"Her Voice is Full of Money”

“ ‘Her voice is full of money,’ he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it.”  

I saw Baz Lurmann’s new version over the weekend.  I liked it a lot. Luhrmann’s style is certainly polarizing, but it worked beautifully for the fairy tale quality of Fitzgerald’s work.  

Gatsby, for me has always been all about Fitzgerald’s prose, the way he astonishes with the mundane.  That is difficult to film.  Luhrmann’s solution is to film something akin to a dream. It works.  But if you plan to see this film, definitely go see it in 3D.  If you have always wanted to see something slow moving and beautiful rendered by the awesome power of Hollywood filming, as opposed to action almost too frenetic to follow… this is what you’ve been waiting for. 

Meanwhile, here is a fun piece from The New Yorker

"In honor of the film’s début, we’ve looked through the magazine’s extensive archives and selected a dozen vintage New Yorker ads that evoke the gin-fuelled “Gatsby” era of “flaming youth” and Prohibition, flapper culture and cabarets…"

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” (December 4, 1926)

Mash-Up: "Lord of the Rings" and "The Maltese Falcon"

I began with a plan to re-imagine "The Maltese Falcon" - the classic noir detective treasure hunt, where clever characters from the grey space  between heroes and villains clash over a fabled object (the black bird).  I wanted to combine all its greatness with a bigger and better myth.  I found one that crosses over many cultures and many great works, from the 1001 Nights (Tales of Arabian Nights), the histories of Josephus,  the operas of Wagner and the Norse myths he based them on, to the works of Tolkien.  All of these sources spoke of history and legend's ultimate struggle for a common lost treasure.

Imagine that it is not a normal femme fatale who walks into the life of Sam Spade with a strange tale to tell and danger on her heels... imagine that the object she needs his help to find is no mere jeweled falcon, but an honest-to-God ring of power.  Could it be that the legendary magic ring of King Solomon, said to be given to him by an angel, said to bear the mark of God himself, was no gift from heaven after all?  Could it have fallen so far through the mists of time?  Could it reach into our own world, to the hands of our own history's kings and treasure hunters?  Could it have fallen, hand to hand, all the way to a runaway teenager and a hard nosed L.A. cop?  What would this ring be like?  What power might it have over the unsuspecting, the uninitiated, the innocent, should they slip it on their finger?  

That's where the story of King's X really begins.  And you won't get a spoiler from me.  

I love stories that make you feel bigger than you thought you were before hearing them. The kind that stick with you, that you want to experience over and over.  The real myth-making,  Joseph Campbell stuff.  I still get pretty misty when Luke looks out over that double-sunset while the french horn plays his theme.  I'm sure a lot of people do.

I also like complex stories filled with intrigue and characters who are smarter than me.  "The Maltese Falcon" is both a great book and a drop-everything-to-watch movie whenever it shows up on TV.  This may sound strange, but my favorite part of that story is the spectacular chase through history that takes place only in snippets of conversation and never "on camera."

I always wanted to write a book that gives the reader all the suspense, action, and intrigue of "The Maltese Falcon," but also really digs into an epic historical mystery - with faces, characters, romance, and many great and terrible deeds that lead from the distant past right to the door of the modern hero.  If I had known before hand how difficult it would be, I might have picked a different dream.  But once I started, I couldn't stop. 

The story I came up with to make that juxtaposition of past and present really work, turned out to be a deep, rich well of history, philosophy, and intrigue that lead me to a big story filled with heart, complexity, and characters who are smarter than me.  But even more than that, KING'S X feels like relevant myth-making for right now, for the nerve-wracking stew of spiritual seeking, religious doubt, and existential angst we all must soak in.  I'm not sure how, but I may have stumbled into some real Joseph Campbell stuff.  My favorite kind of story.

All Men Dream, but not Equally

Here is an excellent website called ZenPencils.com.  It is a near bottomless source of awesome set to pictures.  I like to read through their archives.  There are many images and strips longer and more complex than this one, but you should go there to see for yourself.  Definitely worth a bookmark.  

Enjoy.

The Real You

"Be sure there is nothing vanishes in this universe, it does but vary and renew its form.”

--Ovid

You are what the entire universe is doing… right where you are… right now.

Who ya Got? Which Modern Characters will Live Forever?

“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.” -- Hector (just before getting his ass kicked, real bad)

What do these names have in common?

Gilgamesh.  Hercules.  Perseus.  Odysseus.  Achilles.

77 years old

Answer: they are fictional* characters who were created at least 2,500 years ago that I just

thought of off the top of my head.  And that you instantly recognized.

Think about that for sec.  Forget for a moment that their true origins in songs shared around hearth fires may be too murky to trace, and allow that their stories were each, at some point, recorded into a more lasting medium, a scroll of papyrus or perhaps a stone tablet.  

74 years old

Now move forward in time to between 0 and 1000 A.D.  How easy is it to name five more such characters (off the top of your head, no googling)?  I’ll do it as I type.  Go.

Beowulf.   Well… that's one.  And you can tell I'm not cheating.  These were the Dark Ages after all…  Let’s see, Aeneas just misses the cut because Virgil was a smidge B.C.… So...um… 

at least 2,700

Alright, let’s skip to the next 900 years.  1000-1900 AD.  Now we're in a post printing press world, when the production of fiction went through the roof.  So it should be a lot easier.  Go.  

Arthur, Merlin, Don Quixote, Hamlet,  Romeo and Juliet, Quasimodo, D'Artagnon, Ivanhoe, Oliver twist…. okay, stop.  There's a lot.  Shakespeare characters alone could keep us going  for quite a while.   

Pushing 400

But here's where it gets interesting.  How many of these characters will anybody remember in 2,000 years (baring the apocalypse, of course)?  I mean, does anybody think that Mr. D'arcy or Sydney Carton will have the shelf life of Helen of Troy?  Cuz I don’t.  Scrooge?  Yeah, maybe.  

In the modern era, 1900-to the present, with the arrival motion pictures, television, comic books, video games, the internet…  production of fictional characters has exploded into the realm of who the f- knows how many. 

I've been thinking about it and I don't think there are many in that soup that will last forever.  But what do you think?

16

What character (not story) created since 1900, will exist in the hearts and minds of people and even be known off the top of their heads, in the year 2513?**

Who, if anyone at all will be our time’s contribution to the pantheon of fiction?  Peter Parker?  Tom Joad?  Scarlett Ohara?  Captain Kirk?

I think the number is between zero and one.  But I'm not saying which one just yet.  Who ya got?  

 88

*Yes, I know… some were possibly actual people.  But surely the versions of them born of gods and nymphs were fictional.  Geez.

**Yes, I know…  the earth will be ruled by Apes by then.  Just play along and don't be such  a smartass.  Geez.

DARE TO BE GREAT

Joseph Campbell once said, (paraphrasing) The Grail Knights never entered the forest at the same point, but always found their own way in.  Because the moment you take the path already cut, you are on someone else's path, and you should already know that the Grail is not there.

He means YOUR Grail.  As an artist, your work, and your journey to create it, IS your search for the sacred.

I just just read a great post last night - for any author or artist - over on the blog of Kristine Kathryn Rusch (linked below).  

There's a great quote from Adam Levine of Maroon 5 in her piece that illustrates the possibilities of the new digital world for artists of all stripes.

Levine said, “ The diversity in people’s tastes now is so much cooler. Everyone is saying MP3s and the Internet have ruined the music business—and it’s sad there are no record stores—but music is just so present now in the culture. More than it’s ever been. That’s a result of the [technological] advancements we’ve made. I’m such a huge fan of where music is right now.”

Rusch also explores runs-ins with gatekeepers of various kinds, and  how the new reality of the digital world frees you to bypass them, if you’ve got the guts.

It reminded me of a column I wrote last year about the same thing, and what the new freedom for writers might mean for books.  From my earlier post…

None shall pass!

But the new development in publishing might just be the most radical of the big three.  A very short time ago, books were very expensive to print and very difficult to distribute.  The gatekeepers were firmly entrenched in a New York based business that had a strangle hold on the magic elixir (Distribution).

But then something happened.  Amazon’s experiment with electronic books, the “Kindle,” worked.  People liked it.  They told their friends and bought more.  Other companies with internet presences followed suit with their own ereaders.

And now, quite suddenly, books are not expensive to produce.  And distribution is readily available for an after market cut of the profits.  That is to say, there is no distribution cost to the manufacturer (the writer).

Imagine that you have been guarding the same bridge for one hundred years, then the water in the river suddenly drains and there is no need for your bridge.

“Oh my God,” some of you might say, “I LIVE on the other side of that bridge!  Doesn’t this mean that there will be a flood of crap writing from every wannabe poet and novelist who couldn’t get by the Gatekeepers?”

I’ve got two answers for that.

First, in 1977 there was a movie that was even better than Stars Wars.  But even Alan Ladd Jr. wasn’t interested.  So I never saw it.  You never saw it.  Nobody will ever see it because it doesn’t exist. (I'm obviously just joking to make a point here because, as everybody knows, there has never been a movie better than Star Wars).

And second, Yes. Yes, of course there will be tons of crap.  But unless there is something terribly wrong with you, you ought to be able to recognize and easily side step crap.

But keep your eyes open because there will be a lot of other things coming as well.

There will be beautifully written stories in which nobody but the teller had a say in how much or how little sex and violence “needed” to be in it or not in it.  Or in how long or short a book must be in order to save on printing costs.  Or in who lives and dies in the end.  Or in how many sentence fragments can be strung together with artistic license in order to make a point about artistic license... (see what I did there?).

There will be concepts that are so different from whatever was successful last year that they will shock and delight you.  Rules will be broken for worse or for better. And readers who are not gatekeepers will find that there are books out there written, it will seem, just for them.

And new things that work, new things that are good, new things that may surprise and delight, will be picked up by those for whom they were intended.  Word will spread to others who like the same things, and before you know it, somewhere within the millions of diverse minds, tastes, and interests that exist in cyberspace, audiences will come together.  Perhaps so small that they are barely a blip on the world wide web, but easily large enough for writers they enjoy, to write for.

Find the rest of my post here - GOT BOOKS?

Stumbling over Rusch’s post last night was uncanny because I was JUST having the same conversation over dinner with my wife.  We were discussing how my goal as a novelist  is to write “unexpected.”  How high-concept themes and stories don’t have to be delivered exactly as they’ve been seen before…

From Rusch’s article - But those things forced me into a series of ever smaller boxes, the idea that I should write only certain things, even though I wanted—and was capable of—writing several other kinds of things. To make matters worse, many of those boxes formed because other opportunities died because of someone else’s incompetence, or simple dumb luck. It wasn’t because I was best at the things I ended up doing; it was because those were the things that had had better breaks.

It all seemed random, and that made it even more frustrating...

And then there was the changing role of advisors.

Somewhere along the way the advisors felt they should control my career rather than allowing me to control it. All of this was before 2007, and since then things have only gotten worse.

Only instead of saying “Out! All of you!” to advisors like that, most writers embrace the criticism or the snide comments, and try to shove themselves into the tiny boxes, not realizing that they’re destroying the one thing that makes them unique.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s article is well worth the read.  And it’s right HERE…

Over dinner last night…

It was exactly like this...

...my wife and I spoke about how my belief that my voice will resonate has been the driving force.  And how I can’t wait to work every day, and get deeper and deeper out there in this new water.

The point is, the sudden ability to bypass gatekeepers was never a green light to produce trash.

It is an invitation to dare to be great.

BRANDING your book. (Redux)

The IMPORTANCE of GOOD BRANDING for your book.  

You hear a lot about "Branding" these days.  Too much, really, because a great deal of what you hear about branding comes from people who don't actually know what it is.  Most people think branding is the same thing as marketing.  It's not.  If you ask 3 people who work in marketing what "branding" is you will very likely get three different answers.

For what it's worth, my day job has been in brand consulting for the last several years.  The truth is, if you ask three brand consultants what "branding" is, you may still get three different answers.  But they will all be closer to it than if you asked a marketing person.  

Therefore, please take the following with all the salt you need.  But it could help.

Branding is NOT marketing:  Branding is about letting people know what your product IS, not where they can get it or how much sex they will soon be enjoying once they own this amazing thing.  Effective branding is not designed to make people want something they didn’t want before.  Rather, effective branding lets people know that this product is the thing they’ve been looking for all along.  That's two very different things.

Your Brand from your perspective:

In my day job, I will tell you that your brand is a promise.  Something that is deeply and fundamentally true about you.  And it better be, and you better not be lying about it, because you have to deliver on that promise every day and in every single interaction with your customers.   This is hugely important because...

Your Brand from your Customer’s Perspective:

This is simple.  It’s what they think you are.  Not what you say you are, not how your marketing makes them feel.  It’s what they think you are.  So, you make a promise ("my product is reliable”) and you fail to keep it (it breaks), then to your customers, your brand is “worthless bulls**t.” And all the marketing in the world can't change that.

Good branding involves knowing who you are and what your product actually is. 

Really good branding will also tell you that this product is NOT the thing you’ve been looking for and is probably NOT for you, so you should just move on.  This is particularly important for books.  It short, you don't want to sell your book to people who probably won't like it.  You may think you do, but you really don't.  ESPECIALLY if its a great book.  If it's great, you want all the word of mouth help you can get.  And that can only come from the people the book was written for.

Let's say you are Toyota and you make a car called the Prius.  It is possible that if you marketed the Prius with TV ads that featured smoking tires, racing rev-counters and beautiful women in denim shorts splayed out across the hood and stroking the windshield with wet, soapy sponges, you might sell a few cars.  But anyone who buys a Prius thinking it's a hot rod and a chick magnet will be disappointed and consequently hate you.  Instead, Toyota cleverly markets the Prius to environmentally concerned parents who want to save gas and don't necessarily expect beautiful women to show up out of the blue to give their cars a good…slow…sensual… washing.

The Prius has a clear brand.  People know if they should seek or avoid them.  Everyone is happy.  And the product does quite well.  It also does great repeat business, which says a lot.

Knowing who you are NOT for is also particularly useful for genre books.  If you write Cozy Mysteries, or Romantic Sci-fi... make friends with branding.

(***The following example is an edited excerpt from an earlier post. It refers to results of making a book free in the Kindle Select Program in 2012) the numbers are several months old, but the point is still relevant***) 

For further anecdotal evidence about what good branding for a book is and how it can really, really make a difference.  I want to talk about another author who has sold a lot of books through Kindle Select.  

David Wisehart has an excellent product page on Amazon.  His novel “Devil’s Lair” is one of the more effectively branded Indie books I’ve seen.  

Perfectly positioned within a clear cut genre, there is no mistaking what it’s about and what to expect from it.  It’s got a great cover in that regard too, and if you are attracted to that cover, then his book will very likely please you.  The product page also shouts “quality,” with a series of glowing and specific blurbs from other authors, and a high price (though still a bargain).  One look and it will be obvious if it’s NOT for you so you can move on (which is good). But if it IS for you, you’ll know it right away, and you will very likely buy it (which is tremendous).  With branding that effective, all he needed was for people to SEE his product page.  He’s using the one day free thing to create visibility and selling in huge numbers. *  

What’s most interesting to me is the consistency of his results, and the way they mirror mine to an uncanny degree.  Through total coincidence, the most recent free promotion I did for King’s X, just happened to be on the same day Wisehart did the same for Devil’s Lair.  So I got to watch what both books did and see all the numbers (the constantly updated rankings) in real time.

As good as King’s X has been doing, Devil’s Lair has been doing MUCH better, but very consistently so.  From what I’ve seen,  Devil’s Lair sells about 50% better than King’s X, every single day, like clock work.  If King’s X is #10 in “Historical Fantasy” then Devil’s Lair is number 4.  If King’s X is number 2,200 in the paid store, then Devil’s Lair is around 1,050.  Seriously.  I've watched the numbers for both books rise and fall for the last 2 weeks.  It's been uncanny.  At this very moment, I’m looking  on Amazon.  14 days since the free promo - King’s X is #8,574 and Devil’s Lair is 3,818.  So I’m still at a little less than 50% of his pace.  Amazing.  

And based on the numbers Wisehart has posted elsewhere, it was exactly like this over Christmas too.  Double amazing.  Enough to prove to me, at least, that it is not a fluke.  

To sum up:  

1. - DWS** says that going free through Kindle Select produces negligible results for 4 out of 5 authors he hears from (undoubtedly a large sample).  
2. - It worked for me 3 out of 3 times and produces very consistent numbers.
3. - It works for David Wisehart every time too, and his numbers are very consistently double what mine are.

So... why?  How could this possibly be?

I’m sticking with branding as the answer.  My book is similar in all the qualities I mentioned about his.  It’s got a very interesting cover that stands out, it has a unique premise and has a very strong product page to let you know what to expect should you start reading it.  

The big difference is issues of clarity.  Wisehart’s “Devil’s Lair” is very clearly an epic fantasy (with a twist), where as “King’s X” is more of a genre-hopper.  The title “Devil’s Lair” offers a lot of specifics, paints a very clear picture even before you read the plot summary.  The title “King’s X” is far more vague.  What the title means is explained in the book, of course, and a hint comes later on in the product page.  But certainly, the title of my book does not call out, “You are my people!  At last we have found each other!  Take me to bed with you and we’ll stay up all night reading!”

I'm suggesting that the crystal clarity of “Devil’s Lair” is worth double the sales of a book that makes you wonder a bit more about what reading it will be like.

For Comparison:  

Original Cover For Paperback.  What about that Font?
 is it a Fantasy?  Sci-Fi?   Not crystal clear.

The New E-Book Only Version -
using the original artwork, but with more exciting font,
additional text plus a nice reviewer’s blurb,
and making it look a little more “Hitchcock”
The title is still a little vague, but this is better, no?
Read the description on Amazon - HERE

So my takeaway from this information is this... if making your book visible to a lot of people at once isn’t helping you sell your book, there may be something you can do about it.  It may be that you need a better cover or a better title, it may also be that you need a better book.  But no matter what the issue is, it definitely means you need to give more thought into WHO YOUR BOOK IS FOR.  Every book was written for someone, or some group of someones.  Like penguins, who can return from hunting in the ocean to find their children among millions of identical chicks in Antarctica, you’ve got to figure out a way for your book’s people to connect right away when they see it.  

Which leads me to one possible down side of being Free on KDP.

Making your book free does go a little contrary to the idea of solid branding helping to match your book with its people.  For starters, the “customers also bought” on your product page will be dominated by one similarity... all books that were also free on the same day.  That doesn’t help you to find your people.

But even more importantly, when a book is free, people don’t necessarily look real close before downloading it.  Very few (percentage wise) will likely ever read it.  Some who do will become fans, but others who do may totally hate the thing you’ve poured your soul into.  “It’s not for me” is a very real thing.  So, you can get bad reviews from angry people who have no patience at all for “it’s not for me.”   

King’s X received an excellent review from author and bookblogger Tamara Rose Blodgett.  When I saw this line down at the bottom... “If you're looking for dessert, skip this...” My eyes got wide.  I immediately made that line one of the first things you see on the product page.  It says a great deal about what reading this book is like, attracts the people it was written for, and politely warns off people who might very well not like it.  Perfect branding. 

But... going free flies in the face of all that.  Shortly after I did, I got a scorching review from a reader who... well, let's just say he was clearly not in agreement with the other reviews.   

And again, just a little more praise for Wisehart and the excellent branding he has done... 25 reviews and none of them negative.  What that means to me is, no one is reading his book who isn’t going to like it.  And as previously stated, A LOT of people are reading that book.  
When you consider that Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” has 51 one-star reviews on Amazon... that’s pretty impressive. 
  

* The blog that link once led to has been removed.  Sorry. 

**DWS = Dean Wesley Smith.  Again, that was from a previous post - STH

One Great Thing - Terrence McKenna

“...scattered through the ordinary world there are books and artifacts and perhaps people who are like doorways into impossible realms, of impossible and contradictory truth.”  

--Terrence McKenna

My favorite thing about the internet is that, for all its silliness and obscenity, it also seems to be a storehouse of the sum total of human knowledge and achievement.  It is a place where you can get up close and personal with the recorded thoughts and deeds of absolutely amazing people you might otherwise have never heard of.  

Here’s One Great Thing (a brilliant mind in this case) that you can learn all about with ease, simply for having been born when you were.   Congrats!  (Seriously.)

Many of you may already know all about Terrence McKenna.  He’s pretty famous.  But I didn’t.  Never heard of him until recently.  Through the miracle of the internet, I’ve been reading up on this strange and wonderfully insightful person who died in April of 2,000.

I am not an advocate of psychedelic drugs, nor am I a user of them, nor a detractor.   Then again, I could say the same thing about Skydiving.  I’m probably a little too cautious/scared for either of those things.   But, whatever path Terrence McKenna took to come to some of his ideas, it was certainly a fruitful one.  

Here’s a clip of Joe Rogan’s podcast (language warning!) where they discuss McKenna's “Stoned Ape” theory (from that book above) of how human intelligence evolved. 

He also said things like this - paraphrased in this article from the Scientific American website…  

"Modern science often depicts humanity as an accident, a bit player in the universe, but the timewave theory puts us at center stage in the cosmic drama, according to McKenna. If he had to define God, he would define it as this novelty-generating process. This definition could serve as the basis for a new moral order. “Anything which destroyed novelty would be bad, and anything which helped build it up and advance it would be good.”

What about Nazi Germany? I asked. Wasn’t that novel? Or the hydrogen bomb? Or AIDS? McKenna acknowledged that novelty may be accompanied by increased suffering and death, but in general progress of some kind emerges out of these catastrophes. In the case of Nazi Germany, “the twentieth century had to deal with the issue of fascism. It couldn’t close its eyes and waltz past that. And it did! So in that sense Nazi Germany, with its science-fiction production values and its silly rhetoric, served a useful purpose.” McKenna, deep down, was apparently an optimist.”

See?  

Here’s a lot more, the thing that got me interested to read up on this “whoa, who the hell is this guy?” guy.   It’s the last recorded interview with McKenna before his death.  At least it claims to be that, but it’s from the internet, so who really knows?  It’s also in the middle of the woods for some reason.  Which is strangely appropriate and awesome.  The video is over and hour long. and the most amazing part (cuz there is a LOT of “amazing” in here) is that he’s basically just talking.  Free-forming stunning thoughts in complex constructions of logic, insight, and what many may feel is total wackiness, like he’s ordering lunch for 500 co-workers at a drive-thru window.  Barely takes a breath.  Just goes and goes…

Definitely worth the time. 

Help Choose a Book Cover

I’m back.  

Where’d I go?  I was writing a book. 

Finished?  Of course not.   Don’t be ridiculous.  But…

I’m getting close.  Real close.

It’s time to start asking for a little help.  Opinions and feedback on everything from covers,  product copy, blurbs and such.  

Okay, let’s start with something simple.   Something fun.  Something obvious

The Cover:  It’s the first thing you’ll see.  The first communication about this book, the story, the character.   First impressions, as we all know, mean a lot.

So without telling you anything at all about the book, here are some covers I’m considering to give a first impression.

One basic look first, with subtle differences of font and colors and such.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and tell me your impressions.  Even if you hate it.  It will really help to know.

Things I’m looking for:

What kind of book do you expect based on the cover? 

Which font you like best.  And why?  

Does the extra copy on the page clear any thing up for you?  Or make it more confusing?   

Think you might read it? 

(in no particular order… and with no which one is the real choice “A")

B

C

D

E
Larger Image - Sepia tone

F
Larger - Background red is brighter 

An Alternative… I think this cover signals a somewhat different read than the ones above.  But in case you are looking for something else… Here’s “G.”

(Note - obviously just a mock up.  Watermarks still on the artwork because it hasn’t been purchased yet.  But it will be if we’re going with “G"

G

Thanks everybody!

Fear Nothing. We Have Work To Do.

The news has shown us all some disturbing stories this week.  I suppose they aren’t really “particularly” disturbing.  After all, there will be more next week.  Anyway, I’m not going to talk about those things here.  I’m going to ignore them in favor of reminding myself, and hopefully you, of something much more important. 

We have work to do.   

Look closely at his hands.  The gesture means “Fear not."

There will always be turmoil in the world.  Obviously.  And of course.  Yet everything is as it must be.  Chaos is a necessary condition for evolution.  And evolution is what we are all here for.  It may not always seem like it, but that’s a good thing too.  Fear not.  Everything is okay.

It’s a very old symbol,
carried down across many cultures for one reason.
Because it’s true.
Everything is Okay.
Fear not.

At the end of each day on planet earth, the net-positive quietly outweighs the net-negative, bombastic and intimidating as it may be.  Even if we can’t easily see it, even if it doesn’t make the news, everyday a man goes without food so that another may eat, a woman goes without rest so that a child may sleep, and entire communities volunteer for hardship so that others may reach higher potentials.  

Every day a great step is taken.  

How great?  Let’s take a step back for some perspective.  No, a little further… a little more… Okay that’s far enough.  Let’s look for a moment at the really big picture.

What we call history, all the way back to the Big Bang, is really the story of growth.  We exist within an ongoing process in which simple things grow into more complex things capable of more and more over time.  On this particular island in space, simple elements evolve into breathable air and sustaining water.  Simple cells evolve into plants and animals.  Autonomous animals evolve from creatures of instinct to creatures of reason.  All of that growth happened over billions of years.  

The next step?  Over the last hundred thousand years or so - a grain of sand on the beach of time - creatures of reason have begun to evolve into beings with the ability to recognize an aspect of themselves we generally refer to as spirit or “soul.”  

Evolution does not happen overnight.  Fungus does not suddenly become a tree.  Instinct does not suddenly become reason.  And humankind does not suddenly become whatever it is we are working our way towards in an instant.  Rather, steps taken in the direction of higher states come from acts of courage born out of necessity.  Some lowly worm had to climb high into the trees before the first butterfly could come.  A fish had to venture onto the land before anything walked.  And some human being had to trust in something about himself which he could not see or point to before he could do something no animal ever could – take a stand on principle.  

Animals do not rush into burning buildings or throw themselves onto live grenades that fall among their comrades.  Nor does every man.  But with each step taken, more and more will be able say I do not need to fear because death has no dominion over me.     

Courage is the key.  Where do human beings get their courage?  Faith.  Not the faith of dogma or religion (although such things can sometimes help).  Ultimately, any act of courage comes from an understanding, whether fully realized in a moment or something more subtle, that we are more than our current situation makes it seem.  

A baby bird can’t really know what’s going to happen the first time it jumps out of a nest high in tree.  But he suspects something about himself, a potential unrealized while he sits and waits.  

After that first act of faith, birds can fly at will.  

“Expansion” by Paige Bradley

Filming an Artist’s Creation

Danielle Eubank is my friend and also the artist who painted the cover for King’s X.  Her work can be seen in galleries in London, Los Angeles, undoubtedly in many other places I’m not aware of and, of course, here on her website.

The gorgeous short film at the bottom of this post documents Danielle creating the spectacular effect she is most known for, waterscapes painted in oil featuring a light effect that seems photo-real and impressionistic at the same time (at least that’s how I would describe it).   

Like this...

Jakarta Sunrise II

And like this...

Venice III

And this...

Rounding the Cape II

Danielle travels to all the interesting places she paints and has many adventures you can read about on her website (linked above).  

For the artwork for King’s X, I wanted something unique and something very atmospheric to convey the dream-like quality of the story.  All of which pointed to Danielle.  I feel very lucky to have her work on the cover.

King’s X 

This 3’x4’ painting in oil covers the front and back of the book jacket to create that atmospheric quality I was looking for.  The image is an interpretation of the dual-plots of King’s X.  The two “Shepherds,” invading the dream state, close in on their prey in two different eras.  Broussard the soldier turns to fight, while Molly desperately tries to stay a step ahead.  In the foreground we see the heroes of two different times and lifetimes cross paths in shadow.  Cool, huh?  

The film follows Danielle through the creation of a painting called Mozambique VI (with a brief cameo from her daughter Severin).  It was shot and edited by another friend, cinematographer Paul Mayne, and scored by Danielle’s husband, composer Fletcher Beasley, and produced by yet another friend, Bonny Giardina.