The voice on the other end of the line.

“Tyrell?”

“Yes?” He didn’t recognize the voice.

It was one of those rare moments of propinquity. The phone hadn’t actually rung yet. That had happened once or twice with people before. He was just thinking about a girl, Cindy, but this was not Cindy. It was just that he was going to be a little late for work. He really should phone in to let them know.

“I’m here for you, Tyrell.” It was a young woman. “I just want you to know that.”

“Ha, ha, ha.” Tyrell wasn't particularly amused. “Well. That’s good to know.”

Holding his breath, he waited on the line impatiently.

“Do you hear me?” 

Maddeningly, he still had no idea who it was.

“Yeah, I’m here. Sure. And if you don’t mind my asking…”

“I’m here for you.” Then she was gone.

“Huh!” Tyrell stood staring off into space and shaking his head gently.

Who in the hell was that?

***

Tyrell stood at the bus stop, holding a brown cardboard coffee cup, warming his hands and hoping against hope that the bus was on time. Carefully peeling back the tab, he had a little sip, but snapped it down again. He preferred to have some of the coffee left when he got to his desk. The trip itself was a good twenty-five minutes at the best of times.

Late as he was, everyone else had pretty much all gone before, and he was alone for once.

He wished he still smoked, but perished the thought quickly. The phone in a kiosk a few metres away began to ring, cracking the morning calm with its shrill, insistent note.

He looked around in annoyance. There was no one nearby or anything.

"What’s that all about?” It was a complaint to the world in general.

It was best not to get too involved, he knew that. The phone rang for the fourth or fifth time.

Surely, it couldn’t go on for too long…still it rang.

“Shit.” He stumbled to the booth.

He would tell them there was no one there. He grabbed it with a sense of futility, certain it would be a hang-up. Someone was wasting someone’s time. Today started off well enough, in spite of waking up twenty minutes late. This was just an added irritation.

“Hello?”

“I just want you to know it will be all right.”

“What? Who is this? I think you might have the wrong number—”

There was nothing but a buzz on the line.

***

So. He had a friend. A secret admirer! He grinned ruefully at the thought. No, it had to be something so much worse than that, considering the way his luck was going lately. She had to be a lunatic, in every sense of the word.

“Oh, wow.” He didn't have time to deal with it, and she couldn’t really be talking to him.

Although she had his number…it could be anyone named Tyrell. That didn’t seem too logical for some reason. Mind you, with a person like that, it didn’t have to be logical. Bizarre thoughts revolved around and around. What was up with her?

It was a troubled young man who booted up the computer and cracked open the first of the client files he was auditing this otherwise fine November morning.

"Tyrell?"

He could hear it as clear as a bell inside his head.

Oh, God! Now he was doing it to himself.

***

The voice on the phone was oddly familiar. Maybe he was just over-analyzing. The strange girl’s voice had some haunting quality. That was the weird part. He could almost accept that some woman might get hold of his number, but now that he thought about it, she seemed too young to be predatory, at least in that sense. Money? Was she after money? How did she hope to get it? Didn’t they usually just break in? Or pick your pocket? She really ought to try picking me up in a bar, he thought.

For the rest of the day, he would be distracted. With the pressure of work, he really didn’t need it right now.

“Tyrell!”

“Ah-ah-ah!” Tyrell lurched up out of his seat as if stung.

“It’s for you.” Mister Evans was there, holding the phone and standing in the door of his cubicle.

***

“Hello?” he asked, standing there beside Mister Evans, impatient to get his desk phone back.

“Tyrell, I just want you to know—”

“I don’t want to know!” he blurted and hung up abruptly.

His heart rate went shooting up and the boss-man was looking shocked.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“What’s going on?” Who was that? Not one of our clients, I hope.”

“I have no idea!” Tyrell told him. “She’s been calling me, and calling me, and I have no idea what it’s about!”

“She keeps calling you? Why would she keep calling you? What does she say?”

“She’s insane,” snorted Tyrell.

“Is she threatening you? Maybe we should call the police.” Nigel Evans was a pretty good guy to work for.

“No, she’s not threatening me,” said Tyrell. “Let’s forget it. They would never catch her anyway.”

“But what is she saying?” Evans was all insatiable curiousity.

For all Tyrell knew, this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.

“She says it’s going to be all right,” groaned Tyrell.

He would be a laughing-stock for sure, and maybe that was what it was about, as Nigel’s face cracked wide open in the biggest grin Tyrell had ever seen on him.

***

“Something wonderful is going to happen,” came Sid Rushton’s voice, overly loud, and half the cafeteria cracked up.

The story, predictably enough, was all over the building by lunchtime. Tyrell, shy enough at the best of times, blushed beet red and focused with all his might on the coleslaw and a few cold, sodden french fries, all covered in congealing ketchup.

“They’ll get over it,” nodded Raphael, his only major acquaintance in the building.

“Anyway, she’ll probably figure it out sooner or later and maybe her hubby or whatever deserves it!”

“What do you mean?’ asked Tyrell, looking up momentarily into his friend’s sardonic blue eyes.

“Well, she’s obviously doing it for a reason,” suggested Raphael. “She’s just missed a digit on the phone number.”

“But why keep calling?” asked Tyrell.

“She’s got it on the top of the list, and she keeps hitting speed-dial,” said Raphael. “Next time she calls, just tell her. It’s too simple, really.”

“I suppose you’re right,” sighed Tyrell. “I don’t know, but that call at the bus stop. That one creeps me out.”

Raphael didn’t have too much to say about that.

“Maybe she’s hot. I wouldn’t rule it out. She must want you pretty bad.”

***

The phone was ringing, and everyone was looking at him.

“I’m not answering it!” he said, and they all laughed.

Still, the unit bolted to the cafeteria wall was ringing, and ringing, and ringing…

“Aw, no,” grumbled Tyrell as that damned Sid Rushton got up and sauntered over with a big grin on his face.

He picked up the handset and appeared to be listening intently. His eyes stabbed Tyrell.

“It’s for you!” he shouted the length of the room, almost collapsing in hysterical giggles on the floor.

But this one was clearly a prank as his perpetual side-kick, Sam Kennich, held up a sleek black cellular phone unit and laughed as hard as his co-conspirator.

“Oh, man,” said Tyrell, holding his head in his hands.

***

A woman screamed and some kid fell onto the tracks and the trolley was coming and Tyrell didn’t even think about it.

“I'm here for you...” The words rang in his head and all was a roaring as he dove the few yards and grabbed him.

With a monumental heave, Tyrell tossed the kid into his mother’s arms and with a clang the thing was upon him. There was one half second of shock and awe and pain and then merciful blackness.

***

“Unbelievable,” observed Doctor Sheridan Daniel Delorme. “The man stepped in front of a trolley to save a child, and look what we have here.”

“You’ll be fine,” the woman at his side assured him.

“Some kind of miracle,” he added. “It is a privilege to see this.”

The joke didn’t get too far. There were a couple of dutiful chuckles, but that was okay, the effort had been made.

“The man shouldn’t have made it this far, but apparently he took a lucky bounce, according to eye-witnesses.”

Machines clicked and hissed and sucked and pumped while they waited.

“Wow. I don’t know.” He ran through the facts in his head.

His hands were all ready to go.

Doctor Delorme took a deep breath. In a quickly acquired habit they had come to know, he engaged all the operating room staff with a long look. A ring of shining eyes looked back at him in a kind of worship. They, at least, had no doubts.

“Looks like we’re committed now.” They all laughed.

It was like he was still learning his trade some days, but confidence had gotten him this far; and a kind of cheerful acceptance. If he couldn’t do it then no one else could either. In which case it didn’t matter anyway. Thank God for those hands and those eyes.

“All righty then! Let’s see if we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

Doctor Delorme went to work, as his mentor Doctor Amy Cardiff looked on.

“I’m here for you. I just want you to know that.”


(Photo: Morguefile.)






Story as Movement.

Never would I presume to tell another writer how to write a story.

I can only try and explain how I write my own, which may be entirely useless to another writer who may not think in the same exact terms. As for why, I think it just works for me.

When I started off, I must have known something about storytelling. Yet I knew absolutely little about writing, the style, the punctuation, the layout, the format, and virtually nothing about the writing industry or even the craft of writing.

I did know something. I learned it in a strange and surprising way. Back in the ‘80s, my mom had a certain make of VCR, and on the remote was this button. It was fast forward, but the pictures stayed onscreen while it scrolled through at a high rate of speed. There was no sound, just the swishing of tape going onto the plastic reel.

What I saw was movement. There were people coming out of buildings and going down streets. There were people getting in and out of cars, driving places, standing in rooms while other people came and went. People would yell and wave their arms around. They shot at each other, and ran back and forth. In some strange way, you could even follow the basic plot. Just like an old silent film, but without the chalkboard with cues to the audience and short bits of what passed for dialogue back then. There wasn’t even a honky-tonk piano player to give it emphasis, or to tell me what emotions to feel.

I learned a lot about storytelling by watching television. As a kid I watched uncritically, as an adult my needs changed but TV and film really didn’t. What bothered me most was things that simply weren’t possible, or not logical, or even just unlikely. Fiction, whether on the printed page or on a screen, static or moving, requires a willing suspension of disbelief. Unlike real life, in some way it has to make sense—it has to hang together long enough for the reader to buy into the illusion.

Once past that point, anything is possible. When I began to supply the next line of dialogue before the actors even spoke, and when I started nailing it a good percentage of the time, that is when I became critical of TV. It was when I read a book, and found something wrong with it, that’s when I started to get the idea that maybe I could write a book, or that maybe I should become a writer.

My storytelling is cinematic. It involves a whole lot of different perspectives on a common scene. It results in one character being featured, and in the next paragraph some other character advances the story. In a weird way, head-hopping, both in separate chapters and in the same scene involving multiple characters, is a kind of movement—we move the reader from one point of view to the next. It often happens quite quickly. I know there are ‘rules’ in writing. Our craft involves breaking every rule that we are competent to break…if we can pull it off successfully.

If we were to take one of my books and make it into a movie, it would be easy to create the scenes from the point of view of film, or motion. As for TV, much of that is kind of static—it’s a lot of people standing or sitting around in a room setting up jokes and gags. That’s why the camera cuts back and forth for people’s reactions. It is a kind of artificial movement. That’s true of almost any situation comedy we might care to name. An action-situation comedy simply doesn’t exist. You have to go to adventure-drama to find anything where figures move against bigger landscapes and backdrops.

Think in terms of film. The director has to set up the conflict. He almost has to show the shadowy murderer stalking the unwary victim. That has to be shown from several different points of view. The camera keeps moving, rather than just sit on top of a building, watching the whole chase in one big, panoramic long-shot that never cuts to a different scene, time or place.

Because the readers have seen more films, TV shows, plays or videos than I ever will, I think it’s safe to trust their perceptions.

Remember the big scene in the opening of ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ directed by David Lean, where Omar Sharif comes riding across the desert, and the bloody thing takes like eight minutes or something God-awful like that?

We really can’t get away with writing like that. It only takes one line, doesn’t it?

“Omar Sharif rides towards the camera for eight minutes from far way across the desert.”

No one wants to take eight minutes to read such a scene or time it on a stopwatch before going on to the next bit. Film has sound, movement, colour, and music, and all we have as writers is the written word, fixed on the page.

Story is movement, among other things.

  (Photo: Morguefile.)

Quality Control in Independent Publishing: Standard Operating Procedure.

(Author photo.)





















I just published ‘Horse Catcher,’ a science fiction adventure set 12,000 years in the future. Standard operating procedure is to wait, let it go through for Premium Distribution on Smashwords, and when it’s in the pipeline for iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Diesel Books, etc., modify the file slightly and convert it to HTML on my desktop. The changes are to front matter only. The variance is in minor details like taking out ‘published by Smashwords.’ I wait to publish it on Amazon. By publishing it on a Friday morning, with a little luck it pops up in the new titles during prime time Friday night.


We also wait because then we know from Smashwords’ own auto and human vetters that the formatting is okay. It’s quality control for the formatting.

Comprene vous?

When I looked at the Smashwords dashboard recently, ‘The Game,’ a science fiction short story had in fact been approved for Premium Distribution. At that point, I tweeted a link and felt comfortable about doing it. That story can now be uploaded to Amazon. I have three or four accounts, SW, Amazon, Createspace, and Lulu, where I do exclusively POD paperbacks. This takes advantage of any traffic generated by the Lulu store.

I also make paperbacks through Createspace, which automatically distribute through Amazon, in several different countries. I only use free distribution channels. I have the option of paying a fee for each title; and then the books would be available to brick and mortar bookstores through Ingram’s (as I recall.) The challenges are several. I have fifteen titles, each would require a fee, and so far the covers aren’t really up to the standards of modern professional publishing. It’s a matter of conjecture as to whether such products would generate orders. However, even a small order might cover the fee. Assuming the fee is thirty bucks, and assuming I did ten titles, the reader can understand my reluctance.

C’est la vie.

In terms of covers, the free Createspace templates are limited in terms of layout and design. The spine and back cover are equally important in selling to customers when they hold the book in their hand—which they are not going to do when buying from Amazon. However, if disappointed by the product when they actually receive it, there are forums where they can disparage it. It just takes longer, and you do get a few sales.

More default fonts would be welcome, and the ability to right-justify text on back cover copy would be nice. Createspace wants customers to avail themselves of paid services, including cover design, as I can certainly understand.

Merde.

Right now, I have the interior file of ‘The Paranoid Cat and other tales,’ all ready to go. I still need to reduce the size of the text on the present marketing image, as what I have now will impinge upon the cropping or trim area of the physical product. The proof of ‘Time-storm’ got hung up because it was sent via DHL, and unlike the post office, they can’t get into the mailboxes in the lobby. But we’ll try and track that down. I like to look the physical product over before clicking on ‘approve proof.’ It’s a matter of confidence when promoting the paperback. We’ve done some quality control. Also, before approving the proof, I plan on updating the cover image, as now the e-book image has been upgraded.

Over the next month I should be able to get caught up on one or two things, including making some more new paperbacks, and hopefully figure out what to write next.

I just tried the Apple iStore widgetmaker on my blogspot blog and it doesn’t appear to work, so I took it off again. It looked okay, but the links didn’t work, and this may require some troubleshooting.

***

I got the ‘Time-Storm’ proof copy today. It looks like this is the second shipment. One of the neighbours told me there was something stuck on the front door, but I never come in that way. Createspace says in their e-mail, ‘if you get a second one keep it,’ and that’s fine.

N’est pas?

Proofing involves a pencil and a piece of paper beside the bed. I get a glass of milk, some cookies and I just start reading. Things to look for include the drop-down to chapter titles, correct number of blank pages, and broken lines in the text as well as typos and stylistic concerns.

I’m just finishing up reading Edward Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ (the actual title is longer, but you get the idea,) and then I have four pulp thrillers to read, including Tony Hillerman, Len Deighton, and one or two others.

My next project is still so secret, even I don’t know what it is. Hopefully someone will enlighten me.

I haven’t written much in the last couple of weeks except blog posts. I’m done editing ‘Horse Catcher,’ and I have this feeling like I’m not really doing my job. It’s okay at first, but at some point it’s all talk and no action. It’s sort of irresponsible, isn’t it?

“Talk the talk and walk the walk,’ to counterfeit a phrase.

C’est dommage.

Sooner later I have to stop faking it. But I have another novel, ‘The Art of Murder,’ coming out on November 1, so at least it looks like I’m doing something. The book has been re-written five or six times. It’s been sitting for a month. As soon as I cracked it open, I began making little changes again.

I suppose that’s inevitable, really, but I still have a month until deadline. There’s nothing here I can’t handle. What’s really interesting is the contrast between editing ‘Horse Catcher,’ written back in 2008, and editing ‘The Art of Murder,’ which I wrote over the summer.

You can learn a hell of a lot about writing fiction in three or four years of effort and application. ‘Art of Murder’ is my ninth novel. ‘Horse Catcher’ was my sixth, and I have no more unpublished novels. From here on in, I’m writing fresh material.

***

I’ve been getting out of the house a bit lately and I think that’s good.

It’s a nice time of year, and a little appreciation for the outside world is okay as far as that goes.

But if this is a vacation, then I’m wasting that too.

Au revoir!

Tips for laundering money.

(Morguefile.)

The best way to launder money is very, very slowly. It can be likened to the old ‘hot water/cold water debate.’

You don’t want to find yourself in hot water, right?

Buying a bunch of shitty little things every day is better than buying one nice big thing and blowing your cover. It’s a question of quality of life, right? That’s all that really matters here.

What you need to do is to get it all into small bills. Using a hundred at a roadside lemonade stand will just draw attention to yourself and you don’t want to do that. Hundreds are what you pay the rent with, right? No one knows if you can actually afford the place, right?

So, once you got her all in fives, tens and twenties, you need to buy a lot of little stuff. No one thing is a big-ticket item. It’s not like you drove up in a brand-new Winnebago, right? Someone will ask how you got it, right? Like a neighbour or something. Or even your crazy brother-in-law. Whatever.

Sign up for a lot of magazines. Sign up for every news rag in town. In a similar vein, you can buy a lot of used books. Your town probably has a used bookstore or two. They might have thrift stores, like the Salvation Army, or the International Daughters of the Revolution Thrift Shoppe, or whatever. Right?

Buy everything at Ikea, I really can't stress that enough. You want to be a loner. It's a kind of high-security lifestyle, and not everyone is cut out for it. Bear that in mind.

Go in once a month and put some major cash on your credit card, that’s always good. Slide a couple of hundred-dollar bills in there. The bank don’t care where you got it.

Never go to the same liquor store twice. Think about it. You show up the same place every day, get a twenty-sixer or whatever size of the liquor of your choice. Sooner or later, they think they’re getting to know you. You’re an old and trusted friend, right? And then, they ask what you do for a living, and you ain’t got no job, right? So never go to the same liquor store twice in a row. It only makes sense. (Don’t tell them you’re a writer either, it’s the most suspicious claim you can make. Writers can’t afford to buy anything at all.)

Another thing you can do is to buy a shitty old car. A big old gas-guzzler will take care of a few of them hundreds every month. You can take it to every garage in town. There’s always something wrong with it, right? Them guys are such crooks, they’ll never suspect. They will laugh at you behind your back, but you know something they don’t, right? Just let it slide, my brother. They’re just jealous anyway, ‘cause you go out to bingo every night. Anyhow, it’s like the Purloined Letter, it’s hiding in plain sight. You don’t want to disturb the pattern of living in your immediate vicinity, right? (All them fuckin’ drones.)

What I like is them Royal Dalton figurines, and them Norman Rockwell plates, but there’s a hundred other things you can collect. Anything with Elvis, pigs, or frogs painted on it is good for that. Anything with Princess Di is good, even now. Trade or sell on Ebay. It’s a visible means of support. You can talk a lot about your ‘online business.’ Try to sign them up for water-filtration affiliate schemes. Trust me on that one. Bore the fuckers to death, it’s legal and everything. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. The real problem arises if you are actually any good at it, and begin to make money on your own. This happened to a friend of mine, quite by accident I assure you. He has the right to privacy, right?

I like having a lot of cold and sinus medicine in the cupboard. That’s always good. You could do comic books or baseball cards, whatever you can turn into cash real quick. Say it’s an investment, people will understand that.

Oh, another good one, buy all of your clothes at Wal-Mart. Have a lot of shoes, and I don’t know, maybe a chair that you can ride around in. You can be like Seinfeld, and have every brand and flavour of cereal in your cupboard.

Just remember, everything you bought was on sale. That’s your story. All you have to do is stick to it.

Then plastic cards are good. Same as cash, right? Leave a couple of bucks on them and then just throw them away on the sidewalk in front of the candy store. Little kids live for found money. They’ll pick it up, try and see if there’s any money left on it, and then your ass is covered. Right? ‘Chain of custody,’ bro. Look it up online somewhere. It works two ways, brother. It works two ways.

Vending machines are another good one. If you follow my advice, you’ll end up with a lot of loose change anyways, and that’s good because there are no serial numbers. How are they going to prove it? Just tell ‘em you looked under the cushions of your couch, and you should be okay on that one as long as you’re not going overboard with the egg salad sandwiches and the candy bars and stuff. You can never have enough cans of Coke in the fridge, right? Follow my advice, and you’ll never have to cook again.

If anyone gives you a rough time, break down and tell them you’ve had a problem with hoarding for years, hug them a lot and then ask if they wouldn’t mind coming over and helping you with a garage sale some weekend.

If that don’t put them off, I don’t know what will.

Take lots of empties back to the beer store. That accounts for a major part of your income, what can you say? You were hurtin’. Right?

The only other thing I can think of is e-books. You can have hundreds of them, some of them are quite expensive, and you can always say you pirated them off the internet.

Think about it: you can always plead guilty to the lesser charge, right, but your main concern right now is the IRS, right? And them guys are inexorable. They never quit. They’ll fuckin’ follow you to your grave, bro. You have to admit I’m a fuckin’ genius. Go ahead: say it.

“Louis is a fuckin’ genius.”

That wasn’t so hard now, was it? Right.

Whereas if it’s just some criminal thing, the judge gives you a slap on the wrist, you get your name in the paper, and off you go, no one the wiser. Lawyers accept cash, trust me on that one.

“Hey everybody, look at me! I’m an online shoplifter. Now fuck off.”

It don’t mean nothing. Anyways, that’s just a few ideas, I thought I’d throw them out there 'cause I just like helping people.

You know how it is. We got the love, bro.

Independent Publishing: Utopia or dystopia?

(Hieronymus Bosch.)


As a science fiction writer, I have to ask the question, is the rise of independent digital publishing dystopian? Or is it Utopian to have the freedom to publish a book?

It depends who you ask, doesn’t it? There are those who see the democratization of publishing in dystopian terms. It is the end of the world, and a cloud descends over humanity. Others, including myself, see it as a vast and wonderful opportunity to transcend hierarchical structures and establish our own meritocracy of abilities.

Not everyone has the ability to write, so there is inequity here as well, although this is true for traditional as well as self-publishing.

What makes dystopia or Utopia is interest. It depends which side you are on. One man’s Utopia might be authoritarian. He would finally have the power and control to rectify the world’s wrongs, and confine or reform those who did not meet social standards. Sounds good, eh? Unless you don’t live up to expectations. His personal Utopia includes tyranny over you.

And yet the opposite, a state where there was no authority, and the needs of all (or the greatest number,) were still somehow met, might seem very dystopian to those who believe that there is nothing good which does not stem from some higher power or authority somewhere—they might be Utopian in that they seek a benevolent world government. They might have all kinds of logical justification. They would be up on a pulpit and no one would listen. That might be very frustrating.

What if all they want to do is to organize things constructively? You can’t get anything done, in an anarchic dystopia. That’s for sure.

What if they want to tell you what you can and cannot read? Surely there is some of this behind all the angst from authority figures in this industry. They're just not giong to come out and say it on record; what you can and cannot read. That would reveal them in all of their splendour, wouldn't it?

A woman’s Utopia, or dystopia, often looks far different than that of males.

So many issues of social control or progress, or reform, revolve around our bodies, from what we can eat, or what we can do on a given day of the week, fish on Friday or whatever, and of course all the reproductive and moral guidelines. Then there is the battle for our loyalties, our hearts and our minds. It’s all over the place. Surely someone has an interest there. Society has an interest—if an ‘inanimate idea’ can be said to have an interest. Society is a necessary fiction. Society is a generally agreed-upon thing. It is the thin veneer that covers barbarism.

To throw all that away could be seen as dystopian or Utopian. It depends on your point of view.

People’s arguments don’t always make sense. Yet they can be very sincere.

Here is the Utopian disconnect: one man’s Utopia involves getting rid of every law. Every law. He drives as fast as he wants on the highway, drinking beer, setting fire to the homes of people he doesn’t like and having sex with farm animals. He’s in paradise. The rest of the world is endangered or even just offended. So many social sanctions depend on public opinion. What else is there to judge by?

Another person’s Utopia is one where everyone behaves rationally and with perfect decorum. How could it be achieved, without massive social intervention, or even a eugenics program?

Another person’s Utopia would involve perfect social control through the use of legal sanctions. There would be a law for every eventuality, and laws for scenarios as yet unimaginable. They would cover all the bases. Who pays for the court system? Who wants to be taxed to support the masses of humanity serving time and paying their debt to society in a jailhouse?

One person’s Utopia might be to impose a belief on another. Not to be able to impose social control, or morality, could be considered dystopian. Perfect personal freedom might lead to dystopia. Surely efforts to band together to avoid anarchy, to provide social services, would tend to promote one group of interests ahead of others. How does that play out over the long run? Wouldn’t that lead to another elite? We admire elites. We look up to them for all kinds of reasons. Or would we all sit around doing nothing? Where none may rule, who is to say otherwise? What right do they have to enforce it?

Public opinion has never stopped evil from doing what it will or good from doing what it must.

What sounds like Utopia, a world where everyone just accepted everyone else, and then went ahead and did what they had to do, what was right for them, probably isn’t an achievable dream anytime soon. That’s because it looks too much like dystopia to the average bear in the street. And you can’t legislate or impose enlightenment on those who will not have it.

I’ve got that much figured out.

Is the new world of digital publishing Utopian or dystopian?

It is both. It represents change. One person’s disaster is another person’s opportunity. There are two schools of thought on the industry today, divided along almost partisan lines. It is that tension that prevents either Utopia or dystopia from actually happening.

***

So what qualifies me to be a writer?

Nothing, really. And everything.

I say that because after some thought, I realized that I’ve had nineteen cars in my lifetime. I’ve lived in five different places, including big cities and remote locations. I’ve had at least thirteen addresses that I can remember. This includes houses, apartments, boarding houses, and even a motel room with a kitchenette.

I’ve had easily fifty jobs, some of which were service or construction jobs, where we went to all the different plants and businesses in the tri-county area. I’ve worked in a hundred cities, towns and villages, and on farms as well.

I attended five different schools, took something on the order of forty different classes, (including bluegrass guitar,) and I’ve had five decades to sort of figure things out. I’ve been around the block once or twice.

I’ve read a lot of books, seen a lot of films, and listened to a lot of music. I’ve looked at a lot of art, listened to a lot of people and lived my life. I’ve had a few girlfriends, drank a lot of beer and had a lot of fun.

I’ve known a lot of people, and heard quite a bit about people I don’t really know all that well. Some of them, I don’t care to meet.

I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve been to two other countries and a couple of different states, although as far as Canada goes, I’ve never been anywhere else but Ontario. Mind you, Ontario is a pretty big place.

I’m fairly intelligent, a good worker, and exhibit some imagination. I’m logical, and reasonable, and just a joy to watch in operation. I also have the ability to write. I have plenty of free time, a good dose of patience and rarely lose my sense of proportion. I’m a pretty good guy, all things considered.

I take things day by day and I like to laugh a lot.

If we’re not having fun, then it’s just not worth doing anymore.