Jim – Yes, THAT Jim

(The audio of this interview is available at the bottom of this post!)

JR: Welcome to jimyesthatjim.com, the blog that continues to exist in spite of itself. For those who are listening or reading this I am online with Jennifer Hudock, who is the author of Goblin Market. The thing that I find most interesting actually that I wanted to just sort of address first is that you are a full-time writer, and that is something that is incredibly impressive to someone like me. And, I just was wondering, how did you end up doing that?

JH: I went to college when I was 26, and the funny thing is that I actually went at the time – I mean, I’ve been writing since I was a little kid. It’s all I’ve ever done. I had tried to get things published traditionally before I went to college, and when I went to college I actually went for Criminal Psychology. I was on campus for about a year before I switched my major over to English and Creative Writing. And my advisor at the time thought I was insane and said, “I know somebody who went into that major and I’m going to tell you right now, she graduated four years ago and right now she works at Pizza Hut!” And that was discouraging, but I’m a pretty determined person so I told myself – before I had gone back to college I had worked in retail, I had worked in restaurants and offices – and I told myself that after I graduated I was NOT going to get another job like that. So, once I graduated I started looking into freelance venues and I started working. It wasn’t even writing at the time, it was more internet research for a company that had just started off at that time. And because I was working with them, I got introduced to other people who were working for another company who was more focused on a combination of freelance writing and research. And I worked for them for about two years and somebody that I worked with through that company had moved on and was actually editing a blog for another company. And he really liked my writing and we had a good work relationship and he actually invited me to come and work for him. So, I have been working from home, freelancing and now writing full time for the last three years.

JR: That’s wonderful. I aspire one day to perhaps get to where you are if I can overcome my own sloth and other issues. (chuckles)

JH: (chuckles) It’s not easy. It takes a lot of discipline. I mean, there are days where I wake up and I would rather stay in bed and sleep in until noon like I used to do but because I have to focus on my work like that it’s more disciplined. And because I learned that discipline of having to work at home and being responsible completely for your own income it motivated me in a lot of other ways, too – I mean, even with podcasting and writing fiction. You have deadlines and you have to meet them so, it’s been a help in a lot of different ways.

JR: Do you use any of those two years of Criminal Psychology in your writing at all?

JH: Actually, this is really funny. The thing that prompted me to go into Criminal Psychology was my love of The X-Files.

JR: Ah!

JH: I wanted to be like Mulder. I actually wanted to join the FBI at the time that I applied to go to college. So, I did have about two years’ worth of psychology before I really switched my major. It’s interesting because – psychology – you learn a lot about how the mind works and I definitely do use that when I’m creating characters because one of the things, being inside a character’s head, is knowing how they psychologically process things. So, it does help. Yeah.

JR: Cool, absolutely. Goblin Market, your podcast, is coming to an end, is it not?

JH: Yes, I have one more episode to record and it will be done! I do have to go back – the first seven episodes, the sound quality was just atrocious because my equipment was poor. I went back and I rerecorded the first episode. I haven’t put it out yet, but after that I have six more that I need to rerecord before I can put it up on Podiobooks.

JR: I really liked it. I’ve been enjoying it for some time now. I first heard about it I think when I was – I’m following Mur Lafferty in her feed – in her Twitter feed – and she mentioned it. And so I went and I checked it out. And it’s really cool, I think! I can see very clearly your fandom of things of the ilk of the Rossetti poem and Labyrinth and all that, but you’ve also gone in other directions with it and I think that is cool that you’re coming up with newer ideas to apply to that kind of thing. Where did your primary inspiration for Goblin Market come from?

JH: It was kind of a cross between Labyrinth and the Christina Rossetti poem. The very first chapter of the novel is sort of the younger sister who goes into the market in the Christina Rossetti poem. And I actually introduce it in the podcast with four lines from the poem – you know, “We should not look at goblin men.” And it was kind of a cross between that. And the funny thing is – and a lot of people probably don’t know this – some people might if they’re big fans of Brian Froud and the Labyrinth – but the Goblin Market was originally a Labyrinth fan fiction that I wrote.

JR: Oh, really?

JH: And after I finished it I realized I had put SO many elements that had nothing to do with the original story into it that I could go back and change a few little details and it would be original. So I did that. The Darknjan Wald, which is the bizarre, disgusting, rotting forest that they have to travel through to get to the goblin castle was originally the Labyrinth. So, there was a lot that you could twist and turn into something that had nothing to do with the Labyrinth itself.

JR: That’s very cool. Yeah, I noticed that – that the environment starts changing and it gets less and less recognizable – I guess more alien – and I really liked that.

JH: Thank you.

JR: It’s very cool, it’s very cool. Well now, once Goblin Market ends, you’ve certainly got plenty of other irons on the fire, I think, to keep you busy right now! The Dark Journeys anthology – tell us about that.

JH: Well, the Dark Journeys collection is a collection of short stories. They are completely unrelated to each other and I put one out pretty much every Friday on Amazon and Smashwords for download for 99 cents to $1.99. I only have one right now that’s $1.99 and that’s because it’s novella-length. But they’re all completely unconnected to each other – but yet, they’re connected by the fact that life itself is a journey. And I twisted it into these dark elements that sometimes we face things in life that are really difficult to overcome. But instead of just focusing on difficult life elements I took it more to a supernatural level. One of the stories, Portrait of the Dead Countess, is about a young boy who becomes enchanted by a haunted portrait in his family’s summer home that is connected to the devil. And through the devil in this portrait he becomes mesmerized and he kills for this portrait to sustain its life – because the woman the portrait was painted of gained immortality by selling her soul to the devil, and the portrait itself was actually painted on human flesh – like, the canvas was human flesh.

JR: Nice!

JH: So, I mean, it’s completely against his will that he’s doing this – like, he’s committing murders to sustain the portrait’s life…

JR: Interesting…

JH: I mean, which, you know – that happens every day. (laughs)

JR: Well, yeah! (laughs) I was almost thinking sort of a reverse Dorian Gray type thing there, where you’re just doing all you can to keep the portrait safe. That’s awesome, that’s great. So, what prompted this sort of buck-and-two-buck fiction thing going on?

JH: My fiancée, James Melzer, started a Deviant Dollars series a couple of months ago where he was selling short stories on Amazon and Smashwords for 99 cents. And I thought to myself, he’s a genius! Because I have been trying to sell my fiction for years and every single story in this collection has been shopped out or previously published on smaller venues like online zines or journals that are so obscure you would never even know about them. And I thought this is a good way to get your work out there so people can read it!

JR: Cool! And are people buying it?

JH: Yeah, yeah! I mean, surprisingly enough, some stories do much better than others. Two of the stories are zombie stories. I have the Zombie Double Shot, which is the shortest thing in the collection and it actually has two stories in it – it only comes to about 3000 words with both stories combined, but that one has outsold all the other stories like four to one.

JR: Well, that’s great! I look forward to seeing how that comes out because that sounds like you guys may be onto something there!

JH: Yeah, a lot of people are actually doing it now, and I’m not sure if they’re having success with it. I tend to approach it from – you know, if you help me out and help me spread the word about this I’m glad to give you the story for free. So, I think that helps a little bit. And the funny thing is that a lot of the people who do blog about it or spread the word about it, they’re like, “No, no. I want to support you. I’ll buy it.” And that’s touching.

JR: That IS great.

JH: Because the community that we’re a part of is just so amazing – I mean people just have no idea. (chuckles)

JR: Absolutely, absolutely. So what’s next? You clearly have, like I said, a bunch of irons on the fire. Any of them that you’d care to pull out and have us bask in the glow of?

JH: Well, I AM working on two collaborative anthology projects. I have the From the Dark Side anthology, which is a charity anthology. I have a bunch of people who are submitting work. We’re going to put the anthology together and sell it through Amazon and Smashwords, and if it does well I would like to actually put it out in print as well. We’ve had some amazing people who are just willing to give their stuff over and we’re going to donate all of the proceeds from the sales to the Letters and Light organization which is affiliated with the National November is Writing Month forums.

JR: Which organization was that?

JH: Letters and Light. It’s a charity that helps promote creative writing in classrooms for kids.

JR: Cool. Excellent.

JH: So there’s that that I’m working on, and I’m also working on the Farrago anthology, which is another charity sort of anthology. It’s not as official, but my friend Michael Bekemeyer, who is a filmmaker, needs to raise money so he can actually put his film vision into the works. So, I mentioned it on Twitter: “Hey, would you guys be willing to donate a story to this anthology so we can help Michael raise money for his film project?” And I was just blown away by the amount of people who came out and were like, “I’ll do it! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” And, I mean, by the end of that day I had so many e-mails from people who wanted to help Michael out – people that didn’t even know him – that it just blew my mind!

JR: Awesome. Well, I am definitely looking forward to that. Give us your web site! How can we find you?

JH: You can find me at www.jennybeans.net.

JR: And that links to all your other projects?

JH: Oh yeah, yeah.

JR: Cool, well, definitely looking forward to seeing how these things develop. Thank you very much for talking to us!

JH: Thanks for having me!

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

I’m about to get into a topic that might tick a few folks off.  You see, this is going to be about something that is fairly commonly done on the internet (in fact, a number of my friends do it) but that I’m not too fond of myself.  Just know that if you happen to be one of those folks who follow this practice, I’m not meaning to single you out or hurt your feelings.  I also don’t think any less of you as a person.  But yes, this IS about you.

I’m talking about taking a picture of yourself and another person and posting it as your personal avatar on an internet community.  Now, I don’t mean including a picture like that in a collection of photos – I have no problem with that.  I’m talking specifically about using a photo of you and someone else as the one identifying image that comes up on Facebook, MySpace or any number of other services when I go to look at your profile.  It’s your avatar – the one picture that’s meant to convey the essence of who you are to everyone who looks at your personal page.

I realize I don’t have a lot of room to complain, here, given that MY avatar photo is usually a close-up of my left eye.  At least in my case, though, there’s no doubt that what you’re looking at is supposed to be representative of only one person.  There are plenty of folks out there who post things just as abstract or bizarre, and I have no issue with that.  But when you’re posting a photograph for your avatar and there’s more than one person in it, things can get a bit confusing.

Me and another guy. Which is which?

Sometimes it’s you and your kid, which I can kind of understand – after all, a lot of folks are proud of their children and place them above all else in importance.  If you consider your kid part of your identity as a person, then there’s no reason not to include them.  I must admit that I find it a little bit disturbing when the photo is ONLY of your child – suggesting that your identity has been completely subsumed by your offspring – but that’s another topic.

There are folks who like to use pictures of themselves with their significant others.  Again, I completely understand if you’re proud of the fact that you’re in a relationship – especially since some of us go through what seem like entire ice ages between them.  If your name is fairly gender-neutral, though, I may have trouble telling which one of you is which.  That, of course, assumes that your significant other is of the opposite gender.  If not, then it becomes difficult to tell who’s who regardless of naming conventions.

When it’s a picture of you and your best friend (again assuming that we’re only talking about cases in which you’re both the same gender), I have no idea what to think.  If I haven’t met you before then I have no way of knowing which one is you.  This is a common problem, I think, and yet people persist in doing it.

Are you trying to remain anonymous… without remaining anonymous?  I know that the last thing I’d expect my best friend to do is use me as a decoy to throw people off of his track.  It’s kind of like a superhero moving his sidekick in front of a bullet.  (“I knew you’d come in handy one day, little chum!”)

I often hear someone say that they’ve used a picture taken with a friend because it’s the best picture they could find of themselves.  That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem of identifying you.  That’s what an avatar is for, after all.

Are you trying to co-op a second person into your identity?  Are you symbiotes?  If it’s your best friend I’m sure they don’t necessarily have a problem with being “part of you” but I have to wonder if that diminishes their own individual identity a bit.  Are they okay with being a gestalt entity?  Does the essence of all that is you inhabit more than one body?

Maybe it does.  Maybe you and your friend are so inseparable that to know you is to know them as well and vice versa.  If that’s the case, then more power to you.  But I just have to ask one little favor: if your shared identity allows you at least the tiniest sense of self, could you possibly make it clearer which of the two people in your avatar photo is you?  Be the one standing closer to the camera.  Do something funky with Photoshop — give yourself a halo of light or glowing eyes or something.

Because ultimately, when I look at your avatar – whether it’s a picture of a giant eye, a cartoon armadillo or an ordinary photograph – I’m meant to be looking at some facet of the person you believe you are, or at least the person you’d like to be.

Otherwise, why bother?

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

It’s time for everyone’s favorite game show, Living or Dead?!

Here’s how the rules work: I’m going to name some celebrities and it’s up to you to tell me if they’re still living or if they’re dead!

Ready?

Here we go!

Rodney Dangerfield

picture courtesy of Jim Accordino

(Answer: Dead. Though he may still be moving around a bit.)

Andy Rooney

picture courtesy of Stephenson Brown

(Answer: Living. Despite everyone’s best efforts. The man is still putting out content, though, so I have to give him props for that.)

Frank Sinatra

(Answer: Dead. Though not for nefarious reasons, from what I understand.)

Dick Clark

picture courtesy of DianthusMoon

(Answer: Living. Though it’s possible that he’s mostly animatronic by now.)

Glenn Ford

(Answer: Dead. Quite suddenly. It may have been my fault – if you believe in tachyons. I declared that he was dead without knowing it had only happened that day.)

Abe Vigoda

(Answer: Living. Believe it or not: http://www.abevigoda.com/ffb.php )

Dan Rather

picture courtesy of Ed Schipul

(Answer: Living. Though I think the man has probably defeated more assassins than I would care to count.)

Elvis Presley

(Answer: Probably dead, though that doesn’t seem to stop him from being seen in public.)

I’m afraid that’s all the time we have!  Thanks for playing Living or Dead?!

(Okay, admittedly this was a quick and dirty way to get a new blog entry up, but it turns out I did have to look most of these guys up before I was sure if they were pushing up the daisies or not.  How well did you do?)

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

So, you might have noticed that I haven’t posted an entry in a little while.

Don’t worry, folks.  I still love you.  I am not seeing other blogs behind your backs.  But unfortunately I got buried under what I can only characterize as a Mountain of Year-End Work.  And so, some of my ongoing projects got pushed back a little bit.  Doing more entries for the blog got pushed back a bit.  The Great Debate! got pushed back a bit.  The other things that I do for War Pig also got pushed back a bit, unfortunately.

And some of that had to do with the fact that I got sick a couple of times, but a good deal of it was that I had a lot that I had to get done by the end of the year.  I wrote a few short stories for presents for some of my relatives – an option that I highly recommend if you’re short on cash and don’t mind burning the midnight oil for several nights in a row.  I also was crusading to finally get the second episode of the Every World News put together and released and thankfully was successful at that!  I was gunning to get it out by Christmas and thankfully I made that deadline.  I also started lending my voice to a couple of other podcasts: Starla Huchton’s The Dreamer’s Thread and the forthcoming The Last Guardians by “Indiana” Jim Perry.  So between all of that – and of course, still going around job hunting – I kind of had to let a few things slide for a little bit.

But the good news is we are now coming up to the end of the year, so with any luck that’ll mean I can get back up on the horse and return to the trail – hopefully without steering myself into a ravine on the way.  I have many, many more blog topics planned and will be getting to them presently.

So, worry not!  All shall be well!  Everything is under control.  Do not rush for the life boats.  There is no reason to panic.  All is in hand!

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Music by Dave Girtman

Here’s a little suggestion I have for writers of fantasy and horror: fairies should be terrifying.

They are not your friends.  They will not whisk you away to a wondrous magical land where you’ll never grow old and you can play happily in golden fields and under the lollipop trees for eternity.  What they’re more likely to do is snatch you away to a horrifying, twisted nightmare realm where the flow of time and the continuity of space are utterly subjective.

There’s been a trend lately, you see, to put the Grimm back into fairy tales and I’m all for it, to tell you the truth.  Why?  Because it makes for much better stories.

Let’s face it.  Stories are much more interesting when the main character suffers torment.  Fairy creatures can potentially represent as much torment as you could ever need.  These are beings with completely alien mindsets who act largely on whim.  They’re pretty much madness incarnate.

Dark fairy creatures make some of the best antagonists.  This is why so many people have been showing an interest in the versions of fairy tales that were told by the Brothers Grimm.  For all its cheese, this is why the movie Labyrinth worked as well as it did.  This is why I keep hearing so many people are applauding the new version of White Wolf’s Changeling RPG and saying that it’s superior in presentation to the iteration that came before it.  This is also why Jennifer Hudock’s podcast novel Goblin Market is getting such good word-of-mouth.

Dark fairy creatures are awesome.

Of course, this is something people knew long before the Brothers Grimm came around.  Shakespeare presented King Oberon and Queen Titania as forces of nature that are quite content to meddle in human affairs – and in some cases transform them partially into donkeys.  The old Celtic and Germanic fairy tales had a plethora of tiny magical folk – and indeed, larger magical folk – who were anything but benevolent.  You really don’t have to dig very deep to find references to fairy creatures with less than pure intentions.  Even the Wikipedia article on fairies makes a nice jumping-off point.

The reason these kinds of beings make good antagonists is that they can instantly (and for the writer, conveniently) embody all manner of psychological trauma.  A.N. Wilson posited an interesting thought in the UK’s Daily Mail – the idea that the original purpose of fairy tales was to help children understand the kinds of fearsome things they may have to face in life.  Not actual child-eating crones or anthropomorphic wolf-men, necessarily, but complex interpersonal situations with strangers, friends and families – especially families of the dysfunctional variety.  When it comes down to it, some people are crazy and some are downright bastards.  Fairy creatures have a level of mutability that lets them very neatly personify the kind of distress anyone might suffer when being forced to deal with the issues of those individuals.

Need a horrifying, murderous glutton?  Hire a redcap.  Want a massive, thuggish bully?  Ogres and trolls both do well in a pinch.  Want to show how a passion to tinker with things can lead to massive destruction?  Just snatch up half a dozen goblins, wind them up and watch them go.  If you use fairy creatures in a story then the darker and more twisted they are, the more interesting and significant the tale can be.  The results rarely fail to please.

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Music by Jason Shaw @ audionautix.com

What with Christmahannukwanzaayuladanivus coming up, people have begun scrambling about like ants in a recently-stomped sandbox searching for original-looking gifts to buy.  As it happens, I have a suggestion on that front.

Not too long ago I got the opportunity to try out a very interesting game called Mad Scientist University.  It’s been available from Atlas Games for a couple of years now, but with the influx of independent card games we’ve been seeing lately, many folks might have lost it in the shuffle.

I think one of the most interesting things about it is that even though cards are used, it’s NOT actually a card game.  This is more of what we’d call a storytelling game.  As the name implies, players each take the role of a student at a university full of mad scientists.  Three to seven people sit and take turns as the Teacher’s Assistant (or TA), handing out a card to each other player.  Each of those cards has a single Unstable Element listed on it such as Mud, Kitty Litter or a Rubber Chicken.  The TA then reveals the randomly selected Insane Assignment, which can be anything from winning an election to mapping a black hole.  Each player must then come up with an explanation of how they can use their Unstable Element to complete the Assignment.  Whoever the TA decides has the best plan gets awarded an Insane Assignment card.  Then another player becomes the TA and another turn is begun.  Play continues for at least three rounds, at the end of which whoever has collected the most Insane Assignment cards is declared the winner – and has thus beaten their fellow mad scientists to the top of the class!

This game was a lot of fun to play.  Of course, being an incorrigible ham probably helped me out a great deal with that.  Taking on the role of a megalomaniacal college student is not for the easily stumped or embarrassed!  Thankfully, I myself have very little in the way of shame.

I very much like the way in which the game promotes the idea of the players throwing themselves into their roles, the TA in particular, who’s encouraged in the text of the rules to behave as an insane demagogue!  You certainly don’t see THAT in every rules document.  The rules are also presented quickly and simply, on the underside of the game box – which is pretty small and easily portable; after all, the only things you need to carry are the cards.  This means you can pretty much just read the rules and get going without having to deal with much of a learning curve.

I can see this game working pretty well as a gateway to get friends and family members interested in new and different kinds of games, though it helps if they’re inclined toward the Weird to begin with. There’s also an expansion planned called Spring Break that looks like it’ll bring in some new and interesting twists.

When my friends and I played this game, we had a very good time with it, though you should keep in mind that the more players you have, the longer the game will take.  In our second game we were at the upper limit of seven players and I found that quite a few folks were about ready to move on to something else by the time we got into the second round.  I should point out, however, that we were all veterans of RPGs and were rather specific and grandiose in our descriptions.  There was also beer involved – though, granted, a few of the players said the beer enhanced the experience for them rather than detracting from it.

All in all, the only problem I really have with this game is that the suggested retail price of $24.95 is a little bit steep.  However, that said, I still recommend it as something you may want to look into picking up this holiday season.  With the massive number of games out on the market, finding one that stands out AND that encourages the use of the imagination can be a real challenge, and Mad Scientist University does both in spades.

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

I discovered the board game Talisman back in the 90’s, when it was just coming out with its 3rd edition. I had a bunch of friends – henceforth known as “pushers” – who initiated me into the ways of that game with its 2nd edition. We only played once or twice but that was enough to engender a deep and sometimes disturbing addiction.

I eventually got a hold of the 3rd Edition of Talisman, which most of my friends had never seen before. It wasn’t long before we were having regular games of it over at my house once a week – sometimes more often than that. We couldn’t get enough of it. It was like a drug that had grabbed hold of our brains and wouldn’t let go.

Two of the things that made this game so horrifyingly addictive – and still do – are that 1) it’s easy to learn and 2) it has expansions. The game is very accessible and appears to have infinite potential right from the start! For someone like me, that kind of game is nigh-impossible to resist. That’s especially true when you consider its D&D-like fantasy setting and the fact that you’re all playing characters who you can choose to move in any available direction when you roll the die and whose stats you’re trying to improve enough to make it to the final challenge at the center of the board. All qualities that sucked me in like a tornado.

And then of course you have the expansions – separate boards you can enter, whenever you like, to fight different kinds of monsters and earn rewards that help boost your stats in different ways. When the 3rd Edition came out they started making those expansions L-shaped so that they could fit together with the main board – with the exception of a 3-dimensional tower that you could put at the board’s center. That little innovation only served to make the game look that much cooler and, naturally, that much more addictive.

Now, in reality, while the game IS very replayable, after you’ve played a few times you pretty much know what’s going to happen. The players are going to try to build themselves up as fast as they can. The process will inevitably take at least a few hours and will continue until one of the players calculates he or she can’t possibly lose and decides to charge to the center and end the game.

I’ve just described almost every Talisman game I’ve ever played.

Of course, by the time my friends and I discovered that little fact, the game already had its hooks in us, and knowledge of the endless cycle we were now facing didn’t really matter. We still played in marathons that seemed to last days on end as late nights would bleed into early mornings. Then we discovered Drinking Talisman, and it was all downhill from there.

There were no real rules for Drinking Talisman – not the version we came up with, anyway. We’d take a drink whenever somebody won a combat… or was turned into a toad… or crossed into a different region… or pretty much whenever we felt like it. We would all begin chanting “TOAD! TOAD! TOAD!” whenever someone was possibly about to be Toaded – a chant that would only become louder and more elaborate the more inebriated we were. One night after nursing a particularly large bottle of Scotch for a while I started going and lying down in the next room between turns and, despite my drunken stupor, always managed somehow to figure out when it was time to come back and sit down to take my next turn. I’m told that, disturbingly, the only thing different about me on each occasion was that my hair had become wilder and more chaotic every time I returned to the table.

2nd Edition Talisman in play. Photo by Wikipedia contributor "Frecklefoot."

This kind of addiction doesn’t seem to fade. Even though I’ve moved twice – and the game has gone out of print twice – since falling prey to it, I’ve continued to play whenever I can convince my friends to do so. I still wander around online every now and then looking for fan-made add-ons to the game (I highly recommend the Talisman Island site for that, by the way). I try going cold turkey every now and then, but sooner or later I always find myself breaking out the game board in a cold sweat and caressing it lovingly until I can rope someone into playing. There is no hope for me.

The game is now in a revision of its 4th Edition and is currently available from Fantasy Flight Games. I have the original 4th Edition, but I haven’t had a chance to buy anything for the revised version as of yet. Fantasy Flight has already put out three expansions for it and there may be more on the horizon. As you can imagine, I’m chomping at the bit to get a hold of them. Especially if the revisions help with some of the afore-mentioned predictability issues I’ve come to know and loathe over the years.
In the mean time I’ll continue applying house rules and fan material as needed. And alcohol, when desired.

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(The audio of this interview is available at the bottom of this post!)

JR: Welcome to the experience that is Jim – Yes, THAT Jim, the blog that is constantly stumbling over itself trying to figure out what it is.

JCH: I’m just glad I actually know who “that Jim” actually is now!

JR: I’m still figuring it out, really! (laughs) So, first off, I guess for anyone who might not be fully familiar, tell us a bit about the whole 7^th Son thing.

JCH: Sure!  I started writing 7^th Son way back in 2002.  I began writing a book that I knew was going to be big.  I’m highly influenced by Stephen King – I love the guy and I love his work – and my favorite novel of his is The Stand. That’s not to say that he hasn’t written great books since then, but that’s one of the books that I really love because the stakes are pretty much at their highest in a book like that.  I love high stakes fiction.

JR: Oh yeah!

JCH: And, so I kind of set out to write a story that kind of rivaled his The Stand in length and scope the best I could.  And, you know, have the whole end of the world kind of thing hanging in the balance with my story as well.  And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.  And I finished writing a 1200 page manuscript in 2004, so it took me two years.  Actually it was longer than that, but I then spent the next year, 2005, editing it down to 1200 pages and then sending it out to literary agents because this is how the publishing business works.  You can’t really submit your manuscripts to publishers and editors if you are a nobody.  You need a champion.  You need a middle man.  You need an agent.

JR: Oh yeah.

JCH: And so that’s what I did.  And I received universal rejections because the publishing industry – deservedly so – would not make an exception for a nobody author who had written a 1200 page book that couldn’t be sold.  Because of its length alone.  (chuckles)  So I was kind of heartbroken but during that time I was also listening to podcasting and came across the work of Scott Sigler, who was one of the very first podcast novelists, and he was releasing his unpublished manuscript online in free, audio podcast format, serialized week to week.  And by the end of 2005 I was like, “Well, you know, if I can’t sell this book I might as well share it.”  And that’s when I started recording 7^th Son and releasing it on the internet.  The book is a high-tech thriller that takes place in present day and it’s about human cloning, genetics, nature vs nurture, the nature of human identity and a villain apparently hell-bent on global chaos and destruction.

JR: Excellent!  (laughs)  If I may briefly quote here from one of the gentlemen on the back, from Patrick Lussier, “Breakneck storytelling at its absolute best.  Characters – dark, duplicitous, and fascinating – stalk through a rich techscape that’s so real, so plausible, it compels and haunts.”  The “techscape” word really is something I latched onto in my little hindbrain.  What did you do as far as sculpting the world – how did you decide you wanted to start to create that “techscape” as they’re calling it?

JCH: Yeah!  Well, first off, I mean like that is the coolest quote in the world, from Patrick Lussier, one of the coolest guys.  And I have the good fortune of saying I personally know him and have personally met him.  He’s the director of My Bloody Valentine 3-D, White Noise 2, Dracula 2000 – I mean some of my favorite genre pictures he’s done –  edited the Scream trilogy – OMG!  The guy’s just freaking amazing and the nicest man you’d ever meet!  Anyway, he picked up on that – you’ve picked up on that, and that’s something I certainly wanted to build into the 7^th Son universe – was that I wanted to make the surface of the 7^th Son universe as absolutely pedestrian and normal and as well-rooted in reality as WE are rooted in reality.  But also kind of build just beneath the surface a 60 (at LEAST 60) year legacy of conspiracy theories and clandestine technologies and government arrangements with other countries and stuff that simply is not publicly available and CANNOT be publicly available because it is protected under a super-secret – beyond top secret – classification called Code Phantom.  In the world of 7^th Son, only ten people on the planet have access to what is called Code Phantom Clearance and the kind of super secrets that fall under that security clearance.  And really what all this was is I wanted to build a plausible history and mythology that could support the core conceit of my novel, which was not only that human cloning exists but that it has existed for at least 15 years and that in addition to that the ability to record human memories – which is, to me, the key ingredient in a great human cloning story – that that has also existed for 15 years.  And how could a government create a program like that?  And how could it fund it?  And how could that exist without people knowing about it?  And who would want that technology?  And who would be willing to do anything to obtain that technology?  All that stuff.  And that’s kind of like the superstructure or the foundation of this building all kind of funneling up to the core premise which is human cloning isn’t near – it’s already here! (laughs)

JR: Ah, yes!  And we actually heard that quote – we saw that quote in that wonderful promotion that you did where you “hacked” everybody’s blogs.

JCH: Yeah!  That was great!

JR: This very one that people may be staring at, at the moment, included (where I got to do my slightly hamfisted Kilroy2.0 impersonation).  That’s one of the really most innovative things, I think, also about this whole thing – is the way that you’re promoting it.  And that is not just through podcastery but also through this various-blog-hacking stuff.  And the music as well!

JCH: Yeah!

JR: Actually, something that I thought was just a brilliant idea was when you took music written by one of the characters in the book.  Essentially, you decided to put out songs – actual MP3 files of songs that this guy, John Smith, had written.  And I’m just curious – how did you come up with that?

JCH: It just popped in my head!  I like to play “What If?”  It all starts with, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?”  And that’s how all of my fiction starts and that’s how all of my promotion ideas start.  And a lot of my promotion is a form of storytelling in its own way.  There’s usually obviously a participatory element, but whenever I can build a mythology into what we’re doing as a community to support 7^th Son, I do it.  For instance, the 7^th Son Ministry of Propaganda, which is basically an online street team.  I mean, at the beating heart of it, it’s a street team, and there’s nothing really unusual about that.  That’s been going on for years.  But what I did was that the Ministry of Propaganda is being led by a Russian woman named Natasha who is imperious and doesn’t ask you for your help, she COMMANDS you to help!  And so, kind of building a mythology around Natasha, I think, helps people playfully buy into this fake history and have more fun with the experience!  And that’s really what this is all about.  It’s that, yes, I would LOVE if you supported 7^th Son by spreading the word, but if it’s a fun experience then you’re 1000 times more likely to do it.

JR: Oh yeah.  And I’ve got to say that I think your stuff has the most awesome extras I’ve ever seen of any author, pretty much!

JCH: Well, you know, in kind of getting it back into the John Smith songs, one of the things I did was I was just kind of sitting there, and *POOF!*  Wouldn’t it be cool if John Smith actually recorded and released some of the song titles that he mentions in 7^th Son: Descent?  And these titles are actually mentioned in the text of the book, which was written years and years ago.  And I thought, “Well, yeah, that would be cool.  What would I need to do to do that?”  Well, I’d need to find a musician to collaborate with who could take my notes about the ideas that I had for these song titles and some mythology and history about John Smith and have him write and perform the songs.  And that’s exactly what I did.  I reached out to a dear friend, Matthew Wayne Selznick, who is also a podcast novelist.  Fantastic lyricist and performer, period!  I’ve heard him play acoustic Folk live and it was SO freaking cool!

JR: Yeah, it’s really good stuff!

JCH: Yeah!  And that’s kind of what I did.  And so the whole kind of goal was to, again, create art and create an experience that not only entertains the listener but also kind of draws them into the 7^th Son world in an unconventional way.  In a way that enhances their pre-existing knowledge of the book if they’ve already read the book or informs them on what to kind of experience as John as a character if they purchase and read the book.  And it’s also kind of cool because you can actually compare the song list of the EP we recorded and the names of the songs in the book and be able to say, “I have actually listened to that song!”  And how cool is that?

JR: Oh, that’s great.

JCH: I’m releasing those songs on my web site in weekly installments.

JR: Yeah and actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to – after this interview – play one of those songs.  I see we’re almost out of time, here, so I just wanted to go ahead and ask the last question, which I’ve actually shamelessly stolen from another podcast called The Game’s the Thing, because they do awesome work.  And that question is what one fact about you might your fans not know?

JCH: My favorite piece of apparel – that I wear regularly – is my robot boxers.

JR: Ooh! (laughs) So, actual boxers with robots on them?

JCH: Robots.  Robots are awesome.

JR: Robots.

JCH: Robots are awesome.  And whenever I wear these boxers I feel twice as awesome as I would on my best day.

JR: Well, they ARE our future masters so it is good to make sure we pay the proper obeisance to them.

JCH: That’s right!  You know, I’m always smelling emerging trends and I figured I’d get on this train pretty quick.

JR: Well, that’s great! (chuckles) J.C. Hutchins, thank you very much for coming and talking about this.  I really appreciate it!

JCH: Jim, it was my pleasure.  Thank you so much!

Song – Winter Love by John Smith

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Howdy, partners.

I expect some of y’all are curious about the art o’ Personal Brandin’.  Step on up to the fire-pit and grab a hot iron, if you think you’re ready.  It takes a brave one to do it, but once everybody sees that there emblem on you, the folks’ll flock to you like a flight o’ rabid condors!  It’ll only be a few seconds before you pass out from the pain, so come on!  Who’s first?

Okay, okay, tempted as I am to finish this whole article in character, I’ll drop the accent and get a tad more serious.

I’ve taken a few tentative steps into the wading end of personal branding and will probably need to try sinking or swimming very soon.  Something I’ve been learning is that writers – writers of pretty much anything – need to advertise not only their work, but THEMSELVES.  What that essentially means is that they have to find ways to make themselves memorable to their readership.

Mur Lafferty (author of “Heaven” and “Playing for Keeps”) talks about this fairly frequently on her podcast.  J.C. Hutchins is doing it all over the place – remember him, by the way?  The guy whose Kilroy2.0 character “hacked” this blog and a bunch of others on October 27^th to promote the release of “7^th Son?”  If you do, then he’s evidently getting it right.

I’m still working on it.  I really need to get in gear, though, since I may very well have a creative project to promote sometime next year (more on that if and when it comes to fruition).  I recently came across an article by the inimitable Miss Destructo that discusses the creation of a personal identity and an accompanying press kit.  All I can say is that when the time comes for me to put a press kit together, I’ll be referencing it heavily!  It also shows that there are clearly a lot of steps I have yet to take in defining my own “brand.”

But, that said, here’s some of what I’ve done so far.  Hopefully it’ll be helpful for someone out there who might just be getting started.

Who is this OtherDoc guy, anyway?

I use the handle “otherdoc” for things like instant messaging services, bulletin boards and various online community sites – basically anywhere that you’re encouraged to go by a cool pseudonym instead of your real name.  I’ve been using it ever since the late 90’s, when I needed to give my then-local ISP a user ID.  “Doc” was already taken, so I went with “otherdoc” instead – and it stuck.  And no, I’m not a real doctor in any sense of the word.  The “doc” aspect was a throwback to my fascination with both Doctor Who and Doc Holliday.  Merge the two and you get a cantankerous smart-alec trying to use his wits to make the universe a better place – which is kind of how I’d like to describe myself – well, an idealized version of myself, anyway.  The “other” aspect, while initially just a way to stand out, has come to represent that sort of “alien” vibe I’m told I tend to give off (if you’ve met me, you probably know what I’m talking about).  It also works nicely as a way for my humility to come out and prod me every now and then, reminding me that I’m not necessarily the idealized “Doc” composite to which I aspire – I’m the OTHER “Doc.”

Regardless of its origin, using the same handle wherever I go means that people will hopefully recognize me no matter what site I’m on.  If you’re picking a handle out for yourself that you’d like to use in a similar way, choose something that you won’t mind being remembered as because you’ll be stuck with it for a long time.

What’s with the eye?

So, you might have noticed that picture of my left eye that appears on my web site, as album art for this blog’s audio files and on virtually every web site and communication service to which I subscribe that allows the use of a personal icon.  Honestly, like my net handle, I stumbled onto the use of that, too.  I had a web camera at one time and tried to get silly and artistic with it.  That photo, showing my left eye in the light and my right eye in shadow, was probably the best of all the ones I took (which probably gives you a good idea of just how pathetic I am at photography).  I’ve used it – or at least the right-most part of it on those occasions when I have to use an icon that’s completely square – as another way people can recognize me.  If they won’t always know me by my face, then by thunder they’ll know me by my eye!

In other words, faces can be forgotten, but if you have some kind of logo – even if it’s just an extreme close-up on one particular feature – people are more likely to remember it.  Maybe not at first, but if you get it out there enough, they will!

Like I said, these are just a couple of small steps.  There’s a lot more for me to do to get where I’ll need to be.  In the mean time, I’d be curious to hear what you folks out there in the digital ether have been doing as a way of branding yourselves?  What do you do to shout your identity to the world?  Don’t be shy – mosey on over to the blog’s comments area and throw down some responses.  We’ll keep the fire-pit ready and the irons hot!

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

Hey, folks!

Just in case anyone might still be wondering, no, I was NOT really hacked!  That last blog entry was a promo.  So, no need to worry about that!

Just wanted to record a quick update and let you know that I shall be conspicuously absent for the next few days because I am going to ICC.

What’s ICC?

Why, the International Camarilla Conclave! (Or, in layman’s terms, “the big meeting of all of the people who are in that pretending-to-be-vampires club that I’m in.”)  So, I’m afraid no new journal entries until after this weekend, but just wanted to give you the heads-up on that and record at least a tiny little something so that you know I am, in fact, still around and desire to continue to produce content for ya!

Take care, folks.  See you later!

——————————-

Um…

Looks like some last minute issues came up and it turns out I will not be going after all.

So.  Feel free to ignore everything I just said.

Ha ha ha ha… ha.  Ha.

Right.  As you were!

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Music by Dave Girtman