1.07.2008

Reading at Writers' Dojo Launch Party

I'll be reading alongside Kim Stafford, Alison Clement, Tom Spanbauer, and Chelsea Cain at the Writers' Dojo Launch Party on January 12th. The event is open to the public, with free food and booze. Doors at 7, Readings at 8, and Partying until the wee hours. I don't know how late I'll stay, being a family man and all, but I imagine I'll be there long enough to say hello to anyone who wants to say hello...

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posted by bigdumbjim at 15:00 0 comments

12.03.2007

Reading at the Portland Downtown Library 12/15 @ 12:30 P.M.

In a rare appearance, I'll be reading at the downtown library around lunchtime on Saturday the 15th. Take a break from your holiday shopping and come see me. I'll be the guy reading to an empty auditorium with a box full of Voodoo donuts by his side. Take a donut and bolt--I really don't care. Whatever's leftover is going to the homeless teenagers out front anyway.

(That is, if the staff at the PPL doesn't confiscate the donuts on the way in. I imagine I'm breaking all kinds of eating in the library rules...)

For the hell of it, I'll be reading brand new material. Raw, first draft stuff. I'm feeling the urge to go off, Howl-style. It won't make any fucking sense but it will sound good. I swear.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 10:03 3 comments

7.05.2007

Best Magic Marker Job Yet


Sent in from a fan:

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posted by bigdumbjim at 09:25 0 comments

5.17.2007

Interview of Me on Riottt.com

posted by bigdumbjim at 14:18 0 comments

5.14.2007

SF Weekly Reviews World Leader Pretend

I'm a little miffed that it took me this long to notice the SF Weekly review of World Leader Pretend that came out last month. It was positive and insightful. (They took a slap or two at the end, but that's pretty much boilerplate review writing.)

I do have to say that there's this funny premise that appears in reviews of World Leader Pretend where people assume that since I wrote a book about online gaming I'm some sort of technology guru.
Frost (himself a refugee from the S.F. dot-com world) shows definite promise as a writer, with a better grasp of emotional and linguistic nuances than one would expect from a techie, and knack for poetic use of cadence and repetition in his lengthy sentences.
They're surprised when they find out that the book carries an emotional punch. The truth is that I'm a psychology major who spent his early twenties attempting to save the world, who subsequently failed, and who came to San Francisco at the beginning of the dot-com boom when tech firms were hiring everybody with a pulse. I'm so not a techie. I always tell people (in jest) that my book is for the girlfriends of gamers, not the gamers themselves. True gamers would pick apart all the book's implausibilities. I was merely fascinated by how online gaming sort of inadvertantly caused the formation of these impromptu international communities, and the possibilities this created in terms of global understanding and togetherness.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 14:17 1 comments

4.13.2007

The Art of the Compliment

I've always found complimenting people to be a difficult thing to do. I can criticize with skill and precision, but when it comes to the compliment, the best I can usually come up with is a "you're awesome" or a "that's great." It's really too bad, and I imagine my relationships have suffered because of it.

Today, I received an email from a gentleman named Gerard Fleck, who I was in a writing group with for a time. The letter he sent was the most complimentary I can ever remember receiving. What I like most about it is its precision--why are most of us so good at criticizing with precision, and so bad at this?

I quote verbatim:
I really enjoyed reading World Leader Pretend. It was very original and kept moving at a good pace that kept me interested (and laughing). Although as an amateur writer, I found that thinking about the task of connecting these people through an online game in a meaningful real world way, kinda daunting --- you pulled it off quite satisfactorily. I'm glad you did not get bogged down in technical detail or the intricacies of on-line gaming. I think that is one of your strong suits, that you deal with a subject not initially accessible to someone who does not get into on-line gaming, yet you give just enough info to get me interested and then you really kept the story about the characters, with game as a backdrop or rather a web that ties them together. I finished reading it about a month ago, and don't have it with me right now, so can't reference the exact character names -- but -- the parts that are very memorable are the guy who ends up in Antarctica - the parts about him living in NYC, picking up girls was very well done. Also, the guy who wants to walk all the time, was good comic relief, but then when he finally does talk, he nails Xerxes - nice. The way your write about Gabby, being nuts, very convincing because you just put the reader right with her without getting bogged down in trying to prove she's nuts or use alot of clinical mumbo jumbo, she's just a young adult who is in fact a bit off kilter. When she tossed the baby off the mountain and hits Xerxes with it, and when the walking dude falls off the rock, absolutely brilliant and hilarious. Also, Gek Lin and Charlie's storyline came across very convincingly, animated, funny, yet with an understated seriousness. I think most guys can relate to Charlie being compromised in their desires to both help and ravage Gek Lin. And most folks cheer for Gek Lin and feisty determination.

Every moment throughout the book I never questioned your authority (ie: your demonstrated ability to be the author of what you were writing - credibility, I guess is the word), or the stories authenticity. I never once broke awkwardly from the narrative or found myself saying 'yeah right.' Even with such a truly mixed bag of characters and events that include a marriage on the south pole, an Olympic class skier from England (where they have no Olympic class mountains!), a millionaire underworld gangster in Thailand, a dotcom upstart gone bust, a therapist intern who moves from NY to AZ for a one-hour per week internship, Gabby & X's absent parents, absolutely outrageous coincidences around a chandelier mounted web cam, it all worked and worked quite well! Overall it was timely with the Internet company bust, the edginess of the characters, casual sexual and drug related references, a strip mall based mental health facility -- your book has quite a good sense of the y2k zeitgeist, my man. To be blunt, your book has all the elements that could have, in a less skilled writer's hands, amounted to schlock, but you, my friend, have clearly created literature. You should be proud of your skillful acrobatic act, and especially the way you stuck the landing.

Stay cool, keep on scribbling, and yes, I have recommended WLP to several people. I'm looking forward to seeing [your next book] in print.

Your Friend,
Gerard

Gerard has obviously made a friend for life...

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posted by bigdumbjim at 12:13 1 comments

4.10.2007

It's the Little Things That Brighten Up Your Day

My brother Joe called me yesterday to let me know that he had looked up World Leader Pretend at the Portland Public Library, and discovered that they had 6 copies, and that these copies were all checked out, and that there were currently two holds on it.

Despite acting like I couldn't care less, I did, of course, care, but mostly that my brother would look something like that up and call me to tell me about it.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 11:17 0 comments

4.03.2007

The Audience Closes Its Eyes and Smiles

I might have considered my reading at Books Inc. in San Francisco to be a failure, given that the audience consisted of 8 people. 3 of those people happen to be some of the most encouraging people in the whole world--in their own bizarre ways--and so it was difficult to be discouraged at all in their presence.

My brother Dave Frost is one of those people. I met my brother before the reading at Naan & Curry, one of my old haunts in S.F. on 9th and Irving. Dave hopped out of his car shirtless and shoeless--a car he had, incidentally, been living out of for the last month--gave me a bear hug, then fumbled through his trunk for a shirt and some shoes so he could make himself presentable in the restaurant.

Dave closes his eyes when something is giving him great pleasure, and many things give him such pleasure. One of those things is sushi--I have spent entire meals with Dave where he has eaten in silence with his eyes closed. It was incredibly encouraging, then, when I looked up for a moment during my reading and saw Dave with his eyes closed. There could not have been a greater compliment.

Also, in the audience was Matthew Yeoman. In a very bizarre transitional period of my life (I'd been sleeping on the friend's couch for a month, and had overstepped my welcome), I answered a random Craiglist ad for a household seeking a roommate. The household consisted of an aspiring screenwriter (Matt), an aspiring actress, and an AmeriCorp volunteer. The ad asked the potential roommate to answer the question: Why would we want you as our roommate? I had a bit of a devil-may-care attitude at the time (still do, really) and so I took great pains to write an over-the-top email, detailing how when I was an important and famous writer they would all have something to tell their grandkids about.

Fortunately for me, Matt and the roommates picked up on the tongue-in-cheek tone, and we became both roommates and fast friends. What amazes me about Matt, and what makes him such a great person to know, is that Matt has an almost photographic memory for things audio (is there a word for this?) He still remembers that email that I wrote, and can quote from it. He remembers other things I have said and repeats them back to me. It's almost like he has a portion of his brain in which he categorizes things--cool and funny things that X has said--at the ready during any conversation.

This is an immensely flattering quality to have. There is nothing a person likes more than to have things they have said remembered.

One other thing about Matt, he has a golden smile. Seeing that smile, coupled with a recently shaved head, in the audience, was both encouraging and Zen. Matt would make a great Buddhist.

Which brings me to another man with a golden smile and a shaved head, Dave Warnke, the illustrator who did the alternative cover for World Leader Pretend. I'd never met Dave before, but I'd always been struck by what an easy-going person he is. In a world of artists paranoid about copyright issues, Dave is a unique entity. When I asked him if he would do a sticker cover for my book, he said "Sure!" When I asked him if I could use it for whatever I wanted to use it for he said, "Sure!" When I asked him how much he wanted for it, he said, "Whatever!" (I think I ended up compensating him well.)

I love Dave's attitude towards his art, "Plaster it everywhere!" He's missing that "it's mine" meme that so many of us have planted in our brains. So many of us could learn from him.

Meeting Dave did nothing to alter my perception of him. He was quiet and humble, and yet when approached about his art was full of childish enthusiasm. I laughed at the thought of him, short and somewhat non-descript, wandering San Francisco late into the night, clandestinely putting stickers on everything he could get his marker-tainted hands on. A thief in the night, I thought.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 07:39 1 comments

3.22.2007

On Not Being Able to Pronounce What I've Written

At my reading at Book Passage on Tuesday I ran into a number of words in my own book that I had no idea how to pronounce. I suspect that at the time I wrote them I knew how to pronounce these words, but as time passed between the writing of the book and the publishing of it, I think my gray matter replaced the pronunciation of these words with other more pressing concerns. (Like, for example, how to change a diaper.)

I slipped up on "chic," "reson d'etre" and "schlemeil, schlemazel, hassenpfeffer incorporated." (Not slips of the tongue, when I came to the words, I literally didn't know how to pronounce them.)

By the end of the reading I was prompting the audience for help. Anyway, the audience seemed to think it was kind of funny. I guess if I didn't impress them with my intelligence, at least I made them laugh.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 10:02 1 comments

3.20.2007

Review My Book Please!

The Willamette Week ran a Q&A with me last week, and while it was positive and made the book sound interesting, I was disappointed that it wasn't actually a review.

I've found the lack of public discourse over my book to be disheartening. At least for me, the entire purpose of writing a book is to enter into the cultural conversation, to see what people have to say about the moving hand that has written. You're prepared for, even eager in some ways, to have your guts ripped out my someone who doesn't see the world the way you do.

But silence and apathy--it's a hard pill to swallow.

We'll see, though, the book's only been out for 3 weeks. It's not dead yet.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 08:53 4 comments

3.02.2007

The Sticker News Blackout Ends: Part I--The Media Coverage I Got for the Sticker Art

While the brave American media imposed a blackout on Paris Hilton news for, like, a whole three days (OMG! What ballsy journalism!), I've been imposing my own moratorium on speaking about the sticker cover of my book. I did this largely because I didn't want the entire focus of my book to be about what it was wearing, rather than what it was like on the inside.

This morning, though, I came to the realization that I'm doing my readers a disservice. After all, we live in America--it's all about what people are wearing!

The sticker cover for World Leader Pretend has garnered a not insignificant amount of press. Portland's alt weekly, the Willamette Week, first covered it. And the online publishing gossip blog Galley Cat followed up. The Willamette Week interviewed me for their piece, and as is typical of any guilt-ridden ex-Catholic, I pretty much just apologized for creating the sticker in the first place, rather than defending the sentiments behind it or my reasons for doing it.

The Galley Cat article about the World Leader Pretend sticker was juicier. The editor there poked through my old blog entries, and found the August entry where I first addressed the issue of the sticker cover. I was, well, angry at the time, and the blog entry reflected that. Basically, I talked about the "take-it-or-leave-it" ultimatum my editor gave me with the cover, and how totally off and wrong I felt the cover art was. As the Galley Cat article quoted, "Why give a sci-fi cover to a book that isn't sci-fi?"

The Galley Cat article got the wheels turning--a number of the more popular lit-blogs commented on it, and attaboys starting appearing in my email box. Yesterday, Print Magazine wrote me with a request for an interview--we'll see whether they follow up.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 11:30 0 comments

The Sticker News Blackout Ends: Part II--The Book Designer Speaks

So in the flurry of blogosphere hype about the sticker, I get an email from the cover artist of the book, a person who I had not previously had any contact with.

The cover artist was refreshingly candid in his email about how the cover design decisions about my book went down. What struck me, immediately, was how exactingly it confirmed every suspicion I had about how things work in the graphic design departments of big publishing houses.

Basically, the graphic designer gets a paragraph about the book from the book's editor. (not the manuscript of the book, or an excerpt from the book, or even a personal phone call or visit by the editor, but a paragraph of text written by the editor) The graphic designer then comes up with a few rough designs for the book without any other direction.

These designs are then taken to "the publisher." "The publisher" hasn't read the book either.

Now this notion of "the publisher" is laughably mythic in the publishing world, and every single person I have ever spoken to--agents, editors, graphic designers, even authors--is guilty of perpetuating it. "The publisher" is never given a name--it isn't even clear whether "the publisher" is one person or some sort of board of directors. "The publisher's" only concern is money, and the job of all other parties is to circumnavigate whether or not the book is important and explain to "the publisher" why the book will make money. Finally, "the publisher's" decisions are final, and not, under any circumstances, to be questioned.

So "the publisher" chose one of the covers that the cover artist designed. The artist was not particularly pleased with his work, and the author was screaming bloody murder about it, but the publisher had spoken. The reasons for the publisher's choice had nothing to do with the book and everything to do with money. A sci-fi/fantasy buyer at the biggest national chain bookstore had shown some interest in the book, and he/she was more likely to order a large quantity of the books if it had a sci-fi looking cover. (At least this was the perception, heaven knows whether the sci-fi buyer really cared.)

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posted by bigdumbjim at 11:25 0 comments

The Sticker News Blackout Ends: Part III--Why I Care So Much and Why I'm Acting Like a Teenager About This

Having a book released is like your Prom, or Bar Mitzvah, or your Wedding Day, or any other Coming of Age-type of event. What you are wearing on those days is very important to you. And if your mother or father orders a dress for you, and if your mother or father doesn't bother to tell the designer what your height, weight, or bust size is, and if the dress comes back and it's not at all right for you--it's a carnation pink and makes you look as flat as a pancake--then you are not really going to want to go to your Prom: you are going to want to go back to room and hide.

But then suddenly you have an idea. What if you screw your parents? What if you act prim and proper, agreeing to go to the Prom in that bad fitting dress, and then when your date shows up, you cart along a paper bag, and you ask your date to pull over at a gas station, and in the gas station bathroom you take out a halter top, a short black skirt and some fuck-me boots from the paper bag, and you put these on, and then off you are to your Prom...

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posted by bigdumbjim at 11:21 0 comments

The Sticker News Blackout Ends: Part IV--Fixing This Is Really Simple

Everything that happened with the cover art for World Leader Pretend was a very simple communication problem. I am relatively certain that if all these levels of fear and secrecy and top-to-bottom management didn't exist, I could have worked directly with the cover artist and come up with a book cover that sold books, suited my book, and even pleased "the publisher." I've seen this artist's work, and when he is given a deeper understanding of the work he is representing he produces fine designs. And I don't think working this way would be less efficient or cost "the publisher" more money--the author's time is free to the publisher, and the artist is less likely to have to start from scratch when the first designs are so terribly off.

In an interesting development, I have been working with the publishing house's Internet marketing coordinator on a MySpace page to represent World Leader Pretend. For whatever reason, this department seems less centralized. The MySpace page that we created was a collaborative effort--both the coordinator and myself had equal access to the MySpace administration functions. He did some stuff; I did some stuff. He did some stuff and I changed some of his stuff. I did some stuff that he changed. Neither one of us had to get approval from an amorphous higher power. We just respected each other's opinions and abilities and got things done.

And the MySpace page is very good...

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posted by bigdumbjim at 10:57 0 comments

The Sticker News Blackout Ends: Part V--The Cool Way the Sticker Art Reflects the Novel

My lovely wife pointed out recently how cool it is that the act of putting a sticker cover on my book mirrors the book itself. All the characters in the novel are trying to escape a real life in which they feel that their creative spirit is overly controlled, so they enter a virtual life where they have more creative freedoms. This split-personality is reflected by the novel: a cover was forced on the book that it didn't like, so it escaped to an alternative one...

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posted by bigdumbjim at 10:00 0 comments

The Sticker News Blackout Ends: Part VI--The Whole Culture Jam/Adbusters Nature of What I'm Doing

I'm aware that the sticker cover fits into the huge international culture jam phenomenon, where people are taking corporate media advertizing and subverting it to make social commentary. It wasn't unintentional on my part.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 09:45 1 comments

2.27.2007

On the Manifestations of Stage Fright

I gave my first public reading last night from World Leader Pretend at Powell's Books on Hawthorne Street. Like half the world's population, I have a strong fear of public speaking.

What is interesting to me about stage fright is how it manifests itself in different people in completely different ways. It also often doesn't have any noticable effect on performance, or at least to the outside observer, who can't get into the performer's head to know what they would have liked to have said, had they not been so flabbergasted.

In my case, my stage fright brings me to an effective mental paralysis, where first I think about what I want to say, and then, before I can bring it into words, I think about the fact that I haven't said anything yet, and that all these people are waiting to hear something from me. Then comes the paralysis: I know that I can't talk about the fact that I haven't said anything yet, and my brain gets fixated on it, and then I'm stuck--I just sort of stand there with that thought in my head and I can't let it go.

Fortunately, at a book reading, one has book material to read. So I do what musicians do: I say into the microphone something completely inane, like here's a song about my mother, and then I start reading. The reading tends to go well, and the people in the audience quickly forget about that awkward opening.

Afterwards, I get patted on the back, and told how good the reading went, while all I can think about was the frightful opening, and how badly I biffed the introduction to my book, where I was going to explain in brilliant detail why people should be interested in it.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 10:42 2 comments

2.23.2007

World Leader Pretend Soundtrack

As any astute Neutral Milk Hotel or R.E.M. fan will immediately recognize, World Leader Pretend is a novel with a sound track. Unfortunately, due to the snail's pace of the modern publishing world, the sound track to World Leader Pretend is a bit dated, which is why I haven't made more of a to do about it. Way back when I was pitching the novel to agents, I would include a CD of the songs referenced in it. I lost that soundtrack some time in 2004, the year my wife and I moved from the West Coast to the East Coast and then back again. Recently, though, I got in touch with my ex-agent who had a copy of it laying around. I share it with you:

Two Headed Boy by Neutral Milk Hotel
World Leader Pretend by R.E.M.
Driver 8 by R.E.M.
Electricity by Spiritualized
A Life of Arctic Sounds by Modest Mouse
Bankrupt on Selling by Modest Mouse
Plateau by Nirvana (a Meat Puppets cover)
Motorollon Scalatron by Stereolab
The King of Carrot Flowers by Neutral Milk Hotel
Mookid by Aphex Twin
Cuyahuga by R.E.M.
Never Ending Math Equation by Modest Mouse
A Spoonful Weighs a Ton by The Flaming Lips
Two Headed Boy by Neutral Milk Hotel (remixed by Yars Revenge)

If you want to get really nutty with my novel, listening to the tunes as they're mentioned in the novel is an entertaining experience. Many of the lyrics in the songs have direct relationships with happenings in it. Everything on this list except the Yars Revenge remix should be pretty easy to obtain...

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posted by bigdumbjim at 20:32 1 comments

2.22.2007

Why You Should Buy My Book and Come to My Event

One of the cooler things that's happened to me in the last few days was Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona offering me 300 words in their newsletter to answer the essay: Why You Should Buy My Book and Come to My Event at Changing Hands.

The main reason I thought it was cool was the unnecessarily lengthy essay title. I have a particular affinity towards unnecessarily lengthy titles (the original title of World Leader Pretend was The Strangely Peaceful Citadel of Blue Orcs...), so I was immediately attracted to the writing of the essay.

Unfortunately, in an attempt to savor the writing of it, I planned on waiting until this weekend to write it. Well, to make a long story short, the calendar editor at the bookstore had gotten the deadline dates wrong and told me yesterday that he needed it done by this morning. I hadn't started.

So this morning, a little jagged from my book release party last night, I wrote this:
(I'm worried that I'm still a bit tipsy...)

You should buy World Leader Pretend because it's weird. Good weird. It’s about a two-headed boy, a man who pretends to be a girl, a girl who pretends to be a man, a coyote, a century plant, a saguaro that says "Good," mountain biking, an electric baby, a poetry slam gone awry, an Antarctic welder who does stupid penguin tricks, and the untimely demise of a dragon. Who writes books about those things? Nobody.

You should also buy my book because it's important. It's about how the Internet has altered human society: how it has made us friends with people continents away and strangers to the people next door. It's also about a young man who is a little like Caesar, a young man who would rather be first in command in a small village in Gaul then second in command in Rome--a young man who feels a bit stifled in 21st century America, where all important decisions are made by some distant talking head on TV. It's about how this young man turns to an online game where he can be a king.

So that's why you should buy my book. You should come to my reading for completely different reasons. You should come to my reading because I am terrified of public speaking and it will be a cliffhanger as to whether I get through the reading at all. It'll be live human drama.

Also, you should come because you can be a Cover Artist Pretend. There will be a table with Sharpies on it, and stickers with my alternative cover art, and you can color your own cover for the book. After you’ve designed it, I will sign your book and officially approve the cover, and then you can go home and add Book Cover Artist to your resume. How cool is that!

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posted by bigdumbjim at 11:00 2 comments

2.19.2007

Why I Bristle When People Ask Me What My Novel Is About

The novel hits the stores tomorrow and I still don't have my talking point down: that very simple two-line answer that every writer who has ever written a book is supposed to have when asked what their book is about.

The reason for that is this: for seven years I have been trying to figure out how to reword my response so that people's brains don't instantly shut off.

My Answer: World Leader Pretend follows the lives of an international cast of characters involved in playing an online fantasy game.

Your Brain: Fantasy game. Ick. I hate those things. I don't want to read that. Boring. Ick.

Very rarely do people listen beyond my first sentence because they assume that a book about online gaming can't also be about the things that they read books for. So I wish people would ask me better questions, because then I would have better answers.

Is there sex in it? Yes, lots of sex.

Do you discuss politics? Yes.

Will the book make me see the world in a different light? Absolutely.

Is it a thoughtful book or a mass-market page-turner? It's thoughtful. And it's a page-turner.

Forget the plot, what's it really about? It's about how the Internet has changed our lives.

Is the book different from every other book out there? Totally.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 08:12 8 comments

2.16.2007

If I Had Pasted World Leader Pretend Stickers All Over Town, This Is How I Would Do It

What I would do is go out on a particularly rainy night on a bike, wearing mostly black with a few reflective devices so I didn't get killed, put a bunch of queued up stickers underneath my jacket, and ride around to all the bookstores in town, pasting stickers on bike racks and newspaper stands and the backs of stop signs.

I didn't actually do this, of course. The glove doesn't fit.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 09:13 2 comments

2.15.2007

I Go About Things the Wrong Way

That vibrating guitar in the background of How Soon Is Now? has been haunting me for the last few days. You see, I decided to go public with my sticker idea, and now of course the press are doing their jobs and hounding me for the juicy details about why I'm putting a sticker on my own book.

I'm trying to reroll my tongue back into my mouth, but as these things go, I've already said too much. The sticker is a humorous graphical representation of what you can expect to find in the pages of World Leader Pretend. It's funny. There is a Two-Headed Boy on it. There's an Electric Baby. I wanted to make people laugh. Really, that's it. Honestly.

So please go read World Leader Pretend. And no, my publisher isn't evil.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 15:10 0 comments

2.14.2007

I Wrote a Whole Novel and All I Got Was This Stupid Sticker

The Willamette Week ran a nice little article about my sticker cover. I appreciated that they worded it so it wasn't disparaging towards my publisher. Now if I could only get someone in the press to actually read the book and review it...

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posted by bigdumbjim at 11:35 1 comments

2.07.2007

It is Finished

Today, when I arrived home from a long and trying day, I found a padded manila envelope tucked behind the ratty green couch on my front porch. The envelope came to me unheralded, and I wondered what was inside. I opened it, and inside I found two copies of World Leader Pretend. Not proofs or review copies, but the actual finished product.

I remember running through Golden Gate Park seven years ago, mad at myself because I had spent the day playing a worthless online game, rather than doing my homework for gradutate school. An idea caught me, while I was running, that maybe I should write a book about the addiction. My hair stood on end. Yes, that's it, I thought. And I started, and seven years later...

It is finished.

I don't think I'll read the copies. Whatever value my book might have, it is now up to readers and critics to decide upon. I will read at a few book stores, send out press releases, paste on stickers, but I will not write any more. There are flaws--some self-generated and some generated by the publishing process--but those flaws are now a part of it. There is nothing left for me to fix or to fight for. It is finished. And for a brief moment, on a rainy night in Portland, Oregon, I'm going to sit at my desk alone, sip a glass of wine, and relish this.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 20:33 1 comments

2.05.2007

2 Weeks!

Here's a fast late-night post--please forgive any spelling errors...

I've spent the last two weeks doing nothing but publicity: finalizing the sticker cover, working on the book supplement, setting up readings, editing press releases, making sure review copies get to the right people. The release is in two weeks. I can't wait! Unfortunately, there hasn't been much time for quality blogging.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 23:19 0 comments

1.27.2007

What Happens When You Think the World Revolves Around You

So a colleague sent me an email congratulating me on my positive PW review. This is the exact same review which I complained about in my last post, thinking it was absolutely terrible.

I reread the review this morning, and was like, what the hell? Is this the same review I read yesterday? Why did I think it was so terrible?

This is, I think, what happens when you think the world revolves around you--when some creepy part of you is still a two-year-old who had very wonderful, doting parents. "DON'T YOU SEE MY INCREDIBLE GENIUS!", you think. "I'M ONLY 2, AND I ALREADY KNOW MY ABC'S!"

So I didn't get a starred review. And the review said that, at times, the book "felt dated" and that the characters seemed "schematic." But in the end, the reviewer called the book an "uncommon literary illustration of the split-identity common to gamers" and really that's pretty positive.

Man have I been thin-skinned of late. I hope all the people who've had to deal with me in the last couple weeks can forgive me. It's only going to get worse.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 13:39 0 comments

1.25.2007

Honorable Failure

A friend sent me a wonderful essay by Zadie Smith about why there are so few "great" novels published, and I've been crunching on it for a week now.

The part that struck me the most was the following:
Great styles represent the interface of "world" and "I", and the very notion of such an interface being different in kind and quality from your own is where the power of fiction resides. Writers fail us when that interface is tailored to our needs, when it panders to the generalities of its day, when it offers us a world it knows we will accept having already seen it on the television. Bad writing does nothing, changes nothing, educates no emotions, rewires no inner circuitry - we close its covers with the same metaphysical confidence in the universality of our own interface as we did when we opened it. But great writing - great writing forces you to submit to its vision. You spend the morning reading Chekhov and in the afternoon, walking through your neighbourhood, the world has turned Chekhovian; the waitress in the cafe offers a non- sequitur, a dog dances in the street.
I post this mostly because this is what I attempted to do with World Leader Pretend. I set out to write a book whose reality was a tad bit unreal. My first review was bad (It was very typical New York snark--I won't do it the dignity of a link) but what was strange about it, was that what the reviewer disliked about the book was precisely the thing I was trying to accomplish. The reviewer called the book "messy," to which I say YES! ABSOLUTELY! SO REFRESHINGLY MESSY! The reviewer called the characters "schematic," to which I say YES! A GOOD WORD! THE MAIN CHARACTER SEES THE WORLD IN MATH AND SO THE BOOK'S WORLD IS THAT WAY TOO!

I seemed to have gotten the reviewer to "submit to my vision." So in a way, I accomplished one of the supposed goals of great fiction. The only problem is that the reviewer didn't think much of my vision...

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posted by bigdumbjim at 13:40 6 comments

1.18.2007

The Quote is Kind of Cheeseball, But I Like It

It looks like my publisher finalized the cover for my book. I say it looks like, because I know as much about this as an outsider. I found it today on Amazon, and so I assume it's the final cover. This post explains the situation a little more.

(They know I don't like the cover, when I've asked about the cover they say they're working on it, and we kind of settled into a mutually agreed upon silence...)

The only surprise on the cover was the inclusion of a quote by David Bowman. It reads:
"Store your copies of Infinite Jest in the basement. World Leader Pretend is this generation's Bible-slash-novel."
The quote is way over-the-top, but being a David Foster Wallace fan who would never store his copy of Infinite Jest in the basement, I can't help but like it.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 20:35 2 comments

1.17.2007

Compliments on the Sticker; And Also, a Metaphor About Monster Truck Tires

posted by bigdumbjim at 19:55 0 comments

1.04.2007

World Leader Pretend: The Sticker

Some of you may already know about my wrangling with the publisher over the cover art for the book. I lost the battle, of course. And now I have to live with the damn thing. (Don't get me wrong, the art is perfect for an L. Ron Hubbard book.)

I decided to be proactive, though, and create my own cover for the book. The wife and I teamed up with sticker artist DAve of San Francisco to produce a sticker that can be placed over the original paperback cover of the book. The early results are so fun! And so much more telling about the wackiness of the novel's pages.



I just wish the publisher "got it." What's with people these days, anyway? Even the book dorks are corporate.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 13:51 9 comments

12.15.2006

Reading at the University of San Francisco

And another one at my alma mater, the University of San Francisco, on March 21st from 5-6 P.M at the Lone Mountain campus.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 13:13 2 comments

Reading at Powell's on February 26

I'll be reading at Powell's on Hawthorne on February 26th. Stay tuned for more details!

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posted by bigdumbjim at 13:12 0 comments

12.12.2006

Yes I Know There's a Band Named World Leader Pretend

I figured I'd post before the inevitable question is raised: isn't there a band named World Leader Pretend?

Yes, there is. And a song by R.E.M. too.

Here's the whole story of the title of my book. In its nascent form, World Leader Pretend was titled The Strangely Peaceful Citadel of Blue Orcs. I thought this title was hilarious: like a bad sci-fi/fantasy book. The only problem was that when I went to sell it people didn't think it was a funny, strangely appropriate title. They thought I was trying to sell them a bad sci-fi/fantasy book.

So I decided to change the title, for the sake of getting publishers to read past the first paragraph of my cover letter. The title I chose was World Leader Pretend. I chose this title in 2002. At the time, I don't think the band World Leader Pretend existed, and if they did, they weren't showing up on Google. I picked the title based on the R.E.M. song, which is about a person who "sits at his table, and wages war on himself."

This seemed a perfect analogy to my main character, who is devastatingly obsessed with an online war game. It also suited me on other levels, as the act of writing is like this, too: forcing yourself to sit still in front of a computer for 4 hours each day, 5 days each week, for weeks and months and years on end is also an act of war against oneself.

So the book got bought, eventually. I spoke to my agent and editor about changing the title back, but nobody ever got the original title. And then this band came along--and now I'm stuck with a novel that appears to be named after an indie rock band.

I just hope nobody decides to sue me. Then again, I could really use the publicity...

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posted by bigdumbjim at 15:17 0 comments

A Review of my Novel

posted by bigdumbjim at 08:26 2 comments

11.24.2006

No Subject

I spammed my mailing list yesterday with the announcement that my book is available for preorder. I wrote the email. Rewrote it. Spell-checked it. Made sure I blind copied everyone, so the email list wasn't visible. I stared at it a while. And then, I clicked. And as I clicked, I knew I had done something wrong, that I shouldn't have clicked.

Today, when I got a few replies, I realized what I had done wrong. I hadn't put anything in the subject line. No PREORDER WORLD LEADER PRETEND TODAY.

I am much chagrined. I can see my email now, populating spam folders, lost forever. Many of the people on my mailing list I have not spoken to in years, and my email has changed a few times since then, and when they see this email, from Jim at sinceritypress, they will surely ignore it. AAAAAAAARG. My ineptitude is once again exposed.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 10:02 7 comments

11.15.2006

World Leader Pretend at Wal-Mart

They're selling my book at Wal-Mart. I have no idea how to respond to this. It's like when Donald Rumsfeld bought a snow globe with a characature of himself in it, with the caption "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" on the outside, and put it up in his office.

I mean, did he get the irony of this? Or was the irony that he didn't care, that he'd gotten so big that he was impervious to criticism. (Or perhaps he simply thinks racism is funny...)

I am rather certain that no one at Wal-Mart has read my book, and so no one at Wal-Mart knows that around page 30, I begin to criticize, in a subtle way, what companies like Wal-Mart have done to this country. And yet, I wonder if they did know, what they would do? Would they even care? Or would they just be stoked to have a book they could sell at bargain bin prices in their store? I mean, you can buy Michael Moore books at Wal-Mart too.

Note from author: Actually, I lied, you can't buy Michael Moore books at Wal-Mart.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 09:30 10 comments

11.14.2006

Reading Frenzy

I don't have the dates yet, but I set up my first author reading today. It's at Reading Frenzy in Portland. HOORAY!

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posted by bigdumbjim at 11:28 0 comments

11.13.2006

Q&A with the Author of World Leader Pretend

I got an email last Thursday requesting that I fill out a questionnaire about myself for a feature on World Leader Pretend that a trade publication called the Adult Paperback McNaughton Catalog wants to do. (Apparently, this catalog gets shipped out to 5,500 librarians.)

As usual, I got a little carried away with my answers. An example:
Q: Can you briefly describe the process you go through when writing a novel? Where do you get your inspiration?

A: Coffee is my inspiration, my muse, and my only true love. (Don’t tell my wife.) Without beloved coffee, my fingers would never find their way across a keyboard. Every morning I walk the streets until I find my love—coffee!—and as I sit alone and barely noticed in some coffee shop—in San Francisco, or Portland, or Prescott, Arizona—my love provides me with my signature nervous and jangly diction, and off I am, another thousand words on a computer screen, praying that the words just written somehow connect with the work of the preceding day.

Read the full text here.

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posted by bigdumbjim at 15:25 0 comments

11.08.2006

Preorder World Leader Pretend

You can now preorder my book! Click here and I get a little extra. (Or wait until it comes out and buy it at your favorite independent bookstore.)

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posted by bigdumbjim at 15:46 1 comments

11.07.2006

Advanced Copies

I got advanced copies of World Leader Pretend from St. Martin's today. WOOHOO!

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posted by bigdumbjim at 13:40 0 comments