.  While there are grains of truth to each, all three are widely being misrepresented to defend the old guard ways and over emphasized to demonize the forces sweeping change across the publishing landscape.

1. Amazon Is Evil

This is a big one.  Amazon is being portrayed as The Great Satan by those in and around the industry.  It makes sense, from their perspective, as Amazon is the most visible entity leading the disruptive influences currently threatening the industry’s revenue streams.  But they’re not evil, they’re a competitor.  I know it’s been a while since traditional publishing saw what actual competition looks like, but come on!  Amazon understands the possibilities that now exist better than most publishers and they’re acting accordingly in their own interests.  Most of all, they’ve made the brilliant move of treating writers as partners in the enterprise rather than necessary fodder for their profits.  Are they doing this out of the goodness of their hearts or because they just love writers so much?  Of course not, but it doesn’t change the fact that what they’re offering today gives us the very real possibility of altering long-standing industry norms in our favor.

Amazon clearly isn’t perfect, but, as a writer, they’ve done more for us in half a decade than traditional publishing has in the past century.  Is it possible that, if they gain a stranglehold on the market, the arrangements with writers will be cut back precipitously?  Certainly it is, but that day is not today, and they’d have to cut back a helluva lot to get from 70% to the 15% or so traditional publishers pony up.  Besides, who says Amazon will ever get that dominant?  Remember, a decade or so ago, Microsoft was on the cusp of putting Apple out of business, and now, they’re saddled with three generations and counting of lousy operating systems and Apple is the most successful tech company in the world.  Things change fast in the internet age.

This is a totally false argument, and one completely self-serving to those who wish to perpetuate the status quo.  You really expect me to believe that it’s in my best interest to shun Amazon based on what they might do in some hypothetical future in favor of what are clearly one-sided deals with publishers that we unquestionably know are happening right now?  Really?

2. Self Published Works Aren’t Worthy

This is the book world’s equivalent of the bloggers as basement dwelling losers argument.  To be sure, there are heaps of not-ready-for-primetime ebooks out there and more coming every day.  But that was to be expected.  This is a major new development, folks.  Regular people have never, I repeat, never had the ability or the access to do the things we all can today.  Of course there is a flood of works being thrown out there.  It’s not a bad thing, in fact, it’s a necessary part of the evolution we’re undergoing.

This will sort itself out. The people putting these works out are gaining valuable experience in the process with their successes and, more importantly, their failures.  Some will learn from it and improve over time, some will lose interest and drift away, but just as the blogging world evolved and improved, so will the ebook world.

I’ve seen opinions recently that suggest only work that the traditional industry would publish should be suitable for self publishing.  These opinions are basically to the effect of, “if they rejected you, then your book sucks and how dare you subject the world to work the established industry deemed unworthy!”  What a load of garbage.  I would argue just the opposite.  If the traditional publishing world shut you down, and you truly believe in your work, that is precisely what self publishing is for. 

This notion that the publishing gatekeepers have somehow cornered the market on literary quality is bogus.  They don’t know what makes a bestseller anymore than you, I or the crazy homeless guy up the street spouting off about death rays from the crocodile people who live in the sewers.  It’s a volume business to them.  They select a variety of books that fit their preconceived notions of saleable material and throw them out there.  If one hits, it pays for them all and then some.  It’s like the lottery, in a way, and the quality of the material really isn’t at issue, possible marketability within their defined distribution networks is.

That market structure is different now and, as ebooks grow, it’s getting broader every day.  A sub-niche book that didn’t make fiscal sense for a large publisher in the past can make perfect sense to a small independent today.  And if you need the vindication of a self-serving corporate publisher for your worth as a writer, you may need to take a little time and work on your self confidence.  Publishers don’t vindicate writers, writers vindicate publishers.

None of this is to say we shouldn’t strongly encourage a level of professionalism.  At the very least, proofread, proofread, proofread!  Creative and artistic choices are one thing, but basic spelling and grammatical errors are an entirely different matter.  It’s in your best interest as a writer to produce prose as clean as possible so readers are judging your ideas and not your execution.  Self publishing is publishing, after all, and if you’re going to play with the big boys, you need to be vigilant and definitely sweat the small stuff.

3. Readers Need Gatekeepers

What list of industry self-justifications would be complete without a little underestimation of the collective intelligence and capability of your customers?  How in the world will the great unwashed hordes of people figure out what to read if publishers and reviewers don’t tell them?  And if you offer them too many choices, people will simply collapse in on themselves and huddle up in a tight little ball on their living room floor until someone comes along to take all those extra options away, right?

That must be why the pizza joint up the street has 27 different varieties of pizza on display to buy by the slice.  I recommend the Thai Chicken Pizza, by the way.  Do you think traditional pizza makers would’ve thought to put barbecue chicken and peanuts on a pie?  Or how about the fact that there’s 236 off-the-wall fruit concoctions right next to the traditional O.J. in the grocery store juice aisle?  I guess that’s because people are easily confused by too many choices.  If anything, the whole of American life these days indicates we want significantly more choices, not less.  Why would books be the lone exception to that?

One of the more arrogant developments I’ve seen of late is the characterization of Amazon’s offerings as “the slush pile.”  For those that don’t know, the slush pile is the less-than-endearing term publishers have long used to describe the stacks of largely unsolicited manuscripts they’ve accumulated and treat pretty much like three month old junk mail.  This descriptor used against Amazon is a term of derision directed as much at the authors of said material as it is at the giant retailer.  The general point of this is to suggest that readers aren’t interested in wading through the slush pile.  Interestingly, though, this seems to ignore two big traits:  people’s desires for ever-larger arrays of options, and the long-established book selecting habits of readers.

I’m a voracious reader.  Every time I go into a book store, I get lost in there for hours.  What am I doing during that time?  Well, I go to a particular section, scan along the shelves, pick up anything that catches my eye, read the description on the book jacket, maybe flip it open and try out a few pages and, if I like it, it goes in my cart.  Once I’ve exhausted that section, I move on to another, rinse and repeat, until I have an armload of new reading material.  How, exactly, is that any different from how I shop on Amazon or other online booksellers?  I search for some subject or genre, scroll through the results, click on any that catch my eye, read the description and, maybe, pop open a sample to check out a few pages.  If I like it, click, it goes right into my cart.  Same thing. 

In such an atmosphere, there is simply no such thing as too many choices, particularly when I can narrow down the field at will through basic search terms.  Thinking that readers need someone to winnow down the options for them is simply arrogant, and it flies right in the face of the clear behaviors of their very own customers. 

Book reviewers are another class of industry hangers on who seem to believe they provide a valuable and irreplacable service that readers would simply be lost without.  All too often, they cling to some of the same bigotry against self published works, frequently refusing to even consider reviewing them.  That’s fine by me.

I buy a lot of books, both print and online, and I honestly don’t recall the last time I actually read a book review.  I’m not totally convinced I ever have.  If you’d like an example of the lessened impact of critics, look no further than the film industry.  Every year, there are lots of movies that make tens to hundreds of millions of dollars while simultaneously being widely savaged by film critics.  Their opinions simply don’t carry the weight they once did, and have little, if any, bearing on the success of the movies they review.  But don’t say that to a film critic, you’re liable to get a big bucket of gooey buttered popcorn in the face.

People seem to be finding their way to the theater and figuring out which movies they want to watch just fine, thank you.  And they’re doing the same in droves with books.  Readers don’t need gatekeepers for one simple reason, they are gatekeepers.  The only ones that truly matter, in fact, and they know it.  Underestimating your customers and overestimating your own worth are two clear signs of an industry in trouble.

Anyway, the point of all this isn’t to argue that self publishing is a panacea that will make all writers millionaires, conjure up world peace and cure cancer.  It’s also not to declare traditional publishing deader than a 48 year old virgin’s social life.  It’s to point out that many of the criticisms making the rounds these days in defense of the established industry aren’t all that viable and they don’t  really matter, anyway.  They can say whatever they want, self publishing is here and it’s not going anywhere.  Traditional publishing needs to realize that this is the new reality and adapt to it, like it or not.  All the excuses and fancy justifications in the world isn’t going to stop what’s coming.

Newspaper publishers have already tried that and it cost them half their business in a relative blink of an eye.  Traditional publishers need to stop hating and figure out how they fit in to the market of tomorrow.  Otherwise, they, too, will wake up one day soon to an infinitely smaller slice of the pie.  And those barbarians they feel so superior to today will have evolved three or four generations ahead of them.

New Stuff and Old Concerns: The emerging ebook market can create a better future for writers

After all the Halloween stuff I did over the past few weeks on this site, I took a little time off.  Hey, cranking out 18 pieces in 14 days can be exhausting.  Anyway, I was very happy with how that worked out.  I got a massive uptick in traffic to this blog, I added a number of Twitter followers who actually stuck around and, ultimately, I sold what I consider to be a fair number of both of my books. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, the actual numbers behind any of this are miniscule.  I’m not making a fortune, I didn’t sell 50,000 copies, I didn’t add 25,000 followers on Twitter.  What I did do was illustrate to myself how some of this could conceivably work over the long haul.  And I made a few bucks to help pay the bills.  Sounds like a success to me.

I’ve noticed a few things of late that are steering me toward future choices.  The first is the impact a second book has had on generating sales for the first one.  That is, while I’ve sold copies of the new book, I’ve noticed a nice little bump in sales of the old one, too.  As much time and effort as I’ve put into trying to figure this stuff out over the past couple years, it startled me a bit to realize that I was still a victim of old school thinking. 

I was looking forward, focusing on the new book, almost subconsciously determining that the old one was played out.  It really never dawned on me that “played out” doesn’t even begin to apply to any of this any longer.  Ebooks are a relatively small percentage of the overall book market right now, but even the most pessimistic observers admit that they will soon come to dominate the market.  Tablets are getting cheaper and more diverse, meaning their penetration into the mainstream of life has the potential of what the VCR or DVD player or cable television did in the past, as in sooner than later, more people will have one than not.  How can a book that never goes out of stock, and never leaves the marketplace be played out when the market itself could be 200-300% bigger in the next few years alone?

I believe the mistake I made, and the mistake a lot of other, smarter people than me are making right now, is considering ebooks a segment of the overall book market.  It’s not.  Ebooks are an entirely different market altogether.  Even though you have the same material overlapping between print and digital, that’s really the only similarity.  Digital revenue won’t overtake print revenue in total dollars historically anytime soon, or even compensate for print’s losses in any effective way because the economics are different.  As much as big publishers want to tell themselves that people will pay $13, $15, $17 for ebooks, that’s a pricing structure doomed to failure.  So to look at ebook sales in the context of a percentage of total book sales misses the point, and totally underestimates the potential upside.

Ebooks are a market that, barring another economic catastrophe, is poised to enter a period of enourmous growth and expansion.  That expansion is predicated on a vastly different sales model than what has existed seemingly forever in print.  There is no longer any such concept as “played out.”  In fact, it appears that, as the networked infrastructures within ebook sales continue to grow and be populated by more and more readers, that each new entrant into the market under an author’s name has the potential to generate just as many sales for a book published two years ago as it does for a new release. 

That just seems counterintuitive to anyone who’s worked extensively in print publishing where everything, no matter how popular and successful, has a distinct life cycle.  It may be that ebooks hold the possibility of not simply extending that life cycle, but making it near infinite.  While things have existed in such a way for the most popular of writers, albeit to a lesser extent, this infinite life cycle in ebooks isn’t limited to the top of the top, it’s available for all writers at all levels of the book food chain.  That is a massive departure from the past, a total game-changer, if you will.

And it never really occurred to me even though it was staring me right in the face.  But I get it now.  After two years of wrapping my head around this stuff, trying to find something that makes sense economically–meaning an earning potential that equates the effort necessary to produce the product–ebooks are by far the most promising development I’ve seen.  There really hasn’t, with limited exceptions, been a model that makes a compelling case for selling digital content as a writer.  The ones that do tended to pull the majority of revenue to the institutions operating the platform.  Newspaper paywalls, for instance, generate revenue mostly for the newspaper and the corporation that owns it, and the writer is left with a miniscule share of that, if any.  Content farms pay peanuts for material, yet exploit that for their own, much larger share.  Ad supported sites are stuck in a volume business because the unlimited structure of the internet has been, and will continue to, drive a race to the bottom on ad rates.  And again, the writer gets a tiny, insignificant slice while the institution gets the lion’s share. 

Even book publishers, who have operated on that premise forever, are trying to squeeze that form into ebooks.  What does it say about a system where I can sell a book for a third or a quarter of the price of a Big 6, agency priced ebook yet I make more per copy than their author, no matter how big their name?  Ebooks have a clear potential to break this cycle, and produce significant financial gains for writers, putting us into a position, perhaps for the first time, to reap the majority of the proceeds generated from our work. 

While I’ve had conflicting issues with previous developments for writers online–most of which seemed based on a devaluing of our work, further mitigating our place in the content ecosystem–ebooks look to be just the opposite.  And we’re right at the ground floor of what is possibly a booming growth industry over the next decade.  When I look at ebooks, I see optimism, I see large growth possibilities, I see earnings potential that at least meets the efforts required to enter the market, and quite possibly far exceeds it.  For the first time in years, I can look at the disruption the internet has wrought on publishing and see an opportunity created for writers rather than one taken away.  Can it be that I’ve actually found what I’ve been looking for?

Anyway, enough pontificating.  I liked the 13 Days of Halloween stuff I did here so much, I decided to collect it up and make it an ebook all its own.  I unleashed it a few days ago.  You can click here to check it out.  I did slap a modest little price on it, as it’s a cleaned up, better organized and polished version of what’s still on the site, so I don’t believe that’s unreasonable. If you simply must read it for free, well, just scroll on down and have at it.

After wrapping that up, I dove right into something I’ve considered for a while but haven’t acted on, I kicked off a series of individual short stories in ebook form, each available for 99 cents.  I started off with three stories, and am listing them under the banner “Watershed Tales.”  Click here to check them out and see where you can buy copies.

It’s been a busy few weeks.  And there’s much more to come.  It’s interesting how encouraging it is to finally see a direction that doesn’t look like a dead end.  I’ve had a lot of pent-up creativity the past few years, mainly because I couldn’t find an outlet that made sense.  Now, however, without even truly realizing it, I’m overloading with ideas and possibilities.  For the first time in a long time, they actually seem attainable.  It’s about damn time!

Happy Halloween: Even More Fiction For The Season–This Old House

So Halloween is finally here, and to wrap up this gloriously creepy celebration, I’ve got a spooky little treat for you.  Here, for the first time ever, is a previously unpublished short story, This Old House.  Betrayal, adultery and a quiet little rundown farmhouse as the unwelcome setting for murder.  Read on and enjoy! 

Thanks for reading over the past two weeks of The 13 Days of Halloween here at The Watershed Chronicle.  I sincerely hope you’ve found something to scare the wits out of you during this best of all holiday seasons.  Happy Halloween!

This Old House

She was a rather large house for this part of the country, made even more so by the utter bareness of her interior.  The constant winds glided over the surrounding cornfields, slamming into her graying clapboard sides with all the force a good, unimpeded gust could muster.  Her paint had peeled away years ago, leaving her looking as many people do when they age; old, gray and alone.  Her now-antique boards would occasionally bend or swell, producing the eerie creaking sound that so many young children suspect is a ghost or ghoul from beyond come to claim their souls, but is only just the settling of her weight over the ages.

This house has a personality, molded over decades of spring plantings and autumn harvests, through the good years and the bad.  Three generations of farmers had called her home, and the impressions they left behind will never fully be wiped away.  Over the decades, she had learned to be protective of her inhabitants, as a good mother should, keeping a watchful eye, a constant vigil over their safety.  But the people had left her long ago now, to wither away silent and alone here in this field.  Cobwebs make up her only furnishings, and virtually every window in her has been broken.

Nevertheless, standing here idle, she still looks strangely inviting.  To a weary traveler who has been moving through the brown and yellowed corn, the cool autumn air having drained the life from their once-brilliant emerald leaves, the sight of her on the horizon could be nothing if not a blessing.

Yes, she is alone now, and yet she is happy.  After years upon years of large families taking up every available inch of her space, and all of the hustle and bustle that the people brought with them, she has grown to appreciate the calm and restfulness she now has in abundance.  This aging home has grown quite used to quiet evenings listening to the winds rustle through the corn stalks.  Her only recent inhabitants have been the occasional field mouse taking advantage of her ample shelter after a long, hard day of roaming between the rows, in the constant search for food.  She does so enjoy the peace of her existence now, her time winding toward its inevitable end and, deep down, she doesn’t want it to be broken.

But on this night, the calm that she has so long cherished is snapped by something stirring in one of her upstairs bedrooms.  A series of moans emanating from the small room where the youngest children used to live and laugh and play and cry, echoed through her hollowed-out halls.  Inside that room was a man, struggling as he tried to regain consciousness.

The unknown man fought to get to his feet, but in his visibly weakened and unsteady condition, he immediately tumbled back to the floor, the resulting thud thundering through the old house.  A small candle illuminated the room, and the shadows from the flickering light exaggerated every false, uneasy move.

“Where the hell am I?” he asked groggily, to no one in particular.

The man lifted his head, scanning the empty room, searching for any landmarks or other clues to give away his whereabouts.  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the inconsistent lighting.  The flame of the candle bouncing in the breeze, drifting through the busted glass of the window pane, didn’t allow for very good visibility.

Soon, however, his eyes did adjust, and the man realized he was alone in the filthy, rundown room.  The chill breeze from outside caused goosebumps to rise on his exposed forearms.  From his position on the dusty wooden floor, he looked out through the last remnants of jagged glass in the window, and could see a nearly full moon, partially obscured by passing clouds.

He cast his clearing gaze on the candle, which, other than the soft streams of moonlight, provided the only source of light in the room.  From the look of it, the long, thin taper candle had been lit very recently.  It was still somewhat rounded at the top, and no streams of melted wax had yet made their way trickling down its sides.

As his strength slowly began to return, the man once again attempted to climb to his feet, this time far more successfully as he finally made it, unsteady but upright.  He slowly circled the room a few times to make certain his legs were fully back beneath him, with light wisps of dust kicked up by each shuffling step, before beginning to explore.

“What happened to me?” he thought to himself as he knelt down to pick up the candle by its small brass holder, being sure to keep a cupped hand around the flame to stop it from blowing out.  Getting a closer look, the candle definitely did not appear to have been lit for very long, but who had done it?  And, more importantly, were they still around?  He searched his mind, trying desperately to remember what he had last been doing, scouring his still-fuzzy thoughts for any hints as to where he was or how he could have gotten here.

“Well, Will my boy,” he finally said to himself.  “You really did it this time.  Must’ve tied one on and now you have no clue where you are.  Or worse yet, who you’re with.”  He looked around the shabby, vacant room one last time, his glance hovering over several patches in the walls where the old plaster had fallen away into odd little piles of refuse on the floor, revealing the rows of thin wooden slats underneath.  “Maybe this is Hell.”

Will finally walked through the open doorway and immediately found himself at the end of a long hall.  Three other doorframes lined the way, and each was standing as open as the one he had just awakened in.  He peered into each room as he went by, passing the candle just over their thresholds, finding similar empty, dust caked wooden floors and busted out windows.

At the far end of the hall, he paused, staring down a large staircase leading to the ground floor of the decrepit old house.  Looking to the bottom, he recognized some small bursts of light that could only have been made by another flickering candle somewhere nearby on the first level. 

“So whoever brought me to this dump must still be around,” he thought to himself as he slowly worked his way down the stairs.  He took each step as lightly as he could, recoiling at every creak of his weight on the well-worn boards.  Without knowing what was going on, exactly, he figured it was best to keep as low a profile as possible.

But as Will reached the bottom of the staircase, he instantly saw the futility of his plan.  Sitting there, in a large room off to his left, he saw another man hunched over a small table, the candle that was throwing light in his direction standing squarely in its center.  The man was holding a deck of cards, playing something that looked like solitaire.  After a brief glance at his surroundings, the table and chair seemed to be the only furniture in the building.  Will considered his position for a moment, thinking better of a fleeting notion to make a break for the closed front door about five feet in front of him.  He finally turned to face the other man and was about to say something when the stranger caught sight of him and jumped up from the chair, leaving the cards scattered about on the table.

“Oh, I see you’ve finally decided to join me back here in the realm of the living,” the man said.  Will’s heart sunk as he immediately recognized the voice as that of Jack Person, one of his co-workers at Wilpon & Heccht Insurance, where he had pointlessly toiled away for the past decade.

“Yeah, Jack,” Will began, uneasily, “What the hell is going on here?”

“You mean you don’t know?  I must’ve put too much of that stuff in your food.  You know, I got it from a cousin of mine who works for a drug company just outside of New York.  He sent me a vial of that shit and doesn’t tell me how much to use.  All he said was that it’ll knock out a 500 pound man for three or four hours, and I figured, what the hell?  The worst it’ll do is kill ya, and I was gonna do that anyway.”

Will froze as he saw Jack pull a small handgun from behind his back and point it at him.  Then, suddenly, a loud bang rang out from somewhere up the stairs, startling both men, causing them each to shudder in surprise.  For an instant, Will had even thought he’d fired.

“Damn wind,” Jack said, still pointing the gun directly at Will’s chest.  “It’s been blowing the doors in this dump shut all night.  They really ought to tear this place down before it falls down.”

“Now, hold on a minute, Jack,” Will said, trying to sound soothing.  “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m sure we can work something out.  There’s no need to do anything drastic.”

The sudden fear for his life caused memories of earlier in the evening to come flowing back into Will’s apparently drug-addled mind.  He had gone to dinner at Jack’s house at his invitation, despite his better judgment.  He had expected to see Jack’s wife, Kathy, there–she was the one who had talked him into going, after all, convincing him that not to would be suspicious–but when he arrived, she was nowhere to be found.  Jack told him that she had gone home to see her parents, something about her mother becoming suddenly very ill.  Their affair had gone on for over a year without Jack’s knowledge, or so they had thought.

“Didn’t think I’d catch you, did ya?” Jack said, waving the gun in Will’s direction.  “You two thought you were so damned slick!”

“Where’s Kathy?” Will asked, hesitantly.

“I told you, she went home to her parents,” Jack chuckled as he spoke.  “At least part of her did, anyway.”

“What did you do?” Will demanded, sounding about as forceful as he could, the sick feeling in his stomach getting worse at the thought of what might have happened to Kathy.

“Boy, that was one helluva dinner earlier, wasn’t it?  Some really good stew.  That Kathy sure knows how to put food on the table,” Jack said, still cackling. 

“Where’s Kathy, Jack?” Will asked again, this time with less force.  He didn’t really want the answer.

“You know, we almost didn’t have it.  While I was cooking, I realized that we didn’t have any fresh meat, so I had to improvise,” Jack said, and through the darkened haze, Will could make out the giant grin on his face as he spoke.  “I always said she had good taste.”

Just the thought of what Jack implied made Will double over, dropping the candle by his side.  His stomach, already twisting and roiling from fear and the after-effects of the drugs, seized mightily and he spilled its contents all over the floor in several massive heaves.

“Aw, what’s wrong?” Jack asked, faking sympathy.  “A little cannibalism’s good for ya.  Keep’s the cholesterol down.”

“You sick bastard!” Will sputtered from his bent over posture, the vile, acidic taste of the vomit still fresh in his mouth.  Jack just laughed heartily, still pointing the gun at him.

“You won’t get away with this,” he said, wiping away some of the vomit from his lips.  It was a pathetic and cliched last attempt to put doubt into Jack’s mind, but Will, himself, knew it wasn’t at all convincing.  How could he be?

“Will, my friend, I already have gotten away with it.  I’ve been planning this for weeks.  I liquidated all of my assets and have the cash out in my car,” he said.  “After I get rid of you, I’m on my way to living out the rest of my days as the king of some Caribbean paradise somewhere.”

Jack walked over to where Will was still hunched over, his footsteps echoing lightly through that large room, and placed the barrel of the gun to the side of his head.

“Say goodnight, Will.”

At that instant, just before he was set to fire, the front door of the house that was closed directly behind Jack inexplicably flew open, blindsiding him and sending him and the gun flying into the large, open part of the room.  Will saw his chance.  He lunged across the floor toward where the gun now rested, just underneath the table, and grabbed it before Jack was able to compose himself.  Will stood up quickly, the sick feeling in his stomach passing, replaced by a burning rage, and pointed the gun at his would-be murderer.

“Say Goodnight, Jack,” Will said, but before he could fire, the house began to tremble.  Will staggered as the floor beneath him rocked, and he could hear doors all around the house slamming shut, then open, then shut, again and again.  He looked down at Jack, who was now curled up in the fetal position, visibly frightened.  Will wasn’t certain if he was afraid because of the sudden turn of events or the unexpected rumblings of the old house, and he really didn’t care.  The bastard deserved to be afraid, after what he’d done to Kathy.

“It’s just a damn earthquake,” Will said, the trembling still noticeable beneath his feet.  “We haven’t had one of those for years, but I have to say, the timing of this one was impeccable.  I’ll see ya around, Jack.”

Will steadied his aim through the rumbling, and squeezed off three rounds directly into the man’s chest.  Just as Jack let out his final breath, the shaking stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the peace and quiet of the secluded, rundown house was restored.

“See, I told you it was just an earthquake,” Will said, as he bent over and fished Jack’s car keys from his front pants pocket.   As he stood up, he tossed the gun onto the prone body and headed for the still-open front door.  Before he stepped outside, Will paused and turned back toward the body on the floor. 

“The king of some Caribbean island sounds pretty good to me, old buddy.  Thanks for the cash.”

He gave the now-departed Jack a short salute, then headed out onto the front porch, passing through the same door that only moments earlier had saved him from being the one shot dead on the floor.  As Will headed down the four steps leading from the porch to the overgrown walkway leading away from the house, he was day dreaming about the sun and the sand, and how much Kathy would have loved it.  Oh well, he thought to himself, there’s always other women.  Will smiled softly, but as he placed his foot on the bottom step, the board gave way under his weight and his leg went crashing through. 

Will lost his balance and pitched forward, but his leg was still stuck, shin deep, in the front step.  He heard the sickening crack of bone as his body fell but his leg couldn’t follow.  There was a momentary sharp explosion of pain from his leg, cut short only when his body twisted and his torso met the partially rotted picket fence that lined the walkway, impaling himself on one of the few remaining pointed posts still upright.

Will used the last of his strength to turn his head slightly toward the old house.  The final thing he saw from this vantage point was the front porch, with its railings somehow still intact, almost glowing in the soft moonlight.  He thought for just an instant that it looked as though the house were smiling.

Undaunted by the happenings of the night, the wind continued on its great, endless journey through the corn.  The old house settled once more in the calming breeze, a few various creaks and moans betraying her years.  Then, once again, she returned to having only the rustling stalks to break the silence.  This house, even at her age, has a personality.  And she does not appreciate having her quiet evenings disturbed.

This Old House, copyright 2011, Dan Meadows and Watershed Publications.  All rights reserved.

For more scares and your otherwise generally creepy reading pleasure, check out my new short story collection Devil’s Dozen.  And if that’s not enough for you, try my earlier collection, Bad Timing.

The 13 Days of Halloween

Day 1: Scary Movies to Spend a Cold, Dark Night With

Day 2: The Ghosts of St. Mary’s County

Day 3: Vincent Price–The Last of the Great Horror Icons

Day 3: A Few of My Favorite Vincent Price Films

Day 4: Some Fiction For The Season–One Step Ahead

Day 5: Horror Literature–A Truly Unappreciated Art Form

Day 6: Hauntings of the High Seas

Day 7: A Few of My Favorite Horror Books

Day 8: More Fiction For the Season–The Trail

Day 9: Edgar Allan Poe–The Greatest American Writer

Day 10: Horror Anthologies on Film and Television

Day 11: Halloween Rituals and How They Originated

Day 12: Alfred Hitchcock Presents Horror

Day 13: Psycho Killers

Day 13: My Favorite Works of Edgar Allan Poe

The 13 Days of Halloween: My Favorite Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Earlier, I wrote about the plentiful reasons I believe that Edgar Allan Poe is the greatest American writer.  Well, to support my assertion, here are a few of my favorites from Poe’s many and varied literary efforts. Given that his work was written over a century and a half ago, they are now well beyond copyright.  Click on the titles of any of the stories or poems listed below and you can read the associated work in its entirety.

The Raven

Is this the best poem ever written?  Quite possibly.  By now, everyone knows the gist of this one.  Exactly how far reaching has this work’s influence been?  We’ve got an NFL team in Baltimore named after it.  When will this poem’s effects ever die out? Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

The Tell Tale Heart

Here’s another piece that everyone, and I mean everyone, is intimately familiar with.  The imagined sound of the murdered man’s beating heart under the floorboards has become an all-encompassing metaphor for inescapable guilt.

Fall of the House of Usher

Has there ever been a more bleak description of a house and surrounding landscape than the opening of this tale?  It’s an intimate little story about a young woman’s inability to escape her family’s long history of madness as it finally comes crashing down around her and her brother.

Annabel Lee

This is another one of Poe’s masterworks of poetry.  While it doesn’t possess the wide-spread longevity of The Raven, the deep emotional scars from a loss of love resonates throughout.  What else can you say about the tale of a love so great that even the angels in heaven were envious enough to kill the fair maiden out of spite?

The Cask of Amontillado

Somewhat similar in tone to The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat, this is the story of a well-to-do wealthy man’s attempt to steal the wife of a local drunkard.  In the end, the rich man’s avarice is his undoing, as he’s led to a death walled into an ancient catacomb by the temptation of some particularly rare and fine wine.

Ligeia

An odd tale of death and possible resurrection.  The narrator, who happens to be an opium addict, marries the hauntingly beautiful Ligeia, only to see her fall ill and die.  Later, he marries again, but his new bride also is stricken and dies.  However, her body goes through a process of slow revival after death, eventually rising from the dead as a reborn Ligeia.  Did she really come back or was it all an opium dream?

The Murders In The Rue Morgue

Possibly the very first detective story ever written, this tale introduces the amateur sleuth C. Auguste Dupin to the world, a character that laid the groundwork for Sherlock Holmes and virtually every other literary detective since.  In this tale, there are two mysterious murders, and it’s up to Dupin to use his considerable deductive reasoning to suss out the inhuman murderer.

The Conqueror Worm

The third poem on this list, and by far the least well-known, this one has stuck with me ever since I’ve first read it.  All of human existence is but a tragic play and, in the end, it’s the worms that feast on their bodies that are the heroes.  This poem was originally a part of another story on this list dealing with tragedy and death, Ligeia.

The Oblong Box

During a sea voyage, a man notices his friend has brought along this large oblong box and kept it with him in his stateroom.  Every night, his friend’s wife leaves the cabin and he can hear his friend inside opening the box and sobbing throughout the night.  Much like in the movie Seven, “What’s in the box?” is a very pertinent question.

The Masque of the Red Death

Talk about some snotty rich people getting their comeuppance!  This tale is about a cruel prince who seals himself and a large group of nobles into his castle to escape a plague ravaging the countryside.  They decide to have a masquerade ball one evening, and a very special guest appears, the Red Death himself, there to infect them all.

For more scares and your otherwise generally creepy reading pleasure, check out my new short story collection Devil’s Dozen.  And if that’s not enough for you, try my earlier collection, Bad Timing.

Click below for more fright-filled stuff.  And come back tomorrow for even more of my favorite time of year as The 13 Days of Halloween concludes…

The 13 Days of Halloween

Day 1: Scary Movies to Spend a Cold, Dark Night With

Day 2: The Ghosts of St. Mary’s County

Day 3: Vincent Price–The Last of the Great Horror Icons

Day 3: A Few of My Favorite Vincent Price Films

Day 4: Some Fiction For The Season–One Step Ahead

Day 5: Horror Literature–A Truly Unappreciated Art Form

Day 6: Hauntings of the High Seas

Day 7: A Few of My Favorite Horror Books

Day 8: More Fiction For the Season–The Trail

Day 9: Edgar Allan Poe–The Greatest American Writer

Day 10: Horror Anthologies on Film and Television

Day 11: Halloween Rituals and How They Originated

Day 12: Alfred Hitchcock Presents Horror

Day 13: Psycho Killers

Happy Halloween: Even More Fiction for the Season–This Old House

The 13 Days of Halloween: Psycho Killers

I watch a lot of horror movies, even bad ones.  Sometimes, especially bad ones because I’ve found that even a terrible horror movie is still more entertaining than a good romantic comedy.  Nothing frightens me more than the prospect of sitting through another Jennifer Aniston Rom-com or pretty much anything with Julia Roberts, for that matter.  Terrifying!

Over the years, I’ve consumed hundreds, if not thousands, of horror movies.  Even the bad ones can offer something unique or interesting to take away.  Much like Hamlet’s line, “The play’s the thing…”, in horror, the killer’s the thing. Without an interesting killer, your movie is ultimately doomed.

I have watched some horrible films over the years that have interesting or unique killers, and I find that I’ll watch them again just for that element, despite the fact that I know the movie itself, frankly, sucks.  It’s sorta like listening to an album with two or three good songs but sitting through the lesser 10 anyway just because the good tunes are worth it.

So, here are seven of my favorite horror movie killers from over the years.  Some of the films they were featured in were pretty good, but some were admittedly lousy.  It doesn’t really matter, though, because, as I said, the killer’s the thing.

Jigsaw

Yeah, I know, everybody’s sick of the Saw franchise, myself included.  Besides, the guy died, like, four movies ago.  But think back to the original, do you remember that it was actually a very good film, and unique for its time?  I know sequels can sap the life out of a movie, especially a horror movie, but let’s not forget how cool the original concept was.

How can you not love a killer who turns people’s weaknesses on themselves but gives them a possible chance at redemption and survival, albeit with sometimes horrifying sacrifices?  Jigsaw wasn’t so much a mass murderer as he was a psychologist.  But rather than simply having his patients drone on endlessly about their problems hoping to stumble onto an epiphany, Jigsaw gives you 60 seconds to cut the key out from behind your eye before the apparatus strapped to your face tears your head in half.  Now that’s what I call therapy!

John Doe

What’s in the box?  Can anyone ever forget the immortal words of Brad Pitt in Seven when first suspecting that his wife has become a victim of a nameless, religious minded serial killer acting out the seven deadly sins to “turn each sin upon the sinner”?  John Doe was somewhat like Jigsaw in that respect, with one key difference:  there was no redemption in Doe’s machinations, even for himself.

Kevin Spacey played the role to perfection, and the intricately plotted out series of killings was as impressive for their inter-connectedness as for their sheer brutality.  The best part is, he won in the end.  Doe led the police by the nose throughout the entire film, and his plan worked out precisely the way he wanted it, down to the very minute.  And how can you not love a guy who gave Gwynneth Paltrow the most emotionally affecting moment of her career, as a head in a box?

Victor Crowley

Unlike the first two killers on this list who were obsessive and intricate planners of elaborate, meaningful deaths, Victor Crowley was a straight-up force of nature.  The movie Hatchet wasn’t a great film, but it was an awesome horror movie.  Crowley reportedly died as a deformed boy when he  accidentally took a hatchet to the face from his father when he was desperately trying to save Victor from a house fire.  Now he’s back, living in the family home in the secluded Louisiana swamps, and woe be unto anyone who crosses his path.

Crowley wasn’t creative or thoughtful with his prey.  He pretty much just tore people apart with his bare hands, ripping off limbs, snapping necks, breaking people in half across trees, all while groaning and growling indecipherable sounds from his horribly deformed face.  Yeah, it’s not great acting work, but it was certainly entertaining.

Jason’s Mom

The original Friday the 13th movie didn’t have Jason as the undead, unkillable monster as protagonist, it was his mom.  An otherwise sweet looking older woman, dressed in a nice sweater, stalking Camp Crystal Lake slaughtering the teen-age counselors to get revenge for a group of horny teenagers letting her son drown at camp years earlier because they were too busy drinking, smoking weed and hooking up to pay attention. 
This woman was flat-out nuts, going around spouting “kill her mommy” in her best squeaky five-year-old-boy voice.  This movie was truly great, combining horror with murder mystery.  It was like a psychopathic version of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.  Not to mention a very young Kevin Bacon getting skewered through the throat with an arrow.  In the end, Jason’s mom lost her head, quite literally, unleashing a 30 year rampage of Jason’s vengeance that took him to Manhattan, Hell, outer space and back again.  Talk about influencial!

Anton Phibes

The Abominable Dr. Phibes was a Vincent Price take on the intricately planned revenge murder sequence.  Phibes was in a horrible car accident that disfigured him and killed his beloved wife.  Years later, Phibes comes back to kill everyone involved in allowing his wife to die on the operating table.

What makes this great is that Phibes didn’t just kill them, he planned each death to correspond to one of the biblical plagues on Egypt.  Brilliant!  To wrap it up, he created a very Jigsaw-like challenge for the lead surgeon to remove a key from near the heart to free his son before having his face eaten off by acid.  Phibes definitely had style.

Pazuzu

Pazuzu was the demon who took up residence in sweet little Reagan in The Exorcist.  Not only did he twist people’s heads around and toss them out windows, but he turned a nice little girl into a drunken, foul-mouthed sailor, and made projectile vomiting cool.

Pazuzu really came into his own in the Exorcist III, though, when he possessed a patient in an asylum.  During that film, he bounced from patient to patient, sending them out to lop off people’s heads with those giant, stainless steel clipper things morticians sometimes use.  Has anyone ever invented a perfectly legitimate tool that looks more like something from a homicidal maniac’s Christmas list than those things?  They’re spring-loaded hedge clippers from pruning people’s limbs.  Totally creepy!

Death

Death is the ultimate psycho killer.  And if you’ve seen any of the Final Destination movies, you know that he also sports a creative side for taking out his victims.  Death doesn’t just toss a little cancer at you, he creates a freaky chain of events, sort of like a gory version of the game Mousetrap, that culminated in his intended victim being disembowled, crushed, exploded, impaled or otherwise dismembered in new and interesting ways.  Has there ever been a series of films with more moments where viewers have to turn their heads suddenly and shout “whoa!” at the sudden carnage than these movies?

You also can’t beat death, no matter how hard you try.  In all these movies, the group of survivors desperately try to defeat death’s plan, but everyone ultimately ends up dead anyway.  It’s the ultimate exercise in futility.  And say what you want about Saving Private Ryan, but I’ll take the opening car crash scene in Final Destination 2 as the pinnacle in awesome movie-opening carnage and mayhem.  Death is a total bad-ass killer, and he definitely has his plans in order.

For more scares and your otherwise generally creepy reading pleasure, check out my new short story collection Devil’s Dozen.  And if that’s not enough for you, try my earlier collection, Bad Timing.

Click below for more fright-filled stuff.  And come back tomorrow for even more of my favorite time of year as The 13 Days of Halloween concludes…

The 13 Days of Halloween

Day 1: Scary Movies to Spend a Cold, Dark Night With

Day 2: The Ghosts of St. Mary’s County

Day 3: Vincent Price–The Last of the Great Horror Icons

Day 3: A Few of My Favorite Vincent Price Films

Day 4: Some Fiction For The Season–One Step Ahead

Day 5: Horror Literature–A Truly Unappreciated Art Form

Day 6: Hauntings of the High Seas

Day 7: A Few of My Favorite Horror Books

Day 8: More Fiction For the Season–The Trail

Day 9: Edgar Allan Poe–The Greatest American Writer

Day 10: Horror Anthologies on Film and Television

Day 11: Halloween Rituals and How They Originated

Day 12: Alfred Hitchcock Presents Horror

Day 13: My Favorite Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Happy Halloween: Even More Fiction for the Season–This Old House

The 13 Days of Halloween: Alfred Hitchcock Presents Horror

Alfred Hitchcock is one of those Hollywood types whose films can be associated with various types of creative work.  Thrillers are probably what he’s best known for as, over the years, Hitch cranked out many excellent films with espionage, murder and other general all-around mayhem as the main component to their plots.  Hitchcock even frequently discussed his use of the MacGuffin, put simply, whatever it was the protagonists were fighting over, be that secret plans or, typically in his films, some vague, unspecified crucial thing that sets up all the thriller elements.

While I do seriously enjoy Hitch’s various array of thrillers, I’ve always been more of a fan of his horror films.  While many of his most famous works straddled the line between multiple genres, there are a few that I feel fall squarely into the horror category, and I believe they include some of the very cream of his cinematic efforts.

Before I get into my list, though, I want to give a specific shout out to four of his films, in particular, that simply straddled that line too far on the thriller side to be considered horror.  I also very briefly considered The Lodger, which is definitely in the horror genre as it’s based on Jack The Ripper, but ruled it out immediately.  It was Hitch’s first film, a silent one at that, and simply doesn’t hold up to the standards set by the other movies listed here.

I really wanted to have Vertigo on this list, mostly because it’s my single favorite Hitchcock film.  Jimmy Stewart gives simply an awesome performance as the troubled and almost creepy-obsessive main character.  And the plot, with its hints at ghosts, dopplegangers and an all around unhappy ending really had me struggling to overcome what I knew was true.  Vertigo is a sublime example of a richly textured psychological thriller, not a horror film.  It pained me to do so, but Vertigo is out.

Speaking of great performances from Jimmy Stewart, I had nearly a carbon copy internal conflict over the fantastic Rear Window.  Stewart was again wonderful, this time as a curious but helpless man stranded in his apartment, only able to watch a murderous plot unfold through his telescope, powerless to do anything about it.  In the end, though, even more than Vertigo, Rear Window was just too clearly a psychological thriller to make it on this list.

Another film I was compelled to leave out despite myself was Grace Kelly’s fabulous turn in Dial M For Murder.  A husband’s ruthless plot to have his wife murdered in a fake robbery goes awry when she manages to kill her would-be assailant.  Unfortunately for Kelly, she herself ends up being arrested for murder.  This is truly a great film, but after her arrest, the movie plays much more like a murder mystery than a horror film.  Despite my initial consideration, deciding to leave this one off was actually easier than either Vertigo or Rear Window.

The fourth film I seriously considered was Strangers On A Train.  In this one, Guy meets a mysterious man on a train trip who offers a bizarre bargain: he’d kill Guy’s wife in exchange for Guy doing away with the man’s father, thereby solving both of their problems.  Guy says no, but the man carries out his end anyway soon thereafter, by killing his wife.  While the setup has some elements of horror, this movie ultimately becomes a thriller/blackmail film.

So, which of Hitchcock’s films did make the cut?  Here are what I consider to be his five best actual horror films:

Psycho

Ok, so this one is obvious.  Psycho may well be the best horror movie ever made, and if not, it’s on an extremely short list.  Written by horror great Robert Bloch, Psycho set the standard for quiet, unassuming nice guy cum serial killer stories.  There’s a creepy old house, a creepy rundown motel, split personalities, cross dressing, desicated corpses and more.  Do I even need to mention the shower scene, quite possibly the single most famous scene in cinema history?  This is a totally creepy masterpiece of horror, no doubt about it.

The Birds

Like Psycho, there is simply no question that this is first, foremost and completely a horror film.  What starts as a seemingly innocent romantic flirtation turns downright frightening as a small coastal California town becomes ground zero for an all-out war on mankind by the area’s bird population.  Made well before the current environmental “green” movement, Mother Nature is pissed in this horror classic and she’s not gonna take it anymore.  Has there ever been a creepier scene than the end of this film, where the birds perched on every available surface magnanimously provide a brief reprieve from their all-out assault to give the few remaining people an opportunity to give up and get out?  If there is, I haven’t seen it.

Rope

Some may say that this film is a thriller, but I disagree.  It is very much a horror story.  Two college friends decide to kill a third friend before a graduation party just to see what it’s like to murder someone.  They then proceed to stuff the body into a trunk, put a table cloth over it and serve the party guests refreshments on it.  If that’s not horror, then I don’t know what is.  The cold, calculated manner of the killing, and the way in which the stronger of the two friends totally relished every moment of the tension during the lead up to and throughout the party was just simply psychopathic.  Besides, I already ruled out two great Jimmy Stewart Hitchcock films, no way I was leaving off a third.

This film may actually be more famous for the way it was filmed, presented in real-time, cleverly masking cuts to make it appear as one long continuous shot.  Those elements helped to build up the tension right from the start, opening as it did with the last gasp of the dying man, strangled by the title character, the rope.  Murder, madness and unfeeling evil sounds a lot like a horror movie to me.

Shadow of a Doubt

What many people, including the man himself, consider to be Hitchcock’s finest film, this is another thriller that I believe totally fits the bill as a horror movie.  Joseph Cotten is charming Uncle Charlie, come to pay a visit to his namesake niece in California.  What the young girl doesn’t know is that sweet Uncle Charlie is also the Merry Widow Killer, seducing and killing a series of wealthy widows, and part of his visit is motivated by a need to flee one of his recent bloody conquests. 

During his visit, young Charlie begins to suspect and finally confirms her Uncle’s murderous ugly side, and has to survive an attempt on her life, leading him to a gruesome face-first meeting with an on-coming train.  Serial killer, beautiful young girl marked for death, and a brutal comeuppance for the killer at the end.  Yup, this is a horror movie.

Frenzy

Hitchcock’s final film and one of his most horrifying.  The Necktie Killer is stalking London, strangling unsuspecting woman with, you guessed it, a necktie.  This film features one of the most disturbing scenes of rape and murder ever put on film, at least up until 1972, when this movie was released. 

Frenzy follows the killer as he plies his deadly trade all over town, and even leads police to pursue and arrest an innocent man for his crimes.  The murder scene alone, and I mean alone as it was so effective that it was the only actual murder shown in the film, rates this as a definite horror movie.

For more scares and your otherwise generally creepy reading pleasure, check out my new short story collection Devil’s Dozen.  And if that’s not enough for you, try my earlier collection, Bad Timing.

Click below for more fright-filled stuff.  And come back tomorrow for even more of my favorite time of year as The 13 Days of Halloween continues…

The 13 Days of Halloween

Day 1: Scary Movies to Spend a Cold, Dark Night With

Day 2: The Ghosts of St. Mary’s County

Day 3: Vincent Price–The Last of the Great Horror Icons

Day 3: A Few of My Favorite Vincent Price Films

Day 4: Some Fiction For The Season–One Step Ahead

Day 5: Horror Literature–A Truly Unappreciated Art Form

Day 6: Hauntings of the High Seas

Day 7: A Few of My Favorite Horror Books

Day 8: More Fiction For the Season–The Trail

Day 9: Edgar Allan Poe–The Greatest American Writer

Day 10: Horror Anthologies on Film and Television

Day 11: Halloween Rituals and How They Originated

Day 13: Psycho Killers

Day 13: My Favorite Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Happy Halloween: Even More Fiction for the Season–This Old House