Phoque It

This is an early draft of a sales pitch. Please correct and edit before release. Under no circumstances should this be allowed to see the light of day in its current state.

Dear readers, writers, book industry people,

It’s become a cliché to claim there’s a veritable Pacific Ocean of crapola out there in the indie book world. But that cliché is not even a good analogy, really, so we’re going to turn it on its head. No, instead of an ocean, what we see is a vast floating island of ugly unbiodegradable plastic that grows vaster and uglier by the day. It’s at least as ugly as the word “unbiodegradable”. And we want to clean it up. Now, is there anything living in the ocean we can all get behind? Excluding those mean, club-wielding Canadians, that is? Wait, club-wielding Canadians are aquatic? Seals, of course!

With their large innocent eyes, playful natures and smooth, round torsos, pretty much everyone adores Canadians seals. Since we all approve of seals, it makes sense you will want to pay me to stamp your book with the “seal” of “approval” (clever, huh?). And since the French for seal is “phoque”, our company’s name almost writes itself: Phoque It. Geddit? It’s almost too perfect. Don’t know about you, but I’m giddy already.

So, here is my proposal. I have formed a collective. Right now it’s just me, admittedly, but my multiple personalities do actually qualify me in this lowdown masquerade exciting new venture. Anyway, I am going to fleece help all of you. And here’s how. Pretty much everyone agrees that indie books are somewhat quality-challenged, yeah? Quite honestly, I’ve seen better-written grocery lists than some of these so-called ebooks. Somewhere there’s a monkey sitting at a typewriter with more talent in one knuckle of its left pinkie finger than most of these losers. But what if we had a way to guarantee quality? You then get happy readers, of course. Who suddenly stop wanting to douse indies in grain alcohol and flambé them on a barbecue while cursing in an ancient Maori dialect start to drop their criticisms of indie authors. And who then buy more books written by said indies. After which, the collective self esteem index rises. Thus ensuring everyone wins. It’s the mother of all positive feedback loops. And with absolutely no more flambéing.

Look, I’ll cut to the chase: I have now patented a top secret algorithm that can objectively evaluate the quality of any book. It took the best part of two years and the illegal abduction expert help of a number of prominent scientists from MIT to create this unique software, but now you can benefit from its 100% accuracy. Not only is it able to assess grammatical accuracy, it can also rate such previously unquantifiable aspects of the writer’s craft as narrative arc, plot holes, the overuse of exposition, even a precarious imbalance of tell over show.

Once evaluated objectively by the program, our panel of industry experts will then pore over your work in order to provide that human touch. If I they decree it to be a reasonable standard, they will issue the Bronze Phoque to wear with pride on your book cover, and you will fork over pay the collective the incredibly low price of $250.

The Silver Phoque is reserved for slightly more elevated works, in which the dialogue is perhaps a little tighter, the language more tonally consistent, and we still only charge the almost painfully low rate of $350. Painful for us, I must emphasize. You, on the other hand, will feel an almost pleasurable sensation in your nether regions when you cheerfully part with such a paltry sum.

Finally, the Gold Phoque will demonstrate to everyone the bewitching, beguiling brilliance of your book, will suffuse it with—yes—golden lambent light and the mellifluous tones of otherworldly choirs (as well as the large Gold Phoque so prominently displayed on your book’s cover for the whole world to admire), all for the astonishingly, damn-near embarrassingly low price of $500.

We even tested our amazing system on a bona fide classic, with somewhat surprising results. Awarding To Kill a Mockingbird a Bronze Phoque, the software had this to say: “A bit weighty for a YA novel. This, alongside some disturbing displays of racism, frankly, prevents this book from achieving a higher rating from our literat-o-meter. We would encourage the author to find less offensive subject matter in light of the young age and impressionability of the novel’s protagonist”. It also suggested Shakespeare go back and rewrite his stuff in “a language we can all understand.” Okay, so there may be a few minor glitches and bugs to be worked out, but I can assure you of this: your book will be in expert hands. What can possibly go wrong?

This is the next step in our adventure together, my avid indie fleet. We are shedding gatekeepers like a squid sheds ink. Today we have set sail toward an unknown land. There may well be hungry sharks and heavy storms along the way. Pirates, even. But we are going to kill with righteous fury that ugly island of plastic, we’re going to remake our ocean voyage in our image, and we’re going to do it with seals, by imbuing them with approval, by showing we care only for quality and not stupid money, which you can’t take with you anyway. What are a few pennies when placed beside immortality, after all? I’ll answer that for you. Nothing, is what they are.

Which reminds me: here’s my last word, since you now know my word is good. In order to further cement your trust, we will demonstrate our exemplary self-marketing competence by providing one of the industry’s more memorable slogans:

“Here at Phoque It, You Give Us Money, Then We Give A Phoque.”

Thank you for your time.

*     *     *     *     *

A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on June 22, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Screw You Guys

I just want to clarify something about my modus operandi as a blogger and as a person. I am not a mean guy. I really do try to avoid hurting others. But I also have a wicked sense of humour, and like many of my original compatriots (the Brits), it is based on a kind of sardonic mockery with lashings of wordplay. Plus, it runs pretty gallows, too. Sorry, not gonna apologise for that. I just want to put it on record that, if I poke fun at something you feel is uncomfortably close to a personal attack, please please approach me privately and ask. I do not bite, other than playfully, and 99 times out of 100, you'll find I am just messing around, nothing unkind or offensive meant. If I have a problem with an individual, I will approach that individual. At risk of sounding complacent, this is what grown-ups are supposed to do, yeah?

Now, when a controversial issue crosses my radar and I recognise a bunch of folks are getting butthurt over it—legitimately or not—sometimes I will parody or satirize the entire topic in a blog post. To kind of blow it up, make it transparent. This doesn't mean I'm taking a position, necessarily. It means I am acknowledging it as a point of contention and using humour to defuse the tension a little. It's how I play. Test how it feels to be on either side of the fence. Or simply on the fence, splinters and all. Which is how I learn. Splinters in one's glutei work wonders that way.

To be honest, it feels kind of weird that I'm having to spell this out, but it seems there are some fellow interwebizens (yes, I just made that word up) who missed the memo that by employing enough snarkology we can sometimes illuminate or otherwise get to grips with a hot issue. I mean, do they live in a world somehow scrubbed of all traces of Jon Stewart? Or Eric Cartman, for that matter? As an example, I mentioned recently a post I wrote for Indies Unlimited that mocked internet collectives who scam writers and set themselves up as phony "experts". Well, yeah. And I still stand by that, of course. Snake oil salesmen deserve all the censure and ridicule we can muster. Unfortunately, those who are not selling snake oil can also feel they're being targeted. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you're not exploiting my fellow writers and are offering a reasonable service, fair play to you. Because look, although I am not even decided on the issue of whether these new "gatekeepers" can have any positive impact, I'm also not convinced they won't.

So, given my ambivalence, when I am able to take advantage of a free promotional opportunity to use one of these ventures for my own book, it is not hypocritical. And even if it were, so what? Show me someone who hasn't accepted his or her contradictions and I'll show you a very restricted and binary thinker. Cut me some slack here and I'll promise to return the favour.

*     *     *     *     *

David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Beachhead Elegy

And they were never seen again.

Cold dark waves like chocolate shavings, assailing the frosted grainy icing of a winter beach. Anemones and urchins know. The herring gulls think they know. Sea monsters might possibly know. We are utterly betrayed by the pretenders to the royal court of Happily Ever After, within the cruel kingdom of Some Day Soon.

I remember the two of them – arm in arm, sweetly curious, as if fresh-weaned kittens had developed hard science – combing the lacerated beach, scrutinizing reeking bones, shells, asking of all that capital-D-death what may have brought its unique chill to pass, at last.

“What is this? Do we know?”

“No.”

Oh, yes, that, of course, curiosity and the cat… along with that most chilling of clichés: Never. Seen. Again.

No monsters now. Just the lap and draw and slow allure of saltwater, over and over and over. Sucking and soothing. Whispering, like Highland mothers, “wheesht” to the stilted watchers, the quiet witnesses so wholly lost in the face of sorrow, so sorrowful in the lap of loss, so strained in the lacy flutter-and-flap of their licit and illicit loves. Beneath a leaden sky. Beneath all effective notice anywhere.

Three-finned fish limp and hump through wet mud. Something wretched with the spreading bloom of its own impending end mewls, infected, feeble. A drooping sun drops beyond it all.

“Pass me that scoop. That lens. Those slides. Somehow, we must preserve all this.”

We measure. We forget. We measured. We forgot.

The great heaving ocean once redolent of ramshackle life, salted, pungent, exuberantly sharp, now just reeks of something so utterly dead the ancient stars preen and pulse.

We look on, almost and even recalling the strides we took, the surf we rode, the honour we stole, the dirt we spilled, the balls we juggled, the plates we spun, the strings we plucked, the feasts we gorged, the grapes we trod, the lambs we slit, the blood we let, the steps we skipped, the fires we loosed, the love we snubbed, the holes we bored, the pricks we jabbed, the…

…the actual shrieking horrors we awoke, lacking any sedative. Or all perspective.

In the saltspray, hearing squalls, offering despair, thanking ourselves, raining stupid on our own parade, lurching nowhere, dark, dim, harrowdown.

Go away now. We are done. They are done. The subliminal drone is gone.

The End has never, ever sounded this dumb.

*     *     *     *     *

A version of this story appeared on BlergPop on May 4, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Close

As unclear dreams go, we gassed up a few miles back and are now pulling into town. Town. An untidy strew of decrepit and peeling clapboard buildings. Okay, a town. After paying for a room – off-white décor, sticky carpet – I step out behind M. into the main street.

“Wonder where’s the best place to eat.”

“May only be one place,” says M.

We gaze vaguely eastward over a sunburned field, absorbing the clear blue brilliance.

Without warning, the unthinkable. A thick column climbs like a tumorous limb above the horizon – squirming, turbulent reds, charcoals, yellows, deep infected orange – blooms impossibly high in the deep blue, before flattening itself like a roiling brain atop a crippled spine, an utterly broken thing.

“I guess it doesn’t matter now,” I say, my heart liquefying when I see M.’s haunted hopeless face. People are crying and someone retches in the street. I step forward and hold M.

“Where is that?”

“Uh-uh, I’m not even sure where we are. New York City, maybe? DC?”

“We’d better get inside.”

In the room, we search for shelter, for something solid, but the furniture is rickety. Even the sagging doorframes seem unworthy. Faithlessly, we force shut windows that barely fit in their frames.

Then we hear it.

An aberrant rumble swelling around the hint of a ruinous howl. Distant yet closing. We stand senseless, embracing. Awaiting the end (the end), an eventuality we couldn’t have remotely considered earlier that day, adrift yet untroubled on warm ribbons of Midwestern highway.

An already hot day grows hotter. The rumble soon a catastrophe, assaulting the ramshackle structure in a storm of screaming heat. A violent, bewitched twilight come early, wholly uninvited. We stand for a long time, clasped in that shuddering embrace, amid hot unholy gales, me feeling the most bewildering blend of pure love and abject sorrow I’ve ever felt, or will likely ever feel again.

Blessed mercy, it passes. I’ve no idea how long we remain there, shocked immobile, waiting for our stampeding hearts to return to us. Outside, fiery buildings crackle and dance. Thick coiling ropes of ash trail in the wake not only of gusts of wind but behind the gathering numbers of fleeing people; these latter gape-faced, blankly intent on outrunning the hurt in the air. The sound of cars being started and revved, of doors slamming. A few individuals are trying to direct these instant refugees, gesturing solemn at intersections, as if civic order were suddenly vital… albeit futile – with a lone artery feeding the Interstate, and an entire town attempting to simultaneously mainline, everything gridlocks.

In the motel, we tie cursory bandannas over our mouths – too numb yet for regret, but oh so lonely – and sit watching thwarted drivers scowl against the backdrop of a smoking town beneath the preternatural murk of a heartrending sky.

One of us, not sure which, says: “When it’s our turn to head back west, at least we’ll have a full tank of gas.”

*     *     *     *     *

A version of this story appeared on BlergPop on May 21, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

A Nurturance Deficit

Stand well back, writer about to brag...

"What a beautiful and touching piece. You have a gift for creating vibrant images and feelings. I was swept away by your physical and emotional journey after the devastation of the 9/11 attacks and appreciated your keen observations about the landscape and the feelings of the people around you. We are very excited to offer Dissolute Kinship a Grub Street Reads Endorsement and to add your work to the official Grub Street Reads library."

So writes Jessica Bennett of Grub Street Reads in her ringing endorsement of my book.

Deeming my work meets the standard in the following categories:

✓ Plot

✓ Characters

✓ Pace

✓ Accurcacy

✓ Grammar/Layout

✓ Overall Assessment

Grub Street Reads not only accepted and endorsed it, they added it to their Grub Street Greats category ("the books we couldn't put down"), an honour only afforded five books out of some forty novels they've endorsed so far.

Now, the whole concept of endorsements has come under scrutiny lately, and I even poked fun at it myself, but I can say in all honesty that no money changed hands between myself and the people who run that site, so I will take the praise and try to turn it into more sales. The question still remains, however: are we replacing the old gatekeepers with yet more gatekeepers? Is the new world order of publishing in danger of succumbing to some of the same pitfalls that befell the old model? While we debate this, however, we still need to get our books into the hands of readers, so I will use any legal and ethical means possible in order to do that.

Writers, huh? I swear most of us weren't breastfed or something. So needy are we that our knees go weak whenever someone with an opinion even glances in our direction. Sigh. As long as we're not tempted to part those knees, however, I suppose that's okay.

*     *     *     *     *

David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.