The Changing Faces
Nice bit on the questions of the the changing faces of fiction.
The Changing Faces
I started with a limited print run, mostly online. What I discovered was a certain loquacity in type, a written version of logorrhea, if one will, and I did. In my defense? I uncovered that I could type, not as a fast as I could talk, but the typing kept the idea in a generalized area, and the logic wasn’t always present, which meant a better way to discourse a theme; tease, stretch, modify, and return to its original condition, with a few mixed metaphors, and the long-term influence of the Southern Gothic and its omnipresence.
In my essentially daily weblog, started roughly Nov., 1998? More like a journal than a blog, most days, but in its rambling formats, versions, and iterations? I have, over the years published short fiction. None of my poetry attempts are visible, but I revisited that notion a while back spurred by a relocated hardware store, which, in and of itself, is weird news.
The various e-readers, mostly just on a tablet these days, though, has an influence in my own mind, on what I will or won’t consume. The pre-pandemic, I was inching towards the various e–readers, and that pandemic with local library access pushed me over the edge.
I’ve been wrestling with William Gibson’s The Peripheral, over and over, excited by the TV version, but also realizing after I finished (re) reading the library copy, that I had purchased a digital copy some years previous. Also: the hardback.
From dense, gloriously dark prose, to the lighter side? Or, apparently, a lighter dark side, snickering?
The Changing Faces
I adore most, all, of Tim Dorsey’s Serge novels. I started in trailer park in old South Austin, and ran out of room, passing some of the paperbacks onto Bubba, only, in more recent years to reclaim that adoration, and find all the hardback versions of the series, mostly first editions. I tend to buy “new” as soon as it drops.
Over the years, as I’ve changed, grown, switched directions, and really good books? Novels that I am willing to keep in my library? Those need to be heavily referenced texts, and for me to buy a hardback, and cherish it, library-style? I want novels or texts that I will continually reference, possibly reread.
So that William Gibson novel is one, and I was mostly spurred by the recent streaming TV series, adapted from, and given the same name. So with Tim Dorsey’s works? What I found, I’ll get the digital version when it goes on sale, like 99 cents. Think one or two later ones were a pricey $2.99, but whatever. I have the hardbacks, mostly first editions, cherish them, and I found that the canon represents works of art that I could go back and reread.
For me, this is how “digital” has changed my reading habits.
The Changing Faces
As an author, that’s entirely different. I tend to be more verbal-like in delivery, and therein is a problem, as I can wander a bit, and then, seem to forget my destination, just in love with the words marching across the page.
Which is part of the problem, but the modern publishing industry, the smart ones, they see the proverbial writing on the wall, and that message includes websites, social media, one publisher turned down my proffered text because I didn’t have enough of a following online, that metric was merely the number of followers on twitter, and we now know that doesn’t matter as much as we thought. Not that it matters, I respect the decision — based in quantified metrics — sometimes known as facts. Publishing is more a folk-art, though, rather than science, to quote another fantasy writer.
None of which is about the act of writing, and as I write primarily, and at this juncture, totally, for a web-based environment? Digital delivery, only? It’s the changing faces, and I’m glad I can adapt as need be, for the time being. Not sure how much longer I can keep at this, but I do enjoy my labor, such as it is.
99-cent-bookstore
