I was amused to see that Bob Greenberger, who suggested this month’s Crazy 8 blog topic “What one piece of writing inspires us?” and wrote the first blog entry based on it, violated the premise right off the bat. Being asked to single out a favorite book or piece of writing is, as he so correctly observed, like being asked to choose a favorite child or family member. Besides, there’s so many ways to be inspired: by a well-constructed story or beautifully realized characters or the elegance (or sparsity) of prose or the reality of the dialog. Bob failed to come up with a single piece that answered the question, deferring instead to the simple truth that inspiration came from different places depending on the mood and the need.

However, in the spirit of the challenge, I did attempt to pick just one piece from a list of favorite writing. I started with what is, in my opinion, the greatest novel of the 20^th century, The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s a beautifully written, stunning achievement of story telling that I reread at least every couple of years. Despite its dated and deeply ingrained Jazz Age flavor, it remains a gripping tale of one man’s need to reinvent himself in pursuit of an American Dream–not necessarily the American Dream, just the one that Jay Gatsby had imagined for himself. That his dream is, in reality, a vapid and ordinary bit of fluff like Daisy Buchannan is what makes his efforts and his fate so heartbreaking.

But that just lead me to another favorite novel of self-reinvention, Jack London’s autobiographical Martin Eden (1909), the tale of a San Francisco waterfront tough who by the sheer power of ideology and muscular intellect shapes himself into a man of letters and renown who, despite achieving everything he’s sought, is unable to live in a world that can’t also be reshaped to fit his proletariat beliefs. But then, I also love his Sea Wolf (1904), which is less a rousing seafaring adventure than it is a psychological thriller that pits brain against brawn. And then there’s London’s John Barleycorn (1913), another autobiographical novel, this one dealing with the author’s love of and struggles with alcohol.

Of course, it’s impossible for me to think of John Barleycorn without comparing it another great American work on the subject, Pete Hamill’s A Drinking Life (1994), another tough guy writer who dealt head on with his demons and addiction to drinking, this one in the form of a memoir that, if you haven’t read, you owe yourself an apology and the immediate purchase thereof. And how can I talk about Hamill without recommending his lyrical allegorical novel Snow in August (1997) and the fantastical Forever (2003), about a man who draws life from the hero of most of this author’s writing, New York City.

Oh, and speaking of F. Scott Fitzgerald, I didn’t mention his wonderful and heartbreakingly funny Pat Hobby stories, a series of short stories about a down on his heels Hollywood screenwriting hack, written near the end of the author’s life. And, while I’m on the subject of humor, there’s no way I can ignore the surrealist offerings of TV writer Jack Douglas, whose collections of short pieces, My Brother Was An Only Child (1959) and Never Trust A Naked Bus Driver (1960), both first read when I was eleven or twelve years old in the mid-1960s were, besides Mad Magazine, Jerry Lewis, and my father, the biggest influence on my thoroughly warped sense of humor. Not so funny (although it has its moments), but written by another 1950s television writer, is Helene Hanff’s epistolary masterpiece, 84 Charing Cross Road (1970), following her twenty year correspondence with London-based bookseller Frank Doel, a clerk at Marks & Co. located at the aforementioned address, which says more about the love and respect of friendships to me than anything since Huckleberry Finn.

I could keep going, on and on (and on and on and on), from longtime favorites acquired in my childhood like Madeleine L’Engel’s A Wrinkle in Time (1962), Sidney Taylor’s “All-of-a-Kind Family” series, and Jacques Futrelle’s “Thinking Machine” stories, to my two candidates for best science fiction novels of all time, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (1953) and Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (1953), to the great detective and noir writers, including Rex Stout, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, and Elmore Leonard, to name just a few, to novels by the likes of Gore Vidal, Frederick Exley, Kurt Vonnegut, William Goldman, Joseph Heller, Graham Greene, and absolutely anything by Phillip Roth…anyone who has ever made me stop dead in the middle of reading what they’ve written to soak in some line or idea. (The latest instance of that happening was while rereading Greene’s Our Man In Havana (1958) with the line, “Time gives poetry to a battlefield.” I mean…wow!)

And I’ve hardly even touched on short stories–J.D. Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948); “The Girls in their Summer Dresses” by Irwin Shaw (1939); Ernest Heminway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1936)–and non-fiction, especially biographies of writers, or the great comic book writers…but don’t get me started! I could literally write a book on the books and stories that have had an impact on me and my writing. And, lately, I’ve been reading a lot of plays and screenplays by everyone from Lillian Hellman and Tennessee Williams to Paddy Chayefsky and Aaron Sorkin, looking for inspiration in the craft of writing dialog.

The point (at long last!) is, there’s some inspiration to be found in everything you read. If you’re lucky, it’s positive inspiration that leads you to take a chance on a new way of expressing an old idea or to up your game and reach for the level of prose and quality of writing you’ve just experienced. At the very least, even bad writing can be inspiring, if only as inspiration to avoid duplicating its badness.

But one piece of writing that’s inspired me? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

That’s the line Humphrey Bogart (as down on his luck gold prospector Fred C. Dobbs) uses on the Man in the White Suit (played by director John Houston) he keeps accosting for a handout in the 1948 film classic, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Down and out in Mexico, Bogie inadvertently hits up the same guy for money, until, on his third time to that same well, the Man in the White Suit says, “Such impudence never came my way. Early this afternoon I gave you money…while I was having my shoes polished I gave you more money…now you put the bite on me again. Do me a favor, will ya? Go occasionally to somebody else — it’s beginning to get tiresome.”

Bogie is humbly apologetic: “I never knowed it was you. I never looked at your face — I just looked at your hands and the money you gave me. Beg pardon, mister, I promise I’ll never put the bite on you again,” and the Man generously lays one last peso on him (“This is the very last you get from me. Just to make sure you don’t forget your promise, here’s another peso.”)…the peso Dobbs uses to buy the lottery ticket that provides him and fellow prospectors Howard and Curtin to their grubstake.

These days, I feel a lot like Fred C. Dobbs. I keep coming up to you, over and over again, hat in hand, asking you for a couple of pesos…or, in my case, to buy my book and the books of my fellow writers involved our own humble little attempt at mining gold out of the cold, hard mountain we call Crazy 8 Press. But unlike Fred C. Dobbs, I’m trying awfully hard not to take advantage of your good will and generosity…and, also unlike the hapless prospector, if you do decide to drop that peso in my cup, you’re getting something in return beyond the warm glow of a good deed done: I hope you’ll find that you’ve exchanged your hard-earned cash for a damned good read, either by me or by fellow Crazy 8 inmates, Michael Jan Friedman, Aaron Rosenberg, Bob Greenberger, Russ Colchamiro, Glenn Hauman, Peter David, and Howard Weinstein.

Crazy 8 authors don’t take our readers for granted, of that I can assure you. I’ve been a writer in the public eye for almost four decades, during which I’ve attended I don’t know how many scores of conventions and book fairs, probably in the hundreds if I bothered to count, and never once has my reaction to a reader or fan who has approached me with something I’ve written to be signed or a hand to shake been anything but a grateful “thank you!” Just this past weekend, I was a guest at the Baltimore Comic-Con where one hyper-apologetic fan stopped me in my wanderings around the convention floor to tell me how much he’s enjoyed my work over the years, repeating how he hated to bother me, but would I mind signing his book…?

What I said to him was the honest truth: He had nothing to apologize for and not only was it not a bother, but I was happy and honored to do it. I know how I feel when I get to meet someone whose work I admire. I also know how it feels to have an admirer tell me what my work has meant to them. It is, quite simply, a win-win situation: One of us has met someone we admire; the other has had the satisfaction of hearing that what we’ve written has touched that reader.

Because without our readers, we’re just a bunch of weirdos hunched over our word processors in the basement, talking to no one.

So even if you don’t have a peso to spare at the moment but you’ve ever enjoyed anything I (or Mike or Aaron or Bob or Russ or the rest of us) have written, or if one of our storirs has touched you or made a difference in your world, you can still do a solid for a fellow American by helping us spread the word about Crazy 8 Press.

Share our blog and website. Talk about us on Twitter; re-Tweet our Tweets. Mention us on Facebook, “Like” the Crazy 8 Press Facebook page, “Share” the posts of Crazy 8 authors, or do whatever it is you do on Tumblr or whatever form of social media you kids are on these days. Tell your friends. Hell, tell your enemies!

And if you’re flush and can support us with your dollars to buy our books, print or electronic versions, let people know what you’ve read and what you think of it. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or better yet, write a quick review on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com, or post it on your own blog or website. What’s better than a recommendation of a good read from a friend?

We’d like your money, sure, but we’re just as grateful for your moral support and your efforts at word of mouth to spread the word. Support us with the knowledge that the advantage of your support accrues not to some faceless behemoth of a corporate publisher but directly to the authors themselves.

Fred C. Dobbs may not have looked his benefactor in the face, but know full well that the Crazy 8 authors do and appreciate everything you do for us, whether it’s buying our books or posting a link to our website. It takes a lot of time, energy, and sweat to write a book, and just as much to see it through to publication. Which reminds me of one last quote from Sierra Madre, this one spoken by grizzled old prospector Howard (Walter Houston):

“A thousand men, say, go searchin’ for gold. After six months, one of them’s lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That’s six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin’ over a mountain, goin’ hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin’ and the gettin’ of it.”

So, yeah, even if you’ve already handed over a peso or two (or three or four!) to me, I’ll be back in your face soon enough, asking for a handout…but in return, I’ll try my damnedest to entertain you. As will the rest of the Crazy 8 gang, so I hope you’ll forgive our impudence.

Here’s the way the conversation usually goes:

Them: “Oh, you’re a writer? Are you famous?”

Me: “If you have to ask, I think you’ve answered your own question.”

Them: “Well, what do you write?”

Me: “All sorts of things. Novels, kids books, comic books.”

Them: “Really? Where do you get your ideas?

Depending on who’s asking, I have a variety of answers, ranging from the snarky, “I subscribe to an idea service; every month they send me two dozen ideas and I pay them for the ones I use,” to the truthful (but not very helpful), “It’s my job.”

The actual writing is only a part of a writer’s job. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s the easy part, it’s still only a part of the process, because before you write you have to have something to write about. Fortunately, having been at my job for a goodly number of years, I’ve gotten pretty good at the whole “getting ideas” thing which come, to me at least, in two distinct flavors: the complete, ready-to-write idea and the broad concept.

The complete, ready-to-write kind are, as you would imagine, the best kind. Those are the ideas which come–pop!–into your head, fully developed, with a beginning, middle, and end already in place. Sometimes, it just feels like all you’re doing is copying something you’ve already read or seen. These are, needless to say, the kind of ideas that don’t come near as often as you wish they would. I can only think of a handful of instances where this has happened to me, one time being in the early 1980s when, in search of an idea for a sword and sorcery concept for a DC Comics series, I came up with–pop!—Arion, Lord of Atlantis, about a sorcerer in the Atlantean end days.

That’s not to say Arion came completely out of nowhere. Knowing the editor of the Warlord comic was looking for a back-up feature to replace one that was spinning off into its own title, I had been noodling with S&S ideas for a while. As a result, Atlantis, sorcery, and a soupcon of Larry Niven’s classic The Magic Goes Away had been percolating in the back of my mind for a while, but I hadn’t really made any sort of effort to turn those ingredients into a concrete idea. Well, not consciously at any rate. So, when the big picture idea came to me–pop!–while I was in the process of doing something totally unrelated to writing or sorcery, it felt like I had given birth without having to go through the messy process of labor.

The broad concepts, what’s sometimes called the germ of an idea, is much more common and can come from anywhere and anything. In just the last week, some random lines from different movies I was watching jumped out at me as being perfect story titles. What stories they would title weren’t clear at the moment of impact, but pretty soon one of them joined forces with a little project that I’ve been working at sporadically over the last few months, that of using pieces of sculpture and paintings created by my late grandmother as the inspiration for short stories (the first few of which can be linked to here). The other will, eventually, find a home somewhere.

Another broad concept came to me listening to an interview with Ben Bradlee, newspaperman and friend of President Kennedy, on CSPAN. Bradlee spoke of a conversation he’d once had with JFK about this post-presidency and, without even thinking about it, I grabbed a pen and paper and jotted down the quote. That, in turn, became the beginnings of a short story that will, I hope, turn into a Crazy 8 anthology sometime in the near future.

I’ve found ideas lurking in conversations, in newspaper and magazine articles, in other people’s stories, and in looking out at inspiring views. I’ve had these ideas while actually searching for them for in the course of an assignment, and I’ve had them without any place in which to use them. I’ve been awakened from a sound sleep with them, and I’ve had them drifting off to sleep. Not all of them are gems, though, but the really good ideas are the ones you don’t forget, even if you get them when you’re half a sleep or don’t get a chance to write them down. The ones that slip away probably weren’t worth remembering in the first place.

Where do I get my ideas? I guess the truth is I get them anywhere and everywhere.

Where do get yours?

I spent yesterday, August 24 as a prisoner in the Trumbull, Connecticut Marriott Hotel! I arrived around 9 a.m. and couldn’t escape until almost 7 p.m., when I made a break for the parking lot and, with another freshly sprung inmate, went to ground miles away at the King and I Thai restaurant in Fairfield, cleverly hidden under platters of spicy larb, nam sod, mooh prig sod, massaman curry, and a couple of bottles of icy cold Singha beer.

When I say “prisoner,” of course I mean “guest” at the 2013 Connecticut ComiCONN, my third year at this great hometown comic book convention run by the indefatigable Mitchell A. Hallock. Mitch has been kind enough these three years to provide me with table space from which to meet and greet fans and friends, peddle a few books, and, this year, spread the word about Crazy 8 Press.

Sharing the table with me this year was Crazy 8 mastermind Michael Jan Friedman, author of Crazy 8’s Fight the Gods, Aztlan: The Last Sun, and Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven (not to mention about a zillion Star Trek novels and comics, every single copy ever printed of which I believe he must have signed yesterday).

Crazy 8 Press was on if not the lips, then the wrists of everyone at Connecticut ComiCONN (we sponsored the show’s admissions wristbands), but Mike made sure that everyone who stopped by our table knew all there was to know about our creator owned publishing endeavor. Whether they stopped by specifically to meet their favorite Star Trek author/comic book writer or were just browsing as they made the rounds of the tables of the guests and dealers, Mike pointed to a Crazy 8 title and made sure they knew who we were and what we were about:

A group of writers with a combined dozens of titles and who knows how many decades of publishing experience between us, working together to publish our books, our way in an environment where the big publishing houses aren’t interested in putting out books that won’t sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Mike pointed out the Crazy 8 titles we were both selling, letting people know that these — as well as the titles by the Crazy 8 authors not present — were books we wrote because they were the stories we wanted and/or had to tell, not because they fit the idea of what some publisher thought might fill a slot in their carefully plotted out sales projections. Anyone who expressed even the slightest interest walked away with Mike’s contagious enthusiasm ringing in their heads and the Crazy 8 website address in hand. And sometimes even a Crazy 8 book in their backpacks.

I was a tad bit more reserved in my approach when the day began, but before very long I’d caught Mike’s enthusiasm and was on my feet giving my variation on his spiel to fans and passersby as well. I think I even managed to infect a couple of writers whose names you would probably recognize with the creator owned small press bug as well. We’ll see if that yields some creative dividends for them and Crazy 8 Press in the not-too-distant future…

But that’s what made me a prisoner in the Trumbull, Connecticut Marriott Hotel. And happy to be locked up for the duration at that…

W.W.S.L.D.?

What Would Stan Lee Do?

He would sell it, baby!

If we learned nothing else from Stan the Man at the dawn of the Marvel Age of Comics, it’s that there’s no such thing as too much promotion. Stan, a natural born hail-fellow-well-met type, used his personal bombast to elevate Marvel Comics from a second-rate publisher of whatever was popular at the moment to the premiere brand in the business. And in the process, raised himself from an unknown writer/editor on the brink of quitting his job out of embarrassment over what he did for a living to becoming the only name in the industry anyone outside of the industry recognizes.

Stan may or may not have known from the get-go (probably not) that he had a tiger by the tail with The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the rest of the Mighty Marvel line-up, and he likely reasoned he had nothing to lose by becoming Marvel’s (and his own biggest boaster), but however he got there, Stan recognized early on that the only way to insure Marvel’s success was to promote the bejeesus out of it, True Believers!

Excelsior!

I invoke Stan because I of late find myself in a position similar to his in the early days of Marvel. As a member of the publishing hub called Crazy 8 Press (along with fellow writers Russ Colchamiro, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Glen Hauman, Aaron Rosenberg, and Howard Weinstein), I find myself in a pack of underdogs facing mighty tough competition in the world of publishing. Stan was competing with the Cadillac of Comics Publishing, DC Comics and its stable of superstars, not to mention Archie Comics, Harvey Comics, Dell, and a handful other publishers, each with their own line-ups of established and popular characters. Against Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Archie, Richie Rich, Caspar the Friendly Ghost, and the rest, who the hell were Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spider-Man, and Iron Man?

Crazy 8 Press is (for the purposes of the analogy) Marvel. The rest of the book publishing world is DC Comics, which not only commanded the newsstands and spinner racks, but also controlled the means of distribution; in those years, Marvel Comics nee Timely Comics nee Atlas Comics was distributed by Independent News…a company owned by DC (then known as National Periodical Publications, or NPP). Independent distributed Marvel, but limited them to something like eight or twelve titles a month.

So Stan and Marvel had nothing but obstacles in their way. They could only publish a limited number of titles and that which they did publish was up against newsstands filled with brands infinitely more recognizable than their own.

So Stan began making noise. He did this by talking directly to the readers who did discover them and, unlike stodgy DC or the publishers who didn’t bother addressing their readers at all, he invited his fans in made them a part of the excitement. The Marvel Bullpen page was nothing but one big house ad, but instead of just promoting a specific issue of a given title, it promoted the Marvel brand; on top of that, Stan’s Soapbox served to promote Stan Lee as he promoted his fellow creators and the brand. Stan “The Man” Lee, Jack “King” Kirby, “Sturdy” Steve Ditko, “Dashing” Don Heck, Gil “Sugar Lips” Kane (you hadda know Gil)…Marvel didn’t have a staff who labored in obscurity like the majority of other companies. Stan invited his readers inside the Hallowed Halls of Marvel (actually a narrow and cramped alleyway of desks and drawing boards in those early days), made them his friend, and, more importantly, enlisted them as his allies in the quest to Mine Theirs Marvel. And it worked. In a relatively few short years, especially once freed from the restrictions of Independent News, Marvel Comics was eating DC’s lunch…and continued to do so, more or less consistently, ever since.

Love him or leave him, no one can deny that Stan Lee was, is, and remains the Hype-Master General of comic books!

I spent this weekend just past in Baltimore at Shore Leave 35, a Star Trek themed convention that, while small, is about the most author/creator-friendly environment I’ve ever encountered in a convention setting. I was there with the Crazy 8 crew, celebrating the imprint’s second anniversary and the release of, among other things, my mystery novel, The Same Old Story, and the third volume of the ReDeus anthology series, Native Lands (co-created with Greenberger and Rosenberg).

In addition to signings and panels, we also met to discuss what lies ahead for Crazy 8; we’ve got the books to sell (more than two dozen titles published thus far) with more (many more!) on the way…but the major item on our agenda was finding better ways to promote and sell our wares. I’m not talking about channels of distribution–all our titles are available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble as paperbacks or for the Kindle or the Nook, likewise from our Print On Demand publisher CreateSpace, which you can link to directly from the Crazy 8 website, and even direct from the authors themselves.

No, what we mostly talked about was how to make the world aware of what we’re up to. We all have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and other forms of social media that we work, but the big question was: How do we cut through the chatter of the hundreds of millions of other users to make ourselves heard? And, more importantly, how do we do it on the near-zero budget of a small, creator owned independent imprint? For now, the answer is (to quote an old Robert Klein routine), “Volume!”

And by volume, I mean persistence, and by persistence I mean, incessant tweeting, endless postings on Facebook, and constant begging of those who follow us to re-tweet and share our postings. By persistence, I mean working our eight individual voices so that we’re talking together and talking to our fans and readers. By persistence, I mean making pains in the ass of ourselves and hoping you’ll forgive our persistence and recognize that we’re doing it not because we like being pains in the ass but because we’re trying to accomplish something here, something that the big publishing houses who once did this for novelists at our level are no longer interested in or able to do.

We’re just doing what Stan Lee would do, but instead of confining it to a Bullpen Page or Stan’s Soapbox, we’ve got to reach a much more scattered audience faced with more distractions than just whether to read Marvel or DC or Dell or Archie. Re-tweet us. Share our posts on your Facebook page. Do whatever it is people do on Tumblr and the rest of the social media sites. Support us if you like something that any of us have written in the past. Support us if you believe in the future and viability of small, independent presses. Support us if you are currently or hope to one day be part of something like Crazy 8 Press yourself. The paradigm is shifting and we’re just trying to shift with it, but we can’t do it without your help and support, and I don’t just mean by buying our books (although that’s not such a bad idea, either).

In the end, we all believe we’ve got the goods, that what we’re hyping is, like Stan’s Marvel Comics of yore, the real deal, written by professional authors with I don’t know how many scores of years of professional experience, credits, and awards between us.

So, if I or any of my fellow Crazy 8 authors start to get on your nerves, please forgive us. We’re just doing What Stan Lee Would Do…hoping to grab you by your imagination, and inviting you to come along for what he hoped will be the creative ride of your life.

Excelsior, True Believers!