Here's some great artwork from Vickie Stankewicz of the Kankakee, IL library (which is one of our great nation's best libraries):
Paste this in your blog for one point!
Longtime readers might remember that if I ever run for congress, Greedo is in my Stump Speech, in which I'll introduce The Han Shot First Bill. Finally, some legislation on which we can all agree!
There are lots of ways to enter:
1. Copy and paste the following text into your blog or webpage to post this banner:
.
That's worth one indie street cred point. You can also make your own banner - just make sure to link it to adamselzer.com. Extra points MAY be given, especially if you generate a whole lot of linkage.
2. Download the official "pirate flier," make a few copies, and plant them in the YA section of any book store that isn't currently stocking Pirates of the Retail Wasteland. CLICK HERE to download the flier as a pdf file, or CLICK HERE to get it as a jpg. Two fliers come to each page - just print 'em up, cut the pages in half, and get 'em in the stores! Send in pictures of the fliers in your local bookstore (or coffee shop, library, etc) to us here. Each store you hit is worth 2 indie street cred points! All pictures will be posted in a special gallery soon!
3. If you've already read and enjoyed the book, post a review on amazon for two points!
4. Make your own promo video on Youtube - there are a few of them available here as examples. Send us a link - you'll get 2 indie street cred points right away, plus a bonus point for every 50 views you get! Send a link to the video here - we'll have links to everything here soon!
5. Send in "fan art" for the book (or for How to Get Suspended and Influence People) - the number of points each piece of art is worth will be determined by Adam after you send it in. Art will be posted online!
6. Come up with your own creative way to promote the book, pirate-style. Email us your idea for approval first; we don't want anyone running around naked and shouting "Pirates!" and expecting to get street cred points for it. That kind of thing doesn't get you points, only citations for indecent exposure. And it'll make Adam look like an alleged smut peddlar - just like Leon in his first book, How To Get Suspended and Influence People. Points awarded will vary depending on the stunt.
EXTRA POINTS MAY BE AWARDED FOR CREATIVITY!
Prizes include everything from eyepatches and fake mustaches (fool your friends! baffle your teachers! get into r-rated movies!) to signed copies of the upcoming book I PUT A SPELL ON YOU. And EVERY prize comes with a certificate of Indie Street Cred, a link to download mp3s of Pirates Always Cheat at Bingo by The Back Row Hooligans AND at least one other song, and a coupon for a discount on a Weird Chicago Ghost Tour.
For a complete list of prizes and all of the "void where prohibited, part of this complete breakfast, etc" fine print, go to adamselzer.com.
YARRRR! I'd be remiss if I didn't credit ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
kidlit_kim for this!
- Music:something really hip, obviously, since I can dispense indie street cred.
You'll notice that practically every movie has a scene or two outdoors where it looks like it's just rained. The reason for this is that wet roads are infinitely more photographable than dry ones - it's instant atmosphere.
You can use this same trick in writing - people are going to picture the scenes in their brain, and damp streets look better in your brain the same way they look better on a screen. If you look at your draft and seems like it needs something hard to put your finger on, consider setting the action against something to sort of lend the scenes a certain atmosphere. For instance, in "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland," I set the action in late January, when Cornersville Trace (the town where all of my stuff is centered) is very cold and snowy. Being able to describe the cold and the ice made for a much more atmospheric "set," and set things up for a major snowstorm that serves the plot well late in the book. During revisions, in particular, adding more information about the snowy scenery - even just a line or two here and there - lent a lot to the text. It's largely for this reason that I like to set things around wintertime. I've never written anything of any great length that took place in summer. Bright sunny days are okay for scenes where people dance merrily around and have a picnic, but, unless you're going for that "hills are alive with the sound of music" vibe, grey skies almost almost always look better.
A similar trick is setting it around a holiday - a time when there are Christmas decorations or graduation signs all over the place. Or even putting in an event - an upcoming wedding that the character has to think about, even though it won't take place til after the action in the book is long over - lends an extra bit of urgency to the situation. George Lucas COULD have set American Graffiti some night other than the night before everyone leaves for college - it would have worked fine in mid-July. But it wouldn't have worked as well.
Try it out - write a simple scene about a conversation between two people about whether to buy something in the window of a shop on a sunny day. Then try the exact same scene in the same place, only just before, during or immdiately after a thunderstorm. Don't get too melodramatic about it; mention it as little as is absolutely necessary. But look at how much it improves the scene!
These things are fun!
- Is the French word for "booger" that I've selected (there are more options than one would think) masculine or feminine?
- Is "dingle-dorf" a slur in any way, or just a funny way of calling someone unpleasant or unintelligent? I used it as such as a kid, but it DOES have a vaguely German feel to it, so one shouldn't overlook the idea that I was using some sort of slur against the Germans (or a German slur against any given ethnicity) without knowing it. Pretty sure I'm safe here, though.
- Would the narrator use the term "needn't?"
- I made up a band called the Westwood Singers - is there really such a group? Could they possibly get upset that I call make fun of them? Would the fact that one of the other bands alluded to in the same paragraph is real change anything?
- Which is worse - risking the ire of the Jim Morrison estate, or risking the ire of hardcore Jim Morrison fans?
I love my job.
Early on, I found the following note:
"We asked our resident Frenchwoman if this was the correct way to say 'I have a booger the size of Montana stuck to my buttocks' in French. Her suggestions are on the back. Take your pick - haha - no pun intended."
2. Came home and got the copyedited version of "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland" in the mail - this is where they go through with a pen and pick away at the very minute stuff - like "should sally rand be referred to as a stripper? she was more of a nude dancer" and leads me into waxing philosophical on whether "dumbass" should be called the "d word" or the "a word." It's a bit nerve wracking; you end up feeling like your book is being dissected and picked to pieces a word at a time. But it's also fun.
3. Did a "practice photo shoot." Next week or the week after I'll be running a ghost investigation that's going to be covered by - get this - National Geographic. They want a picture of the whole crew looking all nerdy with our equipment.
But this "waiting for news on a book proposal that's out on submit" business simply doesn't get any easier!
May, 2001 - I get the idea for the book during an orientation class that I took before my second hitch at Starbucks
June, 2001 - a first draft is written. In this version, the action centers around 3 bored, self-absorbed college students who fancy themselves to be socialists. It was intended to be an adult book, but I ended up deciding it was probably more of a YA.
Spring, 2003 - I finally get around to editing and expanding it from about 40,000 words to about 60,000.
June, 2003 - the expanded version is revised
Nov/Dec, 2003 - another major revision, including 15k more words. It's at this point that Trinity, the protagonist of the song Punk Rock Tango Girl is written in as a side character; the song already referred to The Cage, a place referred to in the early version of the book. A lot of the rewrites connect the book to the album Suburban Post-Modernist, which I was finishing off at the time.
2004 - my then-agent passes on the book. I put it on a shelf for another day and get to work on the project that became How To Get Suspended and Influence People instead.
June 2005 - Suspended sells; I start thinking about having Pirates be the sequel. I tried one draft where I just took what I had and changed the names of the characters to "Leon," "Brian," and "Edie," but it didn't work well .
September 2005 - first attempt at writing "Pirates 2.0", this time with Leon, et al, in high school. Many scenes from the original version are still present. The opening page of this version was practically the same as the first page of the 2003 version. A shorter version of that page shows up at the beginning of one of the later chapters of the final draft.
October 2005 - about 50 pages into Pirates 2.0, the version is scrapped. Instead, I spend October writing a surreal juvenile mystery called "The Ultimate Hot Dog," which, actually is another revamp of a book I started writing in Fall of 2000. Not sure what will happen with that one, but writing the draft got me back into shape to get back to work on "Pirates."
January 2006 - Started Pirates 3.0, still incorporating one or two scenes from the original version. In all, I'd say maybe 2-5 pages worth of text from the original ended up copied and pasted, and a few of the side characters (Trinity, Troy, and a couple of characters in the coffee shops) from the original version are present, but just about everything newly written for Pirates 2.0 in the fall is gone. I decided that I could have more fun keeping them in 8th grade than moving them up to high school or college right away. You have to do enough backstory in a sequel without having to fill in what happened in a long gap between stories.
Spring 2006 - just under five years after the project was first started, the book sells.
August 2006 - the first draft of Pirates 3.0 is revised and expanded just a bit before being turned in.
November 2006 - Random House gives me a sketch of the cover
December 2006 / January 2007 - major work is done to edit the draft, adding a couple thousand words (and cutting about 5-7k), streamlining it remarkably. One side character from the original draft who was previously left out is given a cameo after all. Copyedits will come through in couple of months, give or take a few, and then the book will actually hit the shelves early next year. So it's a long, long process, but the timeline does include very long stretches in which the project was on the backburner.
I'm finally satisfied now that I've made it the best book it can be. There are still plenty of good scenes in early drafts that I'd like to cannibalize for other books eventually. The 75k word version may have tossed in the junk pile in the end, but it makes for a fine junkyard for me to root through. Maybe I'll have a big "deleted scenes" extravaganza on the web some day in the far off future - I've already picked out a few deleted scenes from "Suspended" that I plan to put online eventually.
I like writing up timelines like this - "Suspended" isn't quite as involved as this one, though there's a long progression of unrelated ideas stretching back to about 1995 that eventually led to it. "At Last, Okemah," the screenplay which may be filmed this summer, also has a long timeline. Others projects would have much, much shorter timelines, but I'll post those when the projects are actually completed!
Meanwhile, since I talk a lot in the book about bumming from nametag job to nametag job, I've been trying to come up with a list of all the places I worked before becoming a writer/tour guide, but it's tough. There are quite a few places where I worked about one week before switching to a slightly better job, but I'm counting those, too. I keep thinking I'm leaving a few places out, but here's the list as it stands:
- 7 restaurants (including one cafe)
- 3 Starbucks (7 if you count places where I just did a couple of shifts)
- 3 pizza places
- 3 retail places at the mall (all owned by one company, though)
- 2 grocery stores
- 1 parking lot
- 1 office
- 1 theatre*
- 1 gig as a merchandiser (which took me to work in about every Wal Mart, K-Mart, Target in Toys R Us in Chicago)
- 1 day as a piano mover**
I think that just about covers the period from 1994-2005. During that time, the only minimum wage hike was in 96 (unless there was one a year or so before that).
* - I trained to be an usher at a college theatre, but never got any hours. This is the only job in which the application process asked me if I'd ever been a communist.
** - this was really just an odd job I was recruited for while hanging around outside a building, but it was paid, and looked too good on the list to leave off. I suppose, since it's there, I should put on the other odd jobs, like babysitting, pigeon feeding, assisting my dad when he was a chimney sweep, etc, but I won't.
In my sophomore year of high school, I worked at the one that had recently opened in Snellville, Georgia. I was a GSR (Guest Service Relations, a fancy way of saying waiter), a job so useless at that place that it no longer exists. People order, pay for, and pick up food at the counter, so I was really just there so people had someone to complain to. I'd go up to tables and say "I'm Adam, and I'll be your server. If you need anything, let me know," at which point they'd pretty generally say "anything? how about a million dollars?" or "You're Adam? Then where's Eve?" My stock answer to the last one was "she evolved."
I was only there a couple of months, but I was amazed at how vividly it all came back tonight - the one I went to tonight was laid out EXACTLY like that the one I worked at. It even smelled exactly the same. The decorations were different, and they weren't playing that one MoTown tape with only five songs on it over and over again, but it was the same place. Even the prices seemed the same, though in those days I thought five dollars was an awful lot to pay for a hamburger.
It would have been a decent job, except for two things:
1 - The managers. Of the three, one of them was stupid and anal retentive, and the other two were just stupid. They all hated each other's guts and fought a lot. I had to watch one of them, because she was always trying to short me when reporting my hours into the computer. She was twice my age, but rumor had it that she had a crush on me. She did tend to button and unbutton the top button of my shirt a lot. Another was under the impression that his work at Fuddruckers was going to change the world - he talked about this a lot, though he never specified how it was supposed to work. Another was responsible for letting the place run out of both french fries and onion rings pretty regularly, and was largely responsible for the ridiculous understaffing. On my second day, I was doing what was normally the work of at least 3 people. The process of closing the place was known to last into the wee small hours of the night.
2 - the other employees. Just about everyone else there was a part of the marching band at the rival high school, and didn't take kindly to the fact that I wasn't. Some of them started having friends come in to harass me - one I particularly remember was a white guy who thought he was a real gangsta, answered to the name of Boat Show, and expected to be taken seriously. Meanwhile, one of the other GSRs apparently WAS a real gangsta - he stole other people's tips openly and was known to respond violently when girls objected to him grabbing their butts in the kitchen. The managers were afraid to fire him.
One of the other employees decided that he thought I was gay and began chasing me around with knives and stuff. He got his friends in on it, too. Finally, I laid down the law to the manager: fire the jerk now, or I quit. They wouldn't fire him outright, so I quickly found a job at another restaurant. The manager laughed when I told him this. "You're working THERE?" he asked. "They're a franchise! WE'RE a corporation!." Zing!
As I walked out of the place on my last day, a couple of the guys who enjoyed harrassing me stepped outside to shout "get outta here, ya queer."
I shan't repeat what I happily shouted back (it was pret-ty obscene), but I went off on a long,long string of other jobs, and I don't think I ever saw any of the other guys who worked there again.
But every little bit came rushing back to me tonight. Which booths were the smoking section. Which table had the gunk on it that we never could get rid of. Where the helium machine was. How I used to get so hungry that I'd have to steal a handful of pickles out of the cooler - we NEVER got meal breaks. Like many restaurants at which I've worked, the only way to get a break was to need to smoke a cigarette. By law, if you can take a break to smoke, you can take a break for just about any reason you like, but in Georgia, they can also fire you for any reason they like. If they want to let you take a smoke break but fire you for a meditation break, they can.
But, from a long vantage point, the memories were sort of pleasant - and nice ones to get when I'm finishing off the revisions for "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland."
And man, was that a good burger.
One month and one day until the prequel comes out - read an excerpt here!
Now, after years of thinking of more and more ways to tell this story, more and more things to throw in, I have about 4 weeks left before the revised version is due to go back to my editor. This is the last chance I have to work on a book that I've been kicking around for nearly six years. After that, it'll be out of my hands. It's more than a little bit nerve-wracking. I feel like I could keep playing with this one forever.
There are a couple of scenes from the original, 2001 draft that made it into the final version - just a couple. There are also some good scenes in the original version that just didn't make the cut for one reason or another. Maybe they'll show up in other books sometime. Maybe I'll have a "deleted scenes" section on my webpage when the paperback version comes out.
The other night I had a dream that the book came out in its current, mid-revision form, when I have so much left that I want to do with it. Waking up from that dream felt like Scrooge waking up on Christmas morning with another chance to make things right.
I'll take a few days off the revision this weekend to work a bit on finalizing a proposal for a nonfiction book (hope to have some news about that soon).
THEN, five minutes later comes the revision letter for "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland."
So now the issue is: do I do FOUR projects over the next two months, or push the start of the Spell sequel back a little?
Well, no matter for now. I must celebrate the finishing of Spell 1!
- Pirates of the Retail Wasteland - novel. draft finished, waiting on revision letter from publisher
- I Put a Spell On You - novel. same as above
- Leon 3 - novel - early writing stages. hope to finish proposal by Feb. Finally have an opening I like after a few false starts.
- I Put a Spell on you 2 - novel. note stage. Need to have a draft by September
- secret nonfiction proposal - book length. note stage. hope to get a good jump on it by New Year's. enlisting the aid of my brother in this one.
- At Last, Okemah - screenplay. Need to get going on the revisions, now that a producer is apparently interested
- The Lock - play. Just got the idea for this.
- The Ghost in Paul Hazuka's Attic - short book. will probably re-write from scratch eventually. ont he back burner for now.
- songs for a new filk album to record next year
- episode 2 of the Weird Chicago podcast (should be up shortly)
- more Weird Chicago business
Spent today writing an essay on censorship and a few 'discussion questions' for the back of the paperback of "How to Get Suspended and Influence People." And reading. And working on a suitable display/frame for an object I recently ordered from a memorabilia dealer. And listening to bootlegs of the Dylan concerts from last weekend. Off to Atlanta tomorrow - don't forget the filk on friday, those so inclined! And don't forget to RSVP - not many people are confirmed as of yet.
- Music:Tom Waits - Bottom of the World
Between tours today I picked up the new Bill Bryson book, which is memoir of growing up in Des Moines in the fiftied. I myself embarked on the adventure(?) of growing up in Des Moines, albeit some years later, so I've really been looking forward to this one. You can put me down for anything Bryson writes, really. In his first book, The Lost Continent, he mentioned the mall at which I used to hang out with the memorable phrase "Jack Kerouac, of all people, said the prettiest girls in the world are in Des Moines, but apparently he was never at Merle Hay Mall on a Saturday." My main hope for this would be some mention fo George the Chili King, a fine diner still in existenve, and he mentions it on page 21, this time with the memorable phrase "A George's chili burger was gone in minutes, but the farts went on forever."
No matter where I live for the rest of my life, I'll never be able to get away from being an Iowan. And that's okay.
Of course, now I find myself at loose ends. For the last few months, I've had one writing project or another to keep my occupied every morning. Typically, I get up a bit before 7, grab some cereal, then take the laptop down to the cafe, where I write until I'm done (1500 words minimum if I'm working on a rough draft, editing just goes til I need a break). Spent this last month on "I Put a Spell On You," the month before that editing "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland," and the month before that editing writing "The Ghost in Paul Hazuka's Attic" and editing "The Ultimate Hot Dog." June was a mixture of "Spell" and "Pirates," and May was spent working on the end of the draft to "Spell."
So, here's October - and what do I do now?
I'll be pretty busy with ghost tours and weird tours all month, of course, but that 7-10 part of the day is tough to fill. I have projects I could work on - a "Pirates" sequel is in the early stages, and I have 11 months to do the "Spell" sequel. But that's PLENTY of time for both of those. I could edit "The Ghost in Paul Hazuka's Attic," but I don't really feel like it at present - still have no idea what to do with that series. Maybe I can rewrite them as graphic novels or something?
Also not really writing any songs right now, so I can't spend my mornings working on that. It looks like October will be a month off from writing, except for taking notes on the two that I definetely need to write next year.
Maybe I could learn to sleep in....
I hadn't been in the south long when I took this job; this place was my true introduction to serious hicks. My customers had a strong tendency to be both rather dumb and exceptionally mean, and there was no real way to do a good job - if I got people sat rapidly, they servers couldn't keep up. If I made them wait, the hicks would really let me have it. One of my other hosts was an older woman with an IQ of about 1, but who considered herself my boss. She did not "sit someone in Brenda's section," she "done set Brender." I think the reason that many customers were so insistent that I spelled their name correctly was that it was the only word they knew how to spell. On Sunday afternoons, when the Southern Baptists arrived from the church across the street (which had a few thousand more members than the town had citizens), things got especially terrifying. I'm not sure who was dumber: the restaurant for giving out forest scene coloring sheets but didn't give out brown crayons, or the customers who thought coming to complain to me about this would make their life any better.
2. GSR (Guest Service Relations; ie, designated complaint-receiver) Fuddruckers, Snellville, GA, 1997
The customers here got a little rough here, too, but the manager and the other employees were the bad ones - everyone else was part of the marching band at my school's rival school (the closest I got to school spirit was hating our rival school), and they resented that I was breaking up the cartel. In my first week, the manager had me working the entire floor, which was supposed to be a four person job - and when we ran out of french fries, the natives got restless and took it out on me. Things came to a head when rumors went around among the employees that having curly hair meant that I was a gay satanist. Starting getting threats and harrassment. The manager said he liked me because "he could see a lot of himself in me." I've spent years wishing he would take that back.
3. barista, Starbucks, Decatur, GA, 2004
I worked at a few different Starbucks over the years - one was actually a very good job, but as they've veered away from "coffee skills" into "leadership skills," things have gotten worse. This particular one wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been for the damned drive-through window. Never got to know my customers, since I couldn't really talk to them with a headset buzzing in my ear. On the plus side, only one of the many managers had a problem with me asking people if they'd like fries with that. The one at which I worked in the loop might have been just as bad, due to poor management, but I wasn't there long enough to tell.
4. bagboy, Publix, Snellville, GA, 1997-98
The real problem here was just that I hated bagging groceries. A place has a lot of nerve to pay minimum wage and still put up signs that say "no tipping." My boss once told me I should be working so hard that I was sweating. I told him straight up that A: nobody wants the bagboy to sweat on their food, and B: I didn't sweat for what they were paying me. This is probably tied with the bagboy job I had in Urbandale, Iowa, in 94-95, but at least that store was better. Much nicer breakroom, and, since I was 14, my hours weren't so bad.
5. server, Bubba Gump Shrimp, Chicago, 2005
I never want to see "Forrest Gump" again. This job had me wearing trucker hats and forced to give Forrest Gump trivia to every table. The hours were long and very hot, and our customers were about 98% tourists - we got some cool people, but also probably more than our share of whiny jerks. To top it off, the manager communicated by shouting at people. You couldn't really take it personally when you got shouted at - that was just how she communicated. She once had me working in the pouring rain, then shouted at me for being wet.
So, yes. I'm really pissed off that the GOP kept the minimum wage increase from passing the other day - it's the same today as it was when I was at PoFolks. I'm very, very glad not to be working a job like this at the moment, but the people who do deserve (and need) more than $5.15 an hour. Congress has had a 30k raise since then - why is that only the people who DO make enough to live on deserve cost of living increases? I know, I know, a raise on minimum wage could make other costs go up, but that's going to happen anyway. Surely they don't think the price of gas tripling since minimum wage last went up hasn't hurt the workers?
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