I’ve logged a lot of miles, seen a lot of airports, but more importantly, ran into a lot of familiar faces and warm strangers.

This photograph was taken in Ft. Davis, Texas. There was some question on whether or not it was a fire fire or a back fire. A year ago the area was hit pretty hard by a fire fire and it was clear the locals were nervous about history repeating itself. I was struck by how beautiful sunset and sunrise is in that particular stretch of the world. And, for whatever potential destruction the fire held, it was also not without beauty.

Sometime back in late January or early February, no doubt in anticipation of my then upcoming 36th birthday, I decided I was unhealthier than acceptable, and that it was probably a good idea to get healthy. There are, of course, about a billion different ways to define “healthy.” I picked getting my Body Mass Index (BMI) into the “normal” range, down from 27.8 (205 pounds/6 feet tall) to 24.99 (184.5 pounds/6 feet tall). The goal was to drop a little more than 20 pounds and end up at a weight I hadn’t seen since my sophomore year of high school.

The whole process has been about eating better, utilizing technology to keep me honest, and a lot of exercise, especially running and hiking in nature, something I hadn’t ever done in the past.

**

Last weekend I was in Mobile, Alabama for a writing conference. Because I know my tendencies to exercise less and eat worse when on the road, I made sure to remind myself of the goal and how important it was to keep up the exercise. I was also excited about the prospect of checking out a new town by foot.

Early Saturday morning I went running. For the first mile or so I was accompanied by another conference attendee. When she’d had her fill of running, I accompanied her back to the hotel, and then decided that I would continue running.

I ran around the Mobile Convention Center past an entrance ramp for I-10 and then headed back towards the hotel, figuring I was done for the day.

And that’s when I saw it.

The cross street of the one I was running on was filled with runners. By then it was the tail end of the pack–light joggers, walkers, a woman pushing a baby stroller–but there they all were, paper numbers tagged to their shirts and hips, moving towards a distant finish line. It called to me. Drew me in with its magic.

I wrestled briefly with the social/ethical dilemma of crashing the party. Would I look like a moron? Would anybody notice? And then there were the practical matters. How long was the race? Did I have the energy? In the end, because I knew it’d make a good story, and because I was genuinely excited about the challenge, I merged into the pack and began the winding race through the neighborhoods of Mobile.

I ran two 5ks last summer, the first time I’d ever run in an organized race. For those of you unwilling or too patriotic to convert km into miles, a 5k ends up being a little more than 3.1 miles. By no means is it a long distance in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a good run. I definitely felt better for the first three miles than I did during last year’s run. I also, at the three mile marker, started looking for the finish line.

And it wasn’t there. But the 4 mile marker was.

I began to wonder if I’d accidentally joined a half-marathon or an even longer race. As you probably gathered earlier, this wasn’t a very well planned or coordinated decision on my part.

Thankfully, for my pride, the finish line wasn’t too much farther away. The race ended up being an 8k (a little under five miles). When I got to the finish line, still caught up in the wave of accomplishment, high-fiving little kids standing on the side of the road, I was faced with another ethics question. Is it ok to cross the finish line of a race you haven’t paid for? Almost as quickly, what sort of freak am I going to look like if I get within ten feet of the finish line before turning away and running in a different direction? 

Decisions!

In the end, I decided to cross the finish line. Unfortunately, there was a fenced in chute on the other side, lined with volunteers taking tags from the racers. When I got there, tagless and out of breath, the gentleman at the end said, “Sir, I need your tag.”

“Yup. About that…”

I did this quasi-Barry Sanders juke move and popped out the other side of the chute and headed back to the hotel.

It wasn’t until a few days later when I talked to my friend Dana that I learned the technical term for what I’d done.

“Oh, that’s called Running Bandit.”

It seems I inadvertently breached racing etiquette. My intentions weren’t nefarious, but there I was, just the same.

I’ve done some research on the subject in the last few days. If I knew then what I know now, I might not have done it. To make good with this particular situation, I’ve emailed the charity that was supposed to receive money from the race to coordinate donating money to them. It won’t undo what I’ve done, but it’ll assuage any lingering guilt over the situation.

So that’s the story of how I ended up running The Old Mobile 8k.

And, as of yesterday, I am now at the healthy BMI of 24.99, thanks in part to the exercise logged with the inspiring people of Mobile.

I am a zealot for words and stories. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they are sacred to me.

And I get my words from a lot of sources. Novels. Speeches. Religious texts. Memoirs. Protest songs. Love letters. I get immutable joy reading the stark poetry of box scores buried deep in the Sports section of the local paper.

My conviction isn’t to a job or an industry. It’s to the spread of words. So it took me by surprise a few months ago when I was at a writing conference and was asked if I was “scared” of the changes in publishing, especially as they relate to the indie author movement.

The answer, unequivocally, is no, I am not scared.

I offer no dismissive hand wave or condescending declaration of “Fools! All of them! What do they know?”

That’s not my bag.

If an author decides to self-publish (or any of the existing or forthcoming names given to the process like “go Indie” or “rebel style publishing” or “literary freedom fighter”), I’m good with it. Do your thing. But if you’re going to do your thing, I want you to promise me that you’ll do it right.

Because it’s only a button push away is not an excuse for disrespecting the legacy of the written word.

I’m not mad at people who opt to go around the old process. I don’t see them as the competition. My sleep is disrupted by plenty of things, but I’ve never woken up with a racing heart because anybody, anywhere has decided to self-publish a book. It isn’t money out of my pocket. And even if it was, even if every existing publishing company dried up tomorrow and I was left unemployed, I wouldn’t begrudge authors who opted to self-publish. There would be plenty of introspection and resulting evolution to follow, but I wouldn’t hold hate.

But I sure get pissed at people who create inferior products, make them available in the marketplace, and then cry when objective consumers find fault with the project. I’m removing the opinions of friends of the author, family of the author, and the ever present wannabe covert Literary Promotional Death Squads that spring up out of nowhere, squeeze off a few rounds from the Praise Gun, and attempt to suppress any negative conversation about a book. And, because I’m only focusing on words right now, I’ll eschew any discussion of cover design and formatting—two hugely important, not to be scrimped on details of what makes a book.

What you choose to write about is up to you. Present tense or past tense? First person or third person? Genre? Novel, novella, short story, flash fiction? All of those decisions are the writer’s. Based on their preferences, different readers will enjoy things differently. But a writer can always, in these matters, say this was my artistic choice, I was compelled to write like this.

Inconsistent head hopping? Typos? Random tense shifts? These things make Reader Bear weep and throw book across room. They are not artistic choices. They are the byproducts of sloppy work from people who know better or the unfortunately likely outcome of people who don’t.

Furthermore, Reader Bear doesn’t care if the writer hasn’t had the formal training of other writers or written ten previous novels, he isn’t reading books based on writer pedigree. He’s reading and judging books based on every other book he has read in his life. A writer’s ignorance of reader expectations isn’t a problem for anybody but the writer. This has nothing to do with LEGACY PUBLISHING STIFLED MY CREATIVITY~!

If you hired an Indie Contractor to build a house for you, and when Indie Contractor lifted the tarp off the thing there were nails and screws sticking out at 45 degree angles and the toilet was connected to the electrical system, you wouldn’t say, “Oh, cool, that’s your interpretation of how a house should be built.” You’d file a complaint. And you’d be right to do it.

Don’t mistake loose wires and uneven joists as a design choice. And don’t think those people who are familiar with how a house works because they have lived in one and visited a million others are going to accept shoddy work. Further, don’t mount the, Well, I was in another house built by ACME Builders and they had a crooked nail defense.

They shouldn’t have. Their negligence is not your opportunity to follow suit. And anyway, a crooked nail here or there, though unsightly and unprofessional is not the same as load bearing walls made solely from 1/8 inch sheet rock.

Writing and publishing—communicating your story to the world—is a practice and learned art. Because you’ve got a computer with a functioning keyboard and a word processing program makes you no more a writer than owning a 16 oz claw hammer and a pair of kneepads makes you a roofer.

If writing and publishing is new to you, I want you to know, I am not afraid of your brilliance. As a reader, I am also uninterested in excuses and unforgiving of sloppy work. Too many people have come before, holy work in hand, to show me the power of what can be done with words. It is what I’ve come to expect.

Need tips? There are all kinds of resources on the internet. One of your first steps might be over to Chuck Wendig and his blog Terrible Minds. He’s the kind of guy that asks the questions that will help you ask questions of yourself.

This piece originally appeared on the “Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room” blog.

That isn’t meant to suggest that every conversation is a blue ribbon. As sure as I am that there will be something exciting, I’m almost as sure there will be a pitch or two that kinda bums me out or has me thinking about dinner plans before I’ve heard the title of the book. Are all of those pitches for bad authors or bad books? Not necessarily, many of them just aren’t good fits for Tyrus/me, and because the inside of my brain is a poorly constructed county fair, I am easily distracted by things off the Midway.

So, Mr. Barnum and Bailey, what DOES keep your attention?you might ask. Here are five things that keep my attention—they are, by and large, completely unscientific and subjective, but so are many other parts of this process. I guess it’s par for the course.

(1)    A bright and sometimes crazy glint in your eyes.

Sometimes I’ll be sitting at a table waiting for the next person who is going to pitch me, and in will come some guy or gal, wide eyed and engaged, ready to go, already going (I imagine there is a similar county fair blinking and ringing in their brain). They’ll hit me up with a genuine, “Well hello!” and not in a Dale Carnegie way, but in a full on “Damn, isn’t it amazing that we’re all alive and doing things and people read books, and we can talk about my book?” way. Not infrequently this person will pitch a book to me that sounds batshit crazy, but intriguing if done right. These people seem to be fascinated by the same kind of fringy cultures and oddball characters that I know and love. Most of the time I can tell the difference between “bright and crazy” (good) from “dude who is going to mail you a raccoon skull crazy” (bad).

(2)    I don’t feel like I’m dealing with Al Gorythm

Every now and then I run into people who think it best to test market their protagonists and plotlines before writing a book. “But, Ben!” you may protest, “It’s good to know what the hot trend is!” I’ll address that issue later. In this case, I’m talking about literally test marketing characters and plots with focus groups. During my publishing career, I’ve been told, on more than one occasion something like—“I’ve got a friend over atCretty Bocker who let me throw in the first ten pages of my novel when they were doing blind taste tests of apple strudel. Strudel makers share 85% of recreational interests with the reader I’m writing for. 73% of the strudel tasters gave my book an 80-89% ranking. 47% said they would buy the book today if given an opportunity. That number increases to 54% ifCretty Bocker throws in a 10% off coupon towards future strudel purchases, and my guy over there said he’d talk to the VP of Special Promotions to see about making that happen! Do you want to buy my book? Do you like strudel?” I get that publishing is a business. I still cling to antiquated notions thatwriting is not. To that end, I don’t believe in calibrating to the point of market testing.

(3)    “This isn’t my first book written, it’s my first book pitched.”

Everybody has to start somewhere. When it comes to writing, that often means with a crappy first book that ends up in a locked drawer. There is no mark of shame in writing a not-yet-ready-for-prime-time first novel. It’s a rite of passage. It is an invaluable learning experience. And it is something to be celebrated. That said, it isn’t necessarily (or even likely) that it’s something to be published. Having the humility to know the truth about your book, is a big deal. You’ll note the fraternity and sorority of high fives and snickers that come when many successful authors talk about their first (and unseen) books. When I hear that an author is pitching his/her second or third written book to me, but that it’s still eligible to be a debut novel, I get butterflies. When that same author tells me that it’s the third or fourth DRAFT of that second or third BOOK, I’m even happier, because I know the author didn’t simply sprint to the finish line of some cross country trek, but took time to look around, stretch, examine the scenery, and contemplate what exactly is the finish line? Gold medal approach, writer. Gold medal.

(4)    When I ask, “Have your characters ever talked back to you?” You nod.

This is one of those questions that, if posed to the general public, would likely result in a bunch of deer in headlight stares. Sounds all illogical. You, the author, have created this story. You set the protagonist down on paper and you push him from Point A to Point B. You are an omnipotent God of literature. Right? Well, except for the crazy phenomenon when the Rebel Angel turns around and shakes his head and says, “But that’s not what I’d really do,” and then you, as OGL actually listen. Ever have a conversation with a person you’ve created from Make Believe Land? Ever feel like you’re not controlling both sides of the conversation? Good, take a seat. Let’s discuss.

(5)    Write the book in your gut, not the book you just read or the tv show you just watched.

I know I’ve beaten this point to death over the last six months, but I can’t stress it enough. For this guy right here, sitting on the other side of the table, I don’t want to hear about Archeologist Masons looking for a lost Picasso being held captive by teenage vampires in Washington. (I’m sure somebody somewhere just got a plot idea, but feel free not to pitch me). When your cop is an obvious mural of Sipowicz, Crockett, and Officer Poncherello named Lieutentant Jackhammer Strongchin, I am DIALED OUT OF THE CONVERSATION IMMEDIATELY AND MY PHONE LINES HAVE BEEN PERMANENTLY BURNED TO THE GROUND AND MY TELEGRAPH MACHINE GOT LOST IN THE MOVE. Derivatives were bad in the financial crisis. They are likewise as bad in writing fiction. But I’ve always been broke, so maybe that’s why I’ve never understood the need for either.

Anyway, there are five things for you today. Take them. Leave them. See you on the road. I’m probably already there.

This piece originally appeared on the blog “Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room.”

My Major League baseball allegiance is to the Chicago Cubs, a franchise perennially cursed by what one might politely label “underperformance.” Or if you’re more inclined to believe in tales of black cats and billy goats, plain old superstitious jinxes.  Though games give me joy on a day to day basis, it is only because under all of the tough luck and the losing, I’m able to squint in such a way that I have faith in the promise of “next year.” To look at the sum total of the franchise’s existence is to see generations of failures, some more glorious than others—tough jawed pugilists ultimately felled by the barrage dealt by opponents better skilled and/or less prone to catastrophic events.

I spend a lot of time on the road. I fly quite a bit, but I enjoy the inefficiency of driving. I prefer the ability to take unexpected exits, to change course in mid-trip, to stop whenever it calls me to chase after rabbits and to explore gimmicky tourist traps. Those flights drop me off in NYC or Los Angeles or Boston—fine towns, all of them—all of them overly familiar to me from personal experiences and the seemingly limitless portrayals in books, movies, and television.

I am more excited by the prospect of exploration in rural America. Once, when I gave up on the idea of driving across Texas and instead headed north towards home, I came across Picher, an abandoned lead mining town in the southeastern corner of Oklahoma. Had never heard of it, didn’t know what it was or, for that matter where I was. I drove by run down restaurants, broken walls, and a sign declaring the town as home of the 1984 Oklahoma Boys Baseball Champs. Only later would I find out the town’s tragic history and the story behind what I’d seen. This beaten down town off the beaten path that I ended up in randomly has come to leave a very real and indelible mark on me.

It will come as no great revelation when I tell you that I prefer books set in towns like Picher, inhabited by people that would live in a town like it. The characters I love are not unlike my beloved Cubs in that they come to understand lifetimes of heartache, but still lace up their boots each day, taking joy in the small victories of an otherwise failed war. It is an inglorious, but (and maybe this is me oversentimentalizing it all) an honest life that I can respect.

Nobody lives in Picher anymore, but there are towns I’ve visited with the same kind of feel. One of my favorite places on Earth—and one where I often dream of settling down without a cellphone or internet access or even a computer—is Wewahitchka, Florida along the banks of the Apalachicola River. It’s beautiful country. Slash pines along the highway. Water dropped all over the map including the Dead Lakes. Beautiful and haunting to see. But there are also dangers lurking on the land and in the water. Alligators. Cottonmouth snakes. I’ve discussed it in other entries on this blog and do not need to retread that ground now.

But it is related to what I want to acknowledge (which, coincidentally is also something I’ve previously discussed here).

Earlier today I found out about the death of author Harry Crews.

I always figured I’d meet Crews at some point. I know people who were close to him, I spend plenty of time in Florida, and I’ve got a lucky streak of running into people I admire. I didn’t feel urgency, even in the face of reports suggesting his poor health, because life works out in the end.

I often point people to the clips of Crews discussing writing on Youtube. I did so on this very blog back on January 5^th. I do it at conferences where I speak. I do it in emails sometimes to the people who submit books to Tyrus. What it means to me to be a writer is wrapped up, succinctly and forcefully, in a ten minute video interview of the author.

Crews’ writing is compelling for its rawness, its honesty, and its exploration of subcultures no less extraordinary than the worlds of superheroes and international badasses. His stories, both fiction and non-fiction are populated with the scarred, the broken and limping, the people who take punches, but find the strength to peel themselves off the canvas. Or at least try to get up. One can only imagine that Crews’ style, like Crews himself was birthed and honed in the backwoods of rural Georgia, not all that far from Wewahitchka.

As Crews said (and was later used as the title of a documentary about his life). “Survival is triumph enough.” I believe that. Even use it sometimes when people ask me about the editorial guidelines for Tyrus.

Though I never did meet him and now most certainly won’t (at least not this go-around), his impact on many writers that I admire will, for me, ensure his continued presence in the literary world. Proud. Honest. Punching.

Thank you, Mr. Crews.

This piece originally appeared on the blog, “Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room.”

It took a while to develop, but eventually we decided to start a “multimedia conglomerate.” We wanted to bring together authors, filmmakers, musicians, photographers…hell, I feel like I’ve already rattled out this tired story a million times, and for all I know, I’ve done so on this blog a half dozen times. Things happened. Ideas got tested out, dreams were birthed and crashed, a few years passed, and we decided to settle on publishing books.

There were a couple of experiments to go through the process—short story and poetry collections that are rotting into the earth right now. Then, in the fall of 2001 we released John Galligan’s debut novel, Red Sky, Red Dragonfly. The company back then was called DIVERSITY INC., a naming relic from an old high school philosophy club my business partner and I had started back in the early 90s (to add to the pretension and the teeth rattling arrogance, I’ll let you know that it stood for Divine Intellectuals Violating Every Rational System In The Yuniverse, ah! the hubris of youth!)

Anyway, at some point there was a name change to Bleak House Books and we published about 50 books over the course of the next eight years. Like any other endeavor there were good times and bad times, close calls, and near wrecks, but we always persevered in some form or another.

As I am sometimes inclined to do, earlier this week I got caught up in the grip of the past, thinking about the journey from smart assed 18 year old kid to 36 year old whatever the hell I am now.

While at Bleak House, I had approximately thirty interns who worked with me during those eight years. The lastingness and depth of those relationships are greatly varied. But in the years that followed I provided recommendations and helped make introductions for some of them. By my best count, nearly a dozen of them went on to work at larger publishing houses or agencies or magazines.

My life is incalculably richer for having made the journey. The business side of things has, on the whole, been nice, but pales in comparison to the personal relationships forged. In addition to the people I discussed above, there have been authors, publishers, agents, librarians, and readers.

It’s this last category that brings me to the point of this entry.

Back at Bleak House we started a program called The Evidence Collection—signed, fingerprinted, and numbered collector editions of our titles. We had dedicated subscribers to The Evidence Collection that ordered directly from Bleak House (as opposed to buying from a store). Though it is nearly five years since we started the program, and three years since it ended, I can still see many of the names in my head. Most of them were strangers, names I was grateful to see on a spreadsheet, their purchases the validation I needed for what might have been a questionable idea.

One of those people—Eric Campbell—picked up copies of everything we published at Bleak House. He and I talked on the phone a few times back then about the Evidence Collection, about what was scheduled for publication way in the future, about our shared love of books. Solid guy.

As life goes, things started falling apart at Bleak House Books (by then a division of Big Earth Publishing) in late 2008. My co-worker Alison and I decided that it might be better to continue publishing with a new company than with the company we’d spent so much of our time and lives building.

In a dying economy and with a more developed sense of business than the 18 year old version of me possessed, we struck out looking for investors in our new venture.  We scraped together enough cash to open Tyrus Books, but it was lean and ultimately, without further investors, doomed to certain failure.

At Bouchercon in 2009 we ran into Eric Campbell. We talked about what happened with Bleak House and what the plans were for Tyrus. As it turned out, Eric had been interested in investing in another publishing company, but hadn’t had much success in working anything out.

No doubt you know where this story goes—Eric swooped into the picture in true superhero style, gave the company the stability to make it through the extra lean patch, and made it possible for us to continue with the line including new books from established authors like Reed Farrel Coleman and Victor Gischler, but also debut novels like Hello Kitty Must Die and Untouchable. It is not an overstatement to say that without Eric’s timely introduction to the scene none of those books would have been published by Tyrus, and who knows if they’d have been picked up elsewhere.

It’s two and a half years later and now Eric is the Publisher of Down & Out Books. Alison is doing some editing for him, and perhaps the hardest working intern I ever worked with, Krystal, who later moved to NYC to work for a larger publisher and then a distinguished agent, is doing publicity for Down & Out.

I don’t know how much longer I’m going to stay in publishing, but I know that it is in good hands as long as companies like Down & Out are around. I recorded a podcast with Eric yesterday to discuss his new venture, what he’s publishing, and to talk about the new book Scoundrels released this week, edited by Gary Phillips and featuring new stories from SJ Rozan, David Corbett, Reed Farrel Coleman, Brendan DuBois, Kelli Stanley, Tyler Dilts, Travis Richardson, Eric Stone, Bob Truluck, Pamela Samuels Young, Darrell James, Lono Waiwaiole, Seth Harwood and Gary Phillips.

This piece originally appeared on the blog, “Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room.”

It’s been some time since the last honest to goodness update from these parts. Here is a brief recap of things and doings:

(1) On the work side of things (the part where I pretend to be a businessman in the publishing world), the good news to report is that one of the books we published last year, Untouchable by Scott O’Connor, won Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Award for books published in 2011. I was incredibly proud of that book from the moment I first read it, and prouder still to watch Scott accept his award last week in NYC. Untouchable is a beautiful and heartbreaking book, and if you haven’t already read it, you should. The story of the awards ceremony was in USA Today. I think that may be the first time either of the two publishing companies I’ve started has ended up there. Also on the work front, I helped launch Prologue Books, a program bringing out of print books back via the magic of electronic books.

(2) On the adventure side of things, I’ve been doing a lot of hiking and wandering. The hope (always) is to get lost, so that I might find my way again. So far there haven’t been any close calls or real excitement, except I’m seeing and hearing things differently. I’ve never really been a “nature” guy, but there is something very powerful in the stillness and quiet. I’ve taken trips to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Devil’s Lake, the woods behind my old house (looking for a long destroyed fort built by ambitious but untrained eleven year old kids twenty five years ago), and Mirror Lake. Later this spring I plan on driving from Madison to Alabama by way of the Atlantic coast. I will attempt to get lost along the way. Updates as events warrant. And if you’re somewhere along the route, as crooked as it may be, let me know.

(3) I’ve written a couple of pieces over at the Hey! There’s a Dead Guy blog. And Bethany Warner interviewed me for Word Nerds.

I hope you are doing well in your respective stomping grounds.

See you on the road,

b.

They have likely been reading since they were able to sound out words on the living room floor. Many of them loved words and books so much they majored in English during their college years. Will they always love the same books you love, or, perhaps more importantly, the book you wrote? Of course not, we’re all subjective human beings with different interests, fascinations, and tastes. In the same way that it doesn’t offend me that some people like the taste of okra, it shouldn’t offend you if I don’t dig your book the way you and others might.

You’ll also note that the math in my initial assertion is (a) not backed up by scientific evidence, and (b) is rather specific with regards to two job titles, and is not the blanket of “all people working in publishing.” On the first point, it’s a number I arrived at by living in the industry for ten years and meeting a whole bunch of people. I have extracted accordingly. As far as the second point, I raise it because there are many other people who are essential to running a publishing company that could just as easily be working at a music label or a computer manufacturer or a general widget company. Their skillsets are for running a business. The product is sometimes secondary, and is usually hostage to spreadsheets and forecasts. Instead of things like plot, pacing, and theme (the domain of the editor and agent), focus is instead given to things like, profit margin, consumer buying trends, and other jibberjabber that I can’t even properly qualify. Undoubtedly, some business types have come in from different industries hoping to apply widget practices to literary conventions and have ruined the party for all present. That doesn’t change the fact that other skilled business folks have also helped keep afloat a vessel, the S.S. Publishing Industry, through many storms.

These two different sides are usually good together. The business suit guy helps keep the editor/agent from indulging in some crazy whims about things that could be published. And, through some complicated osmosis that I’m still not completely sure I understand, the buttoned up Poindexter behind the calculator learns about things like Love and the Existential Struggle.

Here’s a sample transcript from a made up meeting between the two sides.

EDITOR: Oh my God! This book is so great. The protagonist is a man who accidentally ingested speaker wire and he falls in love with a poor country singer who can’t afford an amp, but absolutely has to play the county talent show. So the protagonist stands on stage with her (the singer), mouth wide open, and the music comes out of him, loud and clear, with the best acoustics ever… 

BUSINESSMAN: Who is going to buy that?

EDITOR: Me. And like, at least a dozen of my friends.

BUSINESSMAN: Is the singer a vampire? Vampires are biiiig right now.

EDITOR: Well, no…I mean…it wasn’t ever really discussed or anything. I suppose it’s possible. There wasn’t any evidence to suggest it, but…

BUSINESSMAN: Could you talk to the author, maybe? Vampire it up a little bit? Or, if the author doesn’t like that idea, could we set the county fair in some dystopian wasteland, where, if the singer doesn’t win the contest she is killed on stage in front of a cheering crowd and her body is harvested for organs in front of everybody. There was this show on HBO that…

EDITOR: Yeah, the book is basically a quirky love story. I don’t know how those things would fit with it…

BUSINESSMAN: Do you have any other projects to suggest? Maybe we should move on.

Editor has a problem. Huge fan of Speakerman and the Blue Ribbon(*), but the numbers don’t work. So now editor has to go back to the author and say, “Well, I love this, I really do. It’ll be with me for the rest of my life, but I couldn’t get the necessary in-house support. We’re not going to be able to publish it.”

Who is wrong in this situation?

Well, to the author, it’s likely to be whoever the hell “in-house support” is, and because that’s not a name or a single person, it can quickly become the company. And if enough companies reject Speakerman and the Blue Ribbon it can become the publishing industry as a whole.

Well, to Captain Numbercruncher behind the big mahogany desk, it’s the author for not writing what’s hot, and, instead, following the pesky gnawing in the gut to write a book that means something to the author.

To the editor, it might also be “in-house support” but in this case, editor knows the names and faces and knows that the business folks who stress over forecasting and budgets are the same people who have to make sure enough money is coming into the company to pay for editor’s salary and health insurance. So editor goes back to the other 300 unread books in the office and begins the process anew, trying to find a brilliant work that has a definable audience (preferably with disposable income for books) and speaks to the same part of the editor that was built on the living room floor and was fed with Ramen during four years of college.

It’s hard, I know, to be out of step with current trends, to be passionate about something brilliant while the world adjusts its bifocals. But as a writer, it is your mission to listen to that voice in your gut, writing the thing that means something to you. It’s the part of the process you have absolute control over. You have an anxious audience waiting behind the desk—agents and editors both who will do what they can because they believe in books. Are moved by words. See your brilliance.

* Because a whole bunch of people asked to buy SPEAKERMAN, I thought I’d at least give you a glimpse of the cover so that you can find it on the shelf at your local bookseller.

This post originally appeared on the blog, “Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room.”