The interview was done via e-mail. All questions were sent to Julie at once, and she typed up her answers and sent ‘em back.

Grab a beverage. This is a long post.

Enjoy.

Julie: I wouldn’t say I’m a visionary, because I’m still of the old school where follow-through is everything. Which is ridiculous, because at some point I learned to start calling myself a writer even if I’m not being published. I’m definitely a dreamer. Maybe a sounder-outer? Anyone who’s talked with me knows I go off a lot. Not the same as sounding off, which I also do from time to time. But like any writer, I suppose, I need to edit. So I sound things out. A lot gets tossed aside. And of late I’ve been incredibly lucky to have found a group of people in, or on the peripheries of publishing, who seem to genuinely appreciate that process.

Photo by Carl W. Heindl

And, of course, my thing is community. Not so much solidarity and all that, but the need for a lot of people to each perform a little task so that together we can mark a larger space. Sometimes, I’m happy to perform that little task alone. In the past year or so, however, I’ve wanted to be at the forefront. I think both roles indicate leadership. But it’s not like once we’re all airborne I have a clue as to how we’ll stay up, or where the landing strip is, for that matter. I was on a Porter flight with Nic Boshart heading to BookCamp Halifax, and as we were landing he started laughing about how bizarre it is that we ever thought we could get, and keep, a however-many-ton craft in air using some fans. Let’s just say that I spend a lot of time cursing once I get my own crafts off the ground.

Oh! You know what I am?! An only child.

Beyond that, I like supporting good people with good ideas. I support action. I support change. I support walking away. I wish more people would.

Or, to answer the question you as possibly intended, I’m a writer and author/book promoter who has managed to secure just enough clients that I get to work only with people I admire in areas of reputation management, visibility, and discovera…

Fuck it, I’m Aquaman. Next question.

Q: Where did the name Book Madam come from?

Julie: I was running an online contest with Indigo, then McNally Robinson. Just a wee thing. I was offering my services as a personal book shopper. The contest ran on Twitter, so I asked entrants to submit a short bio in ten words. From there, I boasted that I’d “hook” them up with a book. I decided to create a separate feed for the contest, and solicited names. A number of people really liked the intimacy of being “hooked up”, so the shortlist was created pretty quickly. Frankly, I wanted Book Daddy. But I think it was Jaime Woo who landed on Book Madam. (No ‘e’.)

At first, it took some time to take myself seriously. But I loved the idea of a Madam learning about your tastes and then guiding you to Door #2 and the hope that the reader would come away satisfied. This is what hand selling is all about. And reader services, for that matter. Listening to a person in the hope that you can help them get what they want. And now that we have The Associates in place at BookMadam.com, with more to come, I really feel that we’ve hit upon something, a place where online visitors can go and pick and choose from a variety of blog posts and personalities to suit your every need. We’re all also quite social beings. We feel very much of this community.

Ultimately, though, in choosing each Associate, I wanted individuals who also had other skill sets or unique identities. I know it sounds silly, but I love, for instance, that Kimberly Walsh knows so much about dachshunds, or that Sean Cranbury knows so much about music, or that Nic Boshart does those insane MS Paint cartoons (not to mention that he’s also a publisher), and so on. Publishing is about stories, and I believe that the things each Associate shares, or even the way in which they share them, echoes that whole idea that it’s not so much the story as how it’s told. And I really dig these guys. I like hanging out with them. They bring a lot to my world. (That’s right! F@ck you, Cranbury!) (Little inside joke there.)

Q: Would you agree with the estimation that you are becoming an internet celebrity?

Julie: Good god, man, for real? I’ll concede that in a wee corner of this industry there are people who know of me and there have been times when I can see something in their eyes when we finally meet that makes me wish I’d tried a little harder with my hair that day. I had that experience recently with an author, and it kind of blew me away. Her face completely lit up and, for a second, I found myself thinking, “Oh, this is awkward. Poor thing thinks I’m someone else.” But, no; she was just really happy to see me. But I’m a person who doesn’t play it very close to the chest in a highly competitive industry. People are constantly telling me to stop sounding out my ideas. But, so far, every time I have has lead to a new opportunity or conversation. So, to that end, I’m not so much a celebrity as I am a person who has had the tremendous good fortune to get to know a lot of people I tend to connect with. Then again, now that everyone knows I’m Aquaman, I may have to change my phone number.

Q: How have books come to be such important part of your life?

Here’s the thing. I’m not well-read. I’m trying to change that. I have a hard time keeping focus. I don’t know if it’s anything beyond the usual response to a fast-paced world, but I still haven’t found the Off switch that shuts out the world, no matter where I am, so that I can just sit with a book for a full day, or days on end. Even as a kid, my report cards all said that I was plenty smart but that my lack of focus was holding me back.

In hindsight, I’d argue that I needed something else to focus on. But that feedback extended into university where I was often told that I’d never get the grades to go to teacher’s college (my original plan) or to pursue my Master’s degree (my fall back plan) if I couldn’t produce papers that showed I knew how to research and respond. I’d hand in these philosophical beasts with, like, five support titles. As long as I can remember, the “real work” has always gotten in the way of “what I want to do.” See the aforementioned reference to being an only child.

Yet, even if I have trouble reading, I’ve always understood that books were legitimate, socially-acceptable method of effectively being alone with yourself. You might stumble across me in a room sitting alone and staring into space. Put a book in my hand and I’m less creepy. Book as prop has always intrigued me.

Secondary to that, I love the idea of book as social object, the thing around which we conduct all kinds of conversations. Book as vessel also inspires me, although I’m personally more taken by recitation, which may be why I’ve taken to recording poets in my spare time and for clients.

Ultimately, I love books because I want to write them. And as a social being who supports the efforts and visions of her peers, it makes sense that I should want to know more about those whose company I wish to keep. And in those rare moments when I’m capable of focus, there are strings of words that have changed my life. Was it Alice Munro who said that writing was the best way she could imagine being alive in the world? I couldn’t disagree with that. But when the words don’t come, just even the knowledge that someone else found them is one of the greatest gifts I can imagine.

Q: From what I know about you, I get the impression that you wear a number of hats. Is my perception correct? What sorts of things are you involved in, and which of them pay the bills?

Julie: I do a lot of one-offs, so the appearance could be that I’m working with or for a lot of organizations. I suppose I wear a lot of hats in that I don’t have a team, so any time I get myself into something, I’m responsible for producing, managing, and maintaining the project. But I like to think (or hope) that most of it’s part of a rough draft for some larger job description or project or community or something I haven’t yet put my finger on.

For instance, a few years ago, I don’t know that I could have pronounced myself The Book Madam without a solid following for Seen Reading, some professional credibility from my time at House of Anansi Press, and even a little bit of notoriety for doing things like getting my publisher kicked off Facebook for creating a friendship profile for a corporation, and, most certainly, for my small ‘s’ snafu with an Indigo bookseller over copyright protection and whether what I was doing at Seen Reading was in violation of that. I got a lot of public support, including from Indigo Corp, which signaled to me that the time was right.

I had no clue what the plan was, but I went after ECW Press to sign a companion guide to True Blood, the savviest thing I’ve ever done, then turned my attention to my relationship. Would it bear the weight of me leaving my job at Anansi? All signs pointed to yes. And I’d say within minutes of announcing my departure, things started to fall into place, including a guest host gig for the CBC Book Club during Canada Reads. That provided me with a huge platform from which I encouraged bloggers and tweeters to get more involved with the book club, which, in turn, increased my visibility, which, in turn, showed a lot of people that I was genuine. I wasn’t selling anything. Cause I wasn’t making anything.

That’s when I started attracting paying clients. I have a few, and it’s enough that I don’t have to accept everything that comes my way, much of which are requests from authors to help with their publicity, which isn’t exactly what I do. One of my clients pays with grant money. That project centres around creating a poetry performance archive and finding ways to disseminate those recordings. Right up my alley. Another client pays out of pocket to tutor in all matters to do with social media and online reputation management. It’s a great relationship. Very organic considering that it sounds so manufactured. But it’s not. There’s a new game in town: How to appear to be in all the right places, still get your job done, and not leave a social trail that would suggest you’ve been on Twitter all day.

All to say, that I liken entrepreneurial endeavors to trying to feel a breeze on a day on which there’s no wind. It’s only going to happen if you put yourself in motion. And as with most freelancers, paying the bills isn’t the problem so much as having money in place when the bills arrive. (Lots of hurry up and wait.)

Q: Are you doing the sorts of things that you’ve always imagined yourself doing? Did you have a plan of attack?

Julie: I don’t know that I knew it would be books, but I’m not surprised that I’m doing things associated with stories and ideas and social experiments. That’s really exciting for me. Certainly, I feel as if I’m being taken seriously. To be perfectly honest though, I’m still waiting for that one job that pays enough and allows me to let my freak flag fly on behalf of all publishers, books, and authors.

I like the energy rush that comes from being able to play around with ideas of book and author promotion, but it can get exhausting when it’s for a number of different clients. In my perfect world, I’m writing part-time and working in a management role for an organization that has a large enough community that we can measure the impact and pleasure of any number of ideas I have floating above my head. And just enough influence that I can keep myself on the Griffin invite list and get myself back onto the Giller invite list. Hell, if I have to write a shortlisted book, that’s what I’ll do. I’m Aquaman!

Q: What are your thoughts on the whole e-book phenomenon?

Julie: Don’t quote me, but I think we’ll buy more books; non-traditional consumers will start buying books (being able to share them freely will be the key, I’d suspect); but I’m not convinced we see evidence that more people are reading necessarily, although I could be persuaded to believe that younger consumers will teach themselves to be lifelong readers on such devices. And while I don’t think the printed book is going anywhere, I’d like to see something on the effect of e-books and e-reading on older generations. Do you know? Will they stop buying books altogether and commit instead to rereading what they already own?

Not sure where I’m going with this, but issues of access concern me. When my grandmother died, we found a drawer of old Walkmans with the play button depressed. She kept buying new ones because she couldn’t see the buttons well enough to know that she was draining the batteries. This was a woman of very sharp mind. Her senses, however, were another story. I can’t even imagine what she’d do with an e-reader, yet at the time of her death she was probably one of the best read people I’d ever known.

For different reasons, I don’t know where this leaves underprivileged people. It’s not to say that e-books will isolate readers to the farthest corners, but I don’t necessarily see them as social glue either. But while you can be certain we’ll continue to top up our landfills with this new gadget or that, and the media will cover every movement, I’d hate to see the disenfranchised left curbside.

Q: How many of the Canadian BookCamps have you attended, and what sorts of experiences have you had with them?

Julie: I’ve been to the first two camps in Toronto, and the inaugural camps in Vancouver and Halifax. Hey, is that all of them so far? Have I collected the set?

All of the experiences have been great. I go with very low expectations. I don’t rely on the panelists to go for gold. If just one person says one thing that gets me thinking, I’m ecstatic and won’t stop talking about it until I’ve found a release for the idea.

The first year in Toronto was electric. I don’t know that that was repeated this past year. I think that’s a reflection of how far the industry has come in terms of knowing one another online, in person, and what each of us is up to. Last year was like trying to catch fire flies in a jar, there were so many faces to connect with names. It was also much less corporate. Again, I see that as a sign of the success of last year’s camp that the industry understood it had to have a face this year. Where do they go next year? Not sure, but I suspect the way the panels are organized has to change drastically.

That said, people are still talking about the geolocation seminar, a good ol’ fashioned brainstorm session that was led by Ashleigh Gardner who is exceptionally good at knowing how to keep a room enthused and on track. The Toronto team has a really hard task because its demographic is a gong show of personalities and expectations. A big, happy family, mind you. But it must be like trying to plan a wedding. How could you possibly please everyone? They do a tremendous job. I was joking recently that I think the key to future success is to take us out of our comfort zones. In Toronto, that means off the transit lines. Dare we?

Vancouver was a whole other vibe. I was an outsider, so I barely knew anyone by face. I knew Sean Cranbury and Monique Trottier quite well, but had never socialized with them. And I got to see Deanna McFadden from HarperCollins facilitate for the first time, something that I’ll cherish when she’s pulling in $80,000 to speak at annual AGMs about how to stay passionate in the industry.

I feel the same about the first time I saw Sean speak at the first Toronto BookCamp and thought, “Who the hell is this Richard Branson character?” No one knew this guy. Yet he flew in, all chill, and wearing his shorts and shit. I had no idea he was taking as big a chance as I was. Going it alone. He’s such a good guy and a close buddy now. That’s what BookCamp does; it brings the right kind of characters together who otherwise just can’t find the time or opportunity to land on each other’s radar.

It happened again this year in Halifax when I realized just how on the ball Meghan MacDonald is. It took flying to Halifax, out of our comfort zones, for me to see that there could be a way to work together, even if our professional paths don’t collide. And, of course, the lovely Kimberly Walsh proved to be only lovelier, billeting me in her house.

This might all sound airy-fairy, but it’s kind of the point in publishing. Connecting is one thing; but how we connect will determine the future of the industry. There are people who connect just fine on the level of tech and production. I’m not one of those people. So I absolutely need platforms like BookCamp to perform outreach and sit in the same rooms with my peers long enough that if they start out thinking I’m a wing nut, I have time to change their minds by the time we hit the pub. I see it this way: I can’t fish worth shit. Can’t read the waters. Can’t touch a worm. But if you drop my line, I know when to set the hook. That’s all I got! That’s it! I can’t even get the fish into the cooler. So gatherings like this are not only fun, they’re key for people like me with this niche skill set.

Q: I’ve just finished a book called L:and things come apart by Ian Orti, which is like a painting made of words. The way this book is put together, both in terms of the writing and the physical production, make it, to my mind, an objet d’art, something both to read and to hold. Do you think this sort of book is in danger of disappearing, or do small publishers like Invisible have a necessary place in our culture?

Julie: Not only do I think books like this have a place, I think they’ll become hugely popular. As I type this, I’m looking at a chapbook, part of The Pocket Canon Revue put out by Misprints Press, a series that ended a few years ago. The Revue published anonymous authors and was created in part in response to writers who had works that were either deemed unsaleable or fell outside the identity the author was building for him/herself. There may have also been some sexy bits. *titter*

Each edition was launched with a cool party and embodied a real sense of celebration for both product and process. There are books you want to own because they come with something extra. Not hyperlinked text or book club questions. In person, community-driven value. When every bookstore, provided they still exist, is fit with a Print-On-Demand machine of some sort, the consumer will never leave empty-handed, because the bookseller will always have what the consumer wants or needs. To my mind, this means that booksellers will be able to get back to the business, actual business, of selling the books they love, support, and know something about.

That said, while e-readers and e-books will continue to get cheaper, my one concern is that, like Polaroid film, once a staple item in every household, ink and print production materials will become more and more expensive. That said, Invisible is one helluva publisher to watch. I defer to them. I plan to work with them in some way, some day, not only because I think they’re smart and sassy, but because as an author, I’d feel supremely confident that they know how to produce and tag books in ways that will make sure the author’s work is locatable and discoverable no matter what its format. (Pay up, Boshart!)

Q: In your experience, is technology really helping us as much as the pundits tell us it is? Or is everything just moving too fast nowadays?

If I were to look at how many devices I own, I’d be tempted to say that technology is moving too fast. But we know that not to be the case. For instance, I’m sure we’ve already figured out time travel, but now we have to find a palatable way to make the consumer pay for it in increments. The only reason they haven’t released the iCapsule is because, unlike poor battery life or DRM, no developer wants to see, “Thanks, loser! My head is stuck in South Miami!” in their reviews. So I’m hesitant to weigh in because it’s probably all worked out.

My goal is not to fall for it every step of the way and to try to find ways to implement organic, community-driven projects that force technology to make space for as many individual stories as possible. Also, see aforementioned reference to access. What technology will provide is more opportunities for more people to create and disseminate their stories, a very real concern for those who won’t have access to the tools or trade.

Q: Finally, if you can, would you sum up the Book Madam Way? That is to say, what’s your philosophy on life, the universe, and, well, everything?

Is Shamon! an answer? It’s tough. Can you poll some people? There’s my answer! Crowd source!

It’s just that over the last year or so, I haven’t been reading as much as I usually do. I’ve been noticing that I don’t have as much fresh material to recommend to customers lately. I just keep recommending the same books to whoever asks my opinion.

And that’s lame.

So, volunteering to help organize BookCamp Halifax was just the thing. I didn’t realize it was going to be just the thing, but it turned out that way. Not only did I meet a lot of great people (many of whom I knew online but not in-the-flesh), but I also learned a lot about books, publishing, book-related technology, and this little concept known as “community”.

Example: If I hadn’t volunteered with BookCamp, I would not have met my co-organizer Robbie MacGregor and would not, then, have been introduced by him to a little book called L:and things come apart written by Ian Orti. As a consumer of a lot of what most folks might call “mainstream fiction”, this was a foray into literary territory I hadn’t visited for a long time. I think the last time I read anything this artistic, imaginative, and thought-provoking was, oh, back in 2004, when I read The Dreamlife of Bridges by Robert Strandquist and wrote a review of it for The Antigonish Review.

My brain needs more of this kind of stimulation. I need to step away from the Dan Browns and Michael Crichtons once in a while. That’s not to take anything away from the pure escapism of Dan Brown and the meticulous research and vivid imagination of Michael Crichton (who I will sorely miss, may he rest in peace), but it’s refreshing to read a book that is Art rather than one that is a movie-on-paper.

Yes, yes. I know. All authors are artists. It’s just that some are a bit more… um… artistic than others. To my mind, there’s a big difference between spinning a good yarn and crafting a piece of written work that steps beyond story and actually starts to spread itself through the reader’s mind like a fine web. It settles there, fastens itself to your neurons, and makes you pay attention.

I love a good yarn. No question about it. I appreciate a tale that will whisk me away and get me turning those pages. Sometimes I just want to be entertained and told a story. That’s the kind of writing I do myself. I have no delusions about my style. When it comes to allegory, allusion, and analogy, I’m all thumbs. I like to get characters talking to each other and seeing what happens next.

But as a reader, it’s nice to challenge myself once in a while, read a work that is not an obvious A-to-B-to-C narrative. Throw my preconceptions out the window and look at the world through a different set of eyes. It’s called expanding one’s horizons.

So, yes, the BookCamp experience has juiced my brain up a bit for the literature. But it’s done something else as well. I was so stimulated by the discussions at the event, and so intrigued and impressed by the people I met there, that I began to revisit a notion I’d entertained back when I first started this blog.

And that is the notion of interviewing interesting people. It’s not something I’ve ever done, and I have no training in journalism, but the concept is intriguing, and because I’m a curious person with a slightly skewed view of the world, I’m pretty sure I can come up with an interesting question or two.

So, I’m doing it. It’s a done deal. I’m taking my rediscovered literary zeal and my rediscovered fascination with people and setting off into the hinter-net with my binoculars and compass to track the species known as “interview subject.”

So watch this space. In the next day or so, I’ll be posting an interview with my first victim, book maven and publicist extraodinaire Julie Wilson (also known as The Book Madam), whose generosity of spirit has given me a tremendous shot in the arm in terms of getting this new aspect of my blog started.

What can I say? I’m excited.

Don’t forget to leave the light on.

(Here’s a brilliant stop-motion book trailer for L:and things come apart, put together by the author, Ian Orti.)

There are ninety-one countries on the list I looked at, and every last one of them publishes some number of books, either large or small, every single year. The top four countries (U.K, U.S., China, and Russia) each publish more than 100,000 books each year. Forty-seven of the ninety-one countries publish more than a thousand books per year.

What I’m saying is: That’s a lot of books.

Hundreds of thousands of books. Millions of pages. Tens of millions of paragraphs. Hundreds of millions of sentences.

All written by people.

In our flashy, souped-up, high-tech world, it’s easy to forget that actual human beings are the source of just about everything we take in. It’s especially easy to forget this when you look at all the technology involved in producing most of our entertainment.

Take something like Iron Man 2, for example. You know, that movie I blogged about for a whole week before I dropped off the face of the earth for a month or so. There is so much technology in that film and so many people involved in its making that it’s hard to see the trees for the forest. Each of the names listed in the (very long) credits at the end of the film represents an actual living, breathing person who is probably passionate about the job he or she does in the film industry.

But let us return to the humble book. Not nearly so many people involved in its production. Yes, there are editors and printers and typesetters and graphic designers and all the trappings of mass market manufacture. But at its heart, the book is the product of one mind. One heart. One person.

The author.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I was involved in organizing a little thing we like to call BookCamp Halifax, which took place on June 5th. It was a remarkable day, for a number of reasons. First off, it was the very first BookCamp ever to be held in Halifax, which is in itself cause for a good bit of cheer. Secondly, the feeling of community of was so palpable through the event that most of us didn’t even notice how small a group we were. Small but mighty, is how I called it. And thirdly, I got to meet some very fine folk from Toronto who were headed to the AGM of the ACP and managed to swing down a few days early to grace our little shindig.

Now, I don’t mean anything pejorative by my use of those diminutive adjectives. Far from it. Sure, we organizers were a bit skittish for a while there about the low registration numbers, but those Toronto folk I just mentioned set us straight in short order. They’d been to the BookCamps in Toronto, and big as they were, they liked our size and energy just fine, thank you very much.

It’s all about people, and it’s all about having something to say and having the space to say it. One of our Toronto visitors, Meghan MacDonald, who’s a project coordinator at BookNet Canada, posted a blog entry about BookCamp Halifax, in which she stresses how important a sense of community is at events like these and how much more inclined people will be to participate in the discussions if they feel comfortable.

I love technology. I love gadgets. I love the internet. But I also love communication. And interaction. And you need fellow human beings for those last two. It’s all about the humans. It’s really the only reason any of us do anything. You can’t even make money if there’s no one around to either give you a job or pay you for your product or service.

Some people get so focussed on the thing they’re doing or the object they’re creating that they lose sight of the fact that there’s very little value in it if they’re the only one who can appreciate it. We write books because we want people to read them; we make movies because we want people to watch them. We make art not for art’s sake but because we want to take a piece of ourselves and put it out there on display, for better or for worse, and hope against hope that somebody out there will get it.

It’s called sharing the human experience.

There’s a certain energy about holding a book in your hand. It’s a made object, put together in the grand tradition of the good people who first discovered how to make a writing surface out of wet reeds. It’s tangible, it’s portable, and it contains the energy of the author.

I’m not dissing e-books, not by a stretch, but I don’t think anything will ever replace the feel of a paper book in your hand, nor the satisfaction that comes with that little thud you hear when you shut the back cover after reading the last page.

BookCamp Halifax was a wonderful experience, and I look forward to putting it all together again next year. I get the feeling that my co-organizers—Kimberly Walsh, Ryan Jones, and Robbie MacGregor—feel pretty much the same way.

Don’t forget to leave a light on… so you can read that book in your hand.

On Saturday, June 5th, 2010, readers, writers, editors, publishers, educators, and technology-type-folks will gather at the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University for a full day of listening, talking, discussing, suggesting, thinking, mulling, considering, and brainstorming.

It will be awesome.

Yes, that word is overused. Someone just mentioned that to me today, as a matter fact. Still, the fact remains.

The way information is delivered to us has been changing rapidly over the last few years. Longer than that, actually, but we’ve really started to see a shift in the publishing paradigm over the last decade or so: blogs, e-books, magazine and newspaper websites, RSS feeds, smartphone web browsing, and netbooks have all made their presence known and have made information both easier to grab and easier to publish.

Everyone can be their own publisher now, it seems.

So what about the venerable book? Is it doomed? Will it have to change? Is there room for the dear old thing in this whiz-bang, breakneck world in which we live?

Come to BookCamp Halifax, and let’s talk about it.

As one of the organizers of BookCamp Halifax 2010, I’m particularly excitied about the event, as I’m seeing it come together first-hand, watching the registrations come in and the session leaders step forward. My co-organizers—Kimberly Walsh (East Coast by Choice), Ryan Jones (Clear Mirror Editorial), and Robbie MacGregor (Invisible Publishing)—are all pumped to meet everyone and hear what discussions emerge from this confluence of content creators and consumers.

If you haven’t registered yet, go to our Eventbrite registration page and grab a free ticket now. Seating is limited, so don’t delay. Call now. Operators are standing by. Offer void where prohibited. Some restrictions may apply. This is not a solicitation where prohibited by law.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Okay, sorry. Back to the topic at hand.

Just ignore that last bit. There aren’t any restrictions, really, but we’ve had to limit attendance to three-hundred. So, yeah, the “don’t delay” part is right.

Just to give you an example of the types of things that BookCamp Halifax has in store, Kimberly and I will be leading a discussion about on-line writing communities. There are a ton of them out there, and as my readers know, I’m an active member of Protagonize.com, which is a collaborative writing site for creative writers. I’m looking forward to talking about this whole concept and how it affects writing and publishing.

This should be a fun, interesting, informative, and social day. We hope to see you there.

Okay, back to the planning.

Don’t forget to leave a light on.

(Here’s a clip of my friend Nick Bouton talking about his baby—one of my favorite websites—Protagonize.com at BookCamp Vancouver back in October 2009.)

I do have a topic for today, but before I get to it, I feel an odd compulsion to share with you the rather bumpy and circuitous route by which it arrived in my brain. Synapses work in mysterious ways, and this is a fairly good example.

Bear with me here. The link density in this first bit will be rather high.

One of my Twitter friends, who goes by the handle @AliasGrace (and whom I met in person for the first time at PodCamp Halifax two weekends ago), has a blog entitled East Coast by Choice, for which I wrote a guest post three weeks ago. She’s had a number of guest posts over the time she’s been blogging, the most recent of which, entitled “The Death of Barrington Street?” and written by Paul MacKinnon (Twitter handle @downtownpaul), was a really interesting read.

Paul’s post mentioned a number of well-known buildings on Barrington Street, but the one that caught my attention was the Green Lantern building. Now, being the geek that I am (you knew that, right?), you’d think I’d have known Halifax had a Green Lantern building. For some reason, though, I didn’t remember the name at all. But, of course, I was tickled by it. So I went to my dear friend Google to see if I could find some pictures.

And find them I did. The Coast (our local artsy/cultural/gritty/emo/freebie newspaper) has an article about the building, complete with historical pics from the time when the building actually housed the Green Lantern restaurant. The building’s official name is the Keith building, and it currently houses Pogue Fado, a traditional Irish pub. Nice to know the green is still there, anyway.

Still with me? Good. ‘Cause I’ll be getting to the point any second now.

When I looked at those pictures of the Green Lantern restaurant, taken in 1941, I very nearly audibly sighed. The shiny newness of the tables, counters, seats, and fixtures made me want to step into the images and experience what it would have been like to sit there, order a meal or a coffee, and watch the people go by. It all just looked so… nice.

How weird is it to suddenly feel nostalgic for a restaurant that opened a couple of decades before I was even born? Well, it did operate into the sixties, but I don’t remember ever going there. Even if I had, I would have been extremely young, and the shiny newness seen in those pictures would have long since faded.

The whole experience of finding these photos and reacting so strongly to them reminded me of how much we romanticize the past. I know I often think fondly of times gone by and wonder what it would be like to visit times before my birth. Sometimes I want to pick a spot, stand there, and move progressively back through the years so that I can see the changes unfolding backwards.

Intellectually, I know that the past was not better. Previous years of my life all had good points and bad points, ups and downs, high and lows, just like the present time does. And some day down the road, I know I will look back upon 2010 with the same gauzy filter through which I now gaze upon my childhood.

So why do we do it? Why do we remember selectively? Why do we idealize past events and put them up on pedestals built of nostalgic longing? Why do we filter things so much? Is the present really that bad?

Well, I have my theories about that.

From what I’ve observed, people tend to get more nostaligic as they get older. This applies not only to people I’ve met, but also to myself. The older I get, the more stuff I have in my head, and the more stuff I have in my head, the less attention I have for the world around me, and the less attention I have for the world around me, the faster time seems to zip on by.

Remember when you were a kid? (Yes, let’s get nostalgic for a moment here.) Remember how long the Christmas break was? Remember how long the summers were? Remember how each school day dragged on and on? Time was different then. There seemed to be more of it. Even the pleasant days lasted longer.

That’s because there was less stuff in your head back then. Less worry. Less planning. Less responsibility. Less distraction from the moment. You were free to soak it all up, see it for what it was, without all the voices in your head tearing your attention away from it.

We talk about the carefree days of childhood. And for a lot of folks, that’s pretty much what they were. Obviously, not everyone has the same experience. Childhood was a nightmare for some people, and they look back with a different filter entirely. But for many, thinking about childhood brings back fond memories. We might not have been free of cares, but we certainly had less of them.

As we grow older, however, and accumulate knowledge, skills, and responsibilities, our attention is more frequently hauled away from the here and now. And so the present becomes something less than it could be. We miss the moment because of our inner time travel. We fret about the past and worry about the future. We go over and over things we might have done differently and try to plan things we can’t possibly control.

And suddenly, the present is not so great. But it’s not the present’s fault. We’re clouding it with hurts from the past and uncertainties from the future. The poor present moment doesn’t stand a chance.

And therein, friends, lies a profound irony. As much as we look back on certain past events with pink gauze over the lens and sigh about how much better things were back then, we are simultaneously corrupting the present moment with ghosts and shadows of past events that just weren’t that shit-hot at all.

Today, I purchased a book entitled The Secret Pulse of Time. It’s a science book, and it looks like it’s going to be an interesting read. I’m looking forward to it, because, well, I’m a little obsessed about this whole time thing.

As I’m sure many of you are as well.

Don’t forget to leave the light on.

(And, in keeping with the nostalgia theme, not to mention the time theme, here’s a live performance of “Time” by Pink Floyd.)

But on the other hand, this is Robert Downey we're talking about here. One of the great actors of our time. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but I mean that in all sincerity. The man has serious chops. I'd watch him as a Teletubby.

Well, I've just come home from watching the movie, and it's the damnedest thing. I'm still conflicted.

I really don't know what to make of this movie. It was a spectacle, for sure, and it looked gorgeous, and Downey was fabulous, and Jude Law was fabulous, and there were lots of funny lines and lots of action and lots of brainy deduction going on.

But it all felt a bit off for me. There was something about the whole thing that just didn't ring true. It was all a bit… um… artificial, I guess, is the word I'm looking for.

One of my friends on Twitter posted a less-than-140-character review of Sherlock Holmes a couple of days ago, saying that the film tried too hard. I think that's a good and apt summation. I'll expand on that slightly by saying that this was a film that was entirely too stylish and clever for its own good.

There was a lot of slam-bang editing in this thing, and that's director Guy Ritchie's style, no mistake about it. But it made the film feel a bit too modern. Especially the flashback sequences where Holmes is explaining something that happened earlier on. There was a lot of slowing down and speeding up of clips, super-saturation of colors, fake film scratches, fake burning at the edges of the frame, and overexposure. All within a fifteen-second flashback. It was too much style heaped on top of what was otherwise quite reasonable substance.

There was also a lot of CGI in this film. A lot. Tons, in fact. London had to be made to look Victorian, and that takes a lot of modern building removal. Tower Bridge, which plays a significant role in the film, was under construction during the time in which many of the Holmes stories are set, and it appears in unfinished form here, providing a dangerous setting for a dramatic sequence in the film's final act.

Unfortunately, this intense sequence suffers from some rather sloppy effects. For one thing, it's obvious at certain points that the actors are working against a green screen. I mean, it's one thing to know that actors are working in front of a green screen, but it's quite another to be able to tell that they're working in front of a green screen. Kinda dampens the old "willing suspension of disbelief."

At another point in this same sequence, a metal structure at the top of the incomplete bridge is pulled down by the weight of another object. It doesn't just collapse. It doesn't crumble and then tumble. It actually looks like it's being sucked downwards. The descent is so rapid as to be jarring. It reminded me of something out of Star Wars.

In this day and age, this kind of CGI sloppiness is just unforgivable.

On to the performances. As I mentioned above, Robert Downey and Jude Law were both fabulous in their respective roles as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. Their onscreen chemistry was perfect, I thought, and the dialogue they were given was sharp, witty, and often hilarious.

Downey, as usual, immersed himself in his role and became a character separate and apart from any other I've seen him play. He convincingly portrayed both Holmes' genius and his human failings. Though Holmes' drug addiction was not mentioned per se in any of the dialogue, it was more than apparent in several scenes that this was a troubled, haunted man who had difficulty coping with the workaday world. It's unfortunate to have to say that Downey knows of this sort of trouble all too well, but kudos to him for tapping into his dark past and bringing that shadow to life in the persona of Sherlock Holmes.

Jude Law plays a much younger Dr. Watson than we're accustomed to seeing, but he plays him with cheek and intelligence. He leaves no doubt that he knows his friend Holmes inside and out, and that he is more than capable of stepping in to save him when necessary, sometimes from himself. I've always liked Jude Law, and that's partly because, like Downey, he's a chameleon who manages to make the character stand in front of the actor, fully adopting the persona of the person he's playing.

Rachel McAdams, on the other hand, was hopelessly miscast as Irene Adler. She's a lovely and delightful actress, and I've enjoyed her performances in The Wedding Crashers and The Time Traveler's Wife (which I also reviewed), but she lacks the edge required to be both romantic interest and intellectual rival for Holmes. She was entirely too pretty and soft and scrumptious to be believable as a wily and devious master criminal. Someone like Angelina Jolie could have pulled it off. McAdams, unfortunately, was not the right choice here.

Mark Strong plays Lord Henry Blackwood, the villain of the piece, a self-proclaimed mystic who purports to possess tremendous supernatural power. He doesn't have anywhere near the screen time that Downey and Law do, but I found his scenes compelling and his twisted evil quite believable. In a bit of an ironic twist, I found that, with his hair slicked back the way it was, he reminded me of Jeremy Brett, who played Holmes in the Granada Television series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and its follow-up series from 1984 to 1994, and who is generally considered to be the definitive Holmes of his time.

On the one hand, I kind of enjoyed this movie, but on the other hand, I kind of didn't. So, even after writing all of the above, I'm still conflicted. I know the script could have been tighter, I know that some of the dialogue was so rapid that I didn't catch it, and I know that I really didn't feel that overwhelming sense of peril that you're supposed to feel as the villain's plans come near to fruition. But it was certainly a ride, and the look of the film (above-mentioned CGI laziness aside) was rich and enveloping. And then there were Downey and Law, who made up for many of the film's missteps just by being the consummate performers they are.

I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing this film. I would, however, caution potential moviegoers that it's probably not going to be what they expect.

It was fun, but it was the cotton candy variety of fun. There were lots of tasty bites to be had, but after all was said and done, there really wasn't much to chew on.

Happy Holidays!

I'm not a King expert. I haven't read everything he's written. Not by half. But what I have read, I've liked.

A lot.

There are those who like to dismiss Stephen King. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's his genre. Maybe it's the fact that he's sold a bazillion copies of every book he's ever come out with. Or maybe it's because he's not "literary" (whatever the hell that means). But there are definitely King-detractors out there.

Personally, I like his stuff. And I'm not even that much of a horror fan. I find King's books to be intelligent, funny, scary, and generally pretty damn honest. I think it's the honesty that attracts me to his writing more than just about anything else. He says what he thinks, and he doesn't couch it in glossiness. He just writes.

Yeah. That's it. Brother just writes. He has a wicked sense of humor and a real knack for throwing words together in memorable ways. He knows how to write a sentence, and he knows how to weave a tale. And he doesn't pull any punches while he's doing it. He just does it.

I think my favorite of his standalone books has to be The Talisman (cowritten with Peter Straub). This is the tale of a young boy's travel across an alternate United States in order to save his mother. Actually, as I recall, he keeps slipping back and forth between the real U.S. and the alternate one. It's pretty creepy, and downright scary in parts, but I love it because it's mostly a fantasy story. I'm a big fan of alternate universes, and that was a big part of this story.

I also recently read The Stand. The revised, expanded edition. Yeah, the big-ass one. It's frickin' huge. I couldn't put it down. I'll confess that I enjoyed the aftermath of the influenza epidemic a bit more than the huge battle between good and evil towards the end, but it was an amazing book, and I would have read more if there'd been more to read.

I also have a copy (well, two, actually, one hardcover and one trade paperback) of King's On Writing. Being a writer myself, I wanted to find out what the Grand Master had to say on the topic. Part biography and part writing resource, the book is at times hilarious and at times thoughtful. And it pretty much typifies King's non-fiction writing style.

I almost feel a bit guilty saying this, but sometimes I enjoy King's non-fiction even more than his fiction. The forewords and afterwords he's written in his novels are true gems, and he's even more honest and straightforward in them than he is in the novels themselves. Likewise for any columns of his I've encountered in magazines.

It's just plain and simple, folks: The guy knows how to write. Nothing more, nothing less. For a man to produce the output he has over the years, and with such consistency and quality, it's almost miraculous. I'll stop short of invoking the celestial here, but it does speak not only of great talent, but of a tremendous work ethic.

The guy doesn't stop. He said he was going to retire after he finished the Dark Tower series, but that didn't happen. I didn't honestly think it would. The books just kept on coming.

Speaking of the Dark Tower series, I have to confess that I haven't finished it yet. I've read the first three books and part of the fourth, but I got a bit derailed during the flashbacks of the fourth book and wandered off into other realms. Now that he's finished the series, however, I fully intend to go back, start it over, and read the whole damn thing.

But first, I'm going to read more of his earlier works (cue retro music). I've seen a lot of mention of the fact that the Dark Tower series makes references to many of his other novels, and I'd like to be familiar with those characters before I venture back into the world of the Gunslinger. So, when I get through with a bunch of other books I have on my shelf, I'm going back to Stephen King.

So, to return to my original point, the man does not need me up here on my blog defending him or singing his praises. He's the most popular author in the world, for God's sake; a few critical voices aren't going to diminish him. But, as a writer, and a defender of language in general, I just wanted to put my two cents in and say how much I enjoy his works and the candor and honesty he injects into them.

So keep writin', Mister King. Keep writin'.

Mind the gap.

(Here's a clip of Stephen King talking about the teaching of creative writing, and about the genesis of Carrie.)

Then it came to me. I've been watching the first season of Trueblood (borrowed the DVD set and am now hooked), so I've slipped into "vampire" mode. (not literally… sheesh…) This got me thinking about a movie I watched a few months back, a little indy piece that made a bit of a splash, garnered some box office, and gave some exposure to its stars.

A crazy little thing called Twilight.

First off, let me state that I have not read the books, nor am I likely to. Teen vampire romances do not appeal to me. But I work in a bookstore and thus am fully and painfully cognizant of how insanely popular this four-part series by author Stephenie Meyer is.

It's off the scale. It's Harry Potter without the restraint. It's David Cassidy, Rex Smith, Justin Timberlake, The Bay City Rollers, and the Beatles all rolled into one.

Except… paler. And… uh… with fangs.

Needless to say, I was curious. I knew a little bit about the books, just from hearing coworkers and customers talk about them. But I still wasn't going to read them. No force on Earth short of a directive from head office was going to make me read them.

But then the movie came out on DVD, and I was able to borrow it and spend ninety-minutes of my time seeing what all the fuss was about instead of however many days it would take me to slog through four thick volumes of sparkly wonderment.

And you know what? The movie wasn't bad.

It wasn't great, mind you. It wasn't a stunning piece of filmmaking, destined to live on for decades as a true Hollywood classic. But neither did I hoist my DVD player over my head and launch it at the nearest window.

It was quite watchable, and it had some rather good stuff in it.

Right off the bat, I'll tell you that I enjoyed the supporting characters much more than the two central characters. There's only so much pale brooding one adult male viewer can handle, and Rob Pattinson gave me more than my fair share of it. If his brows had furrowed any deeper, he would have had a mustache.

The sparkling did not in any way make up for this.

And Kristen Stewart, though cute in a flaky sort of way, was endlessly annoying. Her one-note performance consisted of reacting to everything with a confused shake of her head and a self-conscious laugh. It's so patented I almost wish I could imitate it. Almost.

So… Bella + Edward = Boring. Longing stares. Forbidden love. No sex, please, we're high school students (shyeah… as if…). Gad. They didn't need to shoot half the film in the forest; there was more than enough pining in the high school scenes alone.

If we could just have removed Bella and Edward from the story, this would have been a much better film.

All right, I'm kidding. But seriously, the rest of the characters were ten times more interesting than Bella and Edward. Take Bella's high-school pals, for example. They were full of life. They were all well characterized and well acted, and the few scenes that featured them were great fun.

Even Edward's vampire family was more interesting than Edward himself, though they did all look just a tad too stoic and tragic for my tastes. But then, they're vampires, I have to keep reminding myself. They've lived a long time; they're probably really bored. Not to mention the fact that they're spending most of their onscreen time with Kristen Stewart. I'd look stoic and tragic too.

The highlight of this film for me was Billy Burke as Bella's dad. This man absolutely made the film for me. When he wasn't onscreen, I missed him terribly. When he was onscreen, I couldn't help but grin. His reactions to just about everything were priceless, and his "everyman" characterization really grounded the rest of the film. He was very real, and very funny.

The style of the film also appealed to me. It had a very "indy" feel about it (probably due to a really small budget), and the camera angles and edits gave it an edginess that worked in its favor.

I also really loved the music. Again with the edginess.  Particular favorites of mine from the soundtrack are "Supermassive Black Hole" by Muse, "Full Moon" by The Black Ghosts, "Spotlight" by Mutemath, "Tremble for My Beloved" by Collective Soul, and "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" by Iron and Wine. There's diversity in this collection of songs—along with the obligatory marketablity to the target demographic—and in combination with Carter Burwell's sometimes ethereal, sometimes raunchy score, they take the viewer on a real journey through the locations and emotions of the story.

And they used Debussy's "Claire de Lune". It doesn't get much better than that.

So, yes, I have my complaints. But the film was enjoyable, visually compelling, and sonically interesting. If you're still fed up with me, though, and are ready to throw rotten vegetables in my direction, then cruise on over to The Danger Magnet, a Twilight blog by my friend AnaCristina. She'll set you up with some more positivity.

Guaranteed.

Gesundheit.

"Karen ran quickly out her front door, frantically waving the small, brown package she held in her trembling hand, but the red, white, and blue Grumman van was moving rapidly away from her, carelessly kicking up a trail of dust as it lurched towards the intersection, where it turned sharply to the right and instantly disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

Karen sighed and dropped her heavy arm to her side. What was she to do now? The smudged, stained label on the abused box did not have her name or address on it.

It belonged to someone else."

The above passage is, fortunately, not a quote from a novel I've read. I constructed it just now, and it's horrible.

Intentionally.

I bought a book the other day called The First Five Pages, by Noah Lukeman. It's a book about writing, targeted at writers who want to decrease the likelihood of their manuscripts being tossed aside by agents and editors.

The book approaches writing from the perspective of the editor, who, the author tells us, actively looks for reasons to reject manuscripts. The guidelines in this book are geared towards minimizing the occurence of any such "reasons" in our writing.

After a brief section on formatting and presentation, the book goes straight into adverbs and adjectives, whose overuse, Mr. Lukeman informs us, is one of the first signs of a weak manuscript.

It's timely to come upon this issue again, because back in June, when the Protagonize web site launched its discussion groups feature, one the of groups launched was called "Editing, Rewriting and Polishing", and two of the threads posted there were called "Cull the Adjectives" and "Kill the Adverbs".

The paragraphs that people posted in those threads for correction were often hilarious. There's nothing like reading an over-the-top example of bad writing to make you look at your own habits in a clearer light.

The moderator of the "Editing, Rewriting, and Polishing" group is a very talented and generous author who goes by the handle Tasha_Noble. If you're ever in the Protagonize neighborhood, be sure to read some of her stuff. It's clever, witty, and quite polished. I really wish she had a blog, because I know I'd enjoy reading her insights into everyday events.

(Tasha, if you're reading this, for God's sake, woman, start a blog!)

So, getting back to my horrible piece of drek at the beginning of this post, it's horrible partly because it has too damn many adjectives and adverbs. I wrote it intentionally that way, and it was a lot of fun to do it. Putting together an example of bad writing is a great way to get the bad stuff out of your system and have a chuckle while doing it.

As I continue through Noah Lukeman's book, I'll post some commentary on the other chapters here. Despite my familiarity with grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style, I still have a lot to learn. That's the way writing is. Kind of like life, really. The more you learn, the more you realize you need to learn.

Well, it ain't boring anyway.

Happy reading and writing out there.

Gesundheit.

In short, it's a stunning book, and I'm sincerely glad that it dropped into my life.

The protagonist of the story, whose name is never revealed, is a porn actor and producer who suffers extreme burns in a car accident. The first third of the book takes place in the hospital where his lengthy treatment occurs. It is during this period that he first meets Marianne Engel, a sculptress and former mental patient who tries to convince him that they knew each other in a past life.

Throughout the book, Marianne Engel tells him stories of her life in the Engelthal monastery in 1300s Germany and how she and he eventually met. Entire chapters of the book are in Marianne Engel's voice, like pieces of a novel-within-a-novel. Other chapters are self-contained stories of other people Marianne Engel either knew or knew of, and they are again told in her voice.

This continual pulling of the reader out of the main narrative into a secondary (or even tertiary) storyline should have been jarring, or at least mildly irritating. But it wasn't. Davidson's presentation of the story, his deft agility with language, and his obvious certainty about his tale made me trust that everything was there for a reason and that all would be revealed in time.

I wasn't disappointed.

A brief synopsis and a few glowing comments are hardly enough to convey the complexity and beauty of this story. It is a love story, certainly, and a semi-historical novel, and a fantasy, and a parable, and a commentary on modern life, religion, faith, and skepticism. But it is simultaneously all of those things and none of them. It is a genre all its own, and I can honestly say that I've never read anything remotely like it in all my life.

The supporting characters in The Gargoyle all come to life just as vividly as the two main characters. Everyone from the protagonist's doctor, psychologist, and physical therapist to Marianne Engel's agent to the near-mythical characters in the stories Marianne Engel tells are all fully-formed and breathing on the page.

In the commentary at the end of the book (newly included for the trade paperback edition), author Davidson talks a bit about the research that was required for the proper telling of the story. The fact that he did his homework shows in every page of the novel. The details of the Engelthal monastery, the descriptions of burns and their treatment, and the inclusion of lines written in Japanese, Icelandic, Italian, and German are all testament to the loving care to detail Davidson took with this work.

The Gargoyle has taken its place right alongside The Time Traveler's Wife as a book that I will be heartily recommending to anyone who cares to listen.

Gesundheit (That's German for "Good health", by the way).

(Here's a video from book's website, Burned by Love. The site encourages readers to share their own intense stories. I found this gal's tale quite compelling.)