Gaming and writing home for Dave Sokolowski
As He Who Laughs Last careens wildly to its 2014 Kickstarter and publication, I could not be happier to announce the addition of Mike Dubisch to the project.
Mike’s art covers the ground from the weird and spooky to superheros and creepy comics. I will provide more art as it starts to roll in, but for now, here is a look at his portfolio.
For the past year, I have been focusing on writing and developing ‘He Who Laughs Last,’ a Cthulhu Dark scenario that I plan to release via Kickstarter in early 2014.
I have created a page for the whole project and updates will be forthcoming. I am planning for a Kickstarter in early 2014 and am in the process of recruiting a top-notch list of contributors. I cannot wait to show you what we have in store.
Anyone who has talked Rush with me in the past ten years has heard me ramble about how I loved the much-maligned Vapor Trails album, despite its horrific mastering. I always hoped Rush would find the time to go back and fix the record, and recently they delivered the goods.
The 2002 album finds the band recovering from the death of Neil’s wife and daughter, and the songs erupt with his long emotional recovery, breathing fresh air (at a huge cost) into a band whose lyrics had grown *Very* stale (‘Net boy/net girl’ I’m looking at you). Everyone’s playing is top notch, and the lack of guitar solos, while indicative of the time it was recorded, compresses the 12 tracks into a full set of tight, power trio rock that is still sorely lacking in our world.
The album has some of Rush’s best work in their career, and now you can finally hear it. The new mastering isn’t perfect, as the damage done to the album’s overall sonics cannot be entirely erased. But there is so much more clarity and room to breath in the records, you can actually – and finally – listen to it without losing your mind. It was worth the wait.
Nine years ago I sent out a chance email for a shot to interview one of my favorite authors, Max Barry. Just that the guy would take time out to answer an email from a fan like this is amazing. Clearly he’s awesome. Read:
Update October 2004
Pie Driver interviews Max Barry
When you were 12 years old, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be the newsreader on TV. That guy really seemed to have his shit together.
What’s your daily writing regiment?
I roll out of bed about 7:15am. I iron my wife’s clothes for the day (she’s a school teacher), because yes, I am just that sensitive. Then I go into my study and start writing. I stop when the words do, or when I start to feel faint from hunger, both of which usually happen around 11 o’clock. Sometimes I write in the afternoon, but more often I do all my creative stuff for the day before noon.
Do you outline before or during your writing? While Syrup has a more evolving storyline, Jennifer Government seems more structured. How are your story-telling techniques evolving?
I start with an initial idea, usually about a couple of characters and what they might want to do, and go from there. I very rarely know what’s going to happen more than a couple of chapters in advance. That helps the story from becoming too predictable, and, more importantly, keeps me guessing. I can’t think of anything more boring than planning out an entire novel, then having to write it. As much as possible, I try to avoid ending up pushing characters around like chess pieces, trying to get them to hit particular plot points. I much prefer they take the lead.
It’s funny that Jennifer Government seems more structured. That’s only because I rewrote it so hard; those story threads didn’t come together so neatly in the first draft, I promise you that. This is the downside of not doing outlines.
What has made Syrup and Jennifer Government keepers as opposed to the other novels that were shelved?
Mainly that they were not crap. That’s a big reason. Crap novels, onto the bonfire. Good novels, I call my agent.
How did it feel to finish Jennifer Government and yet have no publisher want to publish it?
My SYRUP publisher (Penguin Putnam) didn’t want it; other publishers were much more receptive. But yeah, it was pretty shocking. When I first got published, I felt so pathetically grateful to everyone that helped me there that I swore I would always stick by them, even if I became hugely famous and popular. They were all so very nice. But they had to make a business decision, and they made it. Tough for me, because I seriously thought my career was over. And I’m very attached to my career. But it was a rough time for Penguin Putnam financially. If I’d been in their shoes I might have cut me, too.
Has Jennifer Government been a success? By what standards? Do you think it will help sell your next book?
Any novel that allows me to keep doing this for a full-time job is a success to me. Getting good reviews is nice, too. In terms of sales, yes, Jennifer Government has done great. I get a stack of fan e-mail, which is just brilliant.
I have a feeling that the sales of novels tend to reflect the quality of the one before them. If you like this one, you buy the next one; if you don’t, you won’t. So very possibly Jennifer Government was just a reaction to Syrup. But hopefully not. Hopefully my next one will get out there and do even better.
Has NationStates been a success? What the future plans for it? Did this evolve as a game or a marketing ploy?
Oh yeah, very much so. I created it as a game to hopefully attract 1,000 people, and so far somewhere it’s had around 400,000 players. I’m not exactly sure what to do with it, since it has become such a big deal all by itself — many, many more people have played the game than read the book — but I’d like to do something.
The idea for NationStates.net — that you get to see what a country based on your idea of perfect politics would look like, and play with it — was one I’d had for a while. And it tied in to the concept behind Jennifer
Government. But I probably wouldn’t have ever coded it unless I could justify that time and expense as a way to promote my novels.
Who do you see as your peers, whether in story-telling or as a novelist? Any authors that you model yourself after?
It really depends on the novel. Two writers I adore, though, are Neal Stephenson and Chuck Palahniuk.
Has being a young author been an asset or a detriment to establishing your career?
I think it’s an asset on the promotional side. The media is definitely more interested in talking to young authors. But as for the actual writing, I think I’ll be creating better novels with another ten or fifteen years’
experience. I sure hope so, anyway. If I’m not, I haven’t been paying attention.
Now that making shit up is your profession, what do you do for fun?
The thing is, though, making shit up is fun. I have that rare and amazing thing: a fun job. But these days, when I’m not writing, I’m trying to maintain NationStates.net. That thing is a real time sucker.
What’s so bad about being Australian?
There seem to be an awful lot of us, wriggling our way into the bastions of American culture. It started with Aussie actors, then came directors, now we’re all over the place. You can’t take five steps in the US entertainment industry without tripping over an Australian. So I apologize for being yet another one.
Max.
I have been a Toastmaster since February 2013, and it may very well be the best professional decision I’ve ever made. If you don’t know, Toastmasters International is a world-wide organization dedicated to helping its members develop their speaking and leadership skills. For a relatively cheap price (~$100/year, which most employers will pay for), TM will help you grown your public speaking and leadership skills, yes, but they also develop your ability to think on your feet.
One of the key elements of the weekly TM meeting is Table Topics, in which someone brings a list of questions that you are asked to answer within one to two minutes, without having known the question ahead of time. The first few times can be pretty scary, as you wrack your brain to answer a random question in a thoughtful and organized manner. But then it gets easier, after you do it five or six times, and soon the fear is gone. Yes, it’s always challenging to think on your feet like that, but when you know you can do it without panicking or just saying um over and over again, you become confident in your abilities.
This ability directly applies to Game Mastering RPGs, which is really just a series of answers to other peoples’ random questions based on some loose parameter (the game). When the PCs take your well-planned and strictly-plotted scenario for a ride way the hell outside of where you though it would go (which happens all the time), having confidence in your abilities to go along for the ride without being rattled is a critical skill. And that confidence directly relates to your ability to run the scenario and own the table, allowing the players to thrive in a thoughtful and imaginative environment.
If you are looking for an unconventional way to improve your GM skills, I highly recommend joining a Toastmasters club (there’s bound to be one near you – check the website). For just an hour a week, you’ll be quite surprised.
I spent some time talking with Richard Bliss about Cthulhu, Lovecraft, and why they’re so damn popular on Kickstarter for Funding the Dream, Episode 168.
I don’t quite get contemporary horror. Some of it is really good (The Orphanage, The Ring) and some of it okay for one trick (Paranormal Activity) and some of it just plain gross (Saw). But growing up in the late 70s/early 80s exposed me to many all-time great horror movies: The Exorcist, The Thing, Carrie, Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween. Lots of Stephen King in there too.
A key appeal of Lovecraft’s world is his imagination – the man was a once-in-a-lifetime individual and his work will live on for quite a while. But his take on existentialism was both nihilistic and weird. The story about the fish people breeding with humans in the failed fishing town in remote New England? Kinda different than what F Scott Fitzgerald was writing during the same period.
It’s the same elements that fuel Stephen King. Buoyed by an unstoppable work ethic (and, in the 80s, lots of cocaine and Miller tallboys), King’s work showed that the world still had room for stories about normal people having horrible experiences. King acknowledges his own Lovecraft influences, as does Clive Barker, Neil Gaimen, John Carpenter and Guillermo del Toro, because Lovecraft sets the bar so damn high – not for scary but for Weird.
His landscape is full of distant Dreamlands full of monstrous shadows, dark libraries haunted by broods of alien cats, crumbling towns on the edge of civilization. Lovecraft pushed the boundaries of imagination so far we are still trying to find the edges. But it’s not about shocks. It’s about going to different worlds, meeting strange creatures and understanding that our cosmos is limitless. It’s about stretching our imaginations into unseen territories, dreamscapes, visions.
I love playing Cthulhu Mythos RPGs because they are weird and different. I love writing Cthulhu Mythos RPGs because I get to be as weird as possible. With He Who Laughs Last, which is set in modern Los Angeles, I continually stretched myself to make things weirder, to catch the players off guard and give their imaginations something to sink their teeth into. The greatest pleasure for me comes when, after a PC awakes to find a large hyena statue has moved in the night to now stand next to his bed, the player says, “oh, man, that’s really freaky…” Caught, unexpected, by a stretch of the imagination.
So my modern horror games aren’t about shocks or surprises. Instead, they’re weird, unusual, gross and hopefully totally unexpected. So call it horror, call it weirdness, call it whatever. I don’t need sudden shocks to make my point.
I can just be weird…
For piano rock fans, there are simply never enough bands to go around. Sure, there is Ben Folds Five (welcomed back after 10+ year sabbatical) or early Billy Joel or Tori Amos, but if you like rock bands where the piano takes the lead, it’s hard to feel sated. Fortunately, the Scottish band Murnie fills that gap, and they’ve got a new EP Crackle to prove it.
One of the best things about the death of the music industry is how it has blown apart the need to release a “proper” album. Bands now can release music on their own, in whatever form, so Murnie can put the four song EP Crackle out there to show progress and keep fans’ appetites whetted, which is exactly what it does. Over the course of the four songs, the piano-bass/gtr-drums+vox trio covers a lot of ground – from the opening rocker “Brass Boy,” to the wistful “Don’t Forget,” all the way until the longer, thoughtful “Little Girl Who Stole the World.” The shorter “Spidermonkey” again shows that the trio knows how to rock. All in all, Crackle is a great four song EP, and I was glad to add Murnie to my music library.
Another benefit of the downfall of the music industry is that bands can now record pretty much everything they need to put out a record on their own. Sometimes this is good, sometimes not. The Crackle EP was clearly recorded and produced on a string budget, which is great for the flexibility and independence it can afford a band, although sometimes a recording can lack the professional sheen that spending a little cash can acquire. Crackle needs just a bump in that direction (a good mastering goes a long way) and would raise the bar for the band significantly.
There is no question Murnie has all the skill it needs. They write great songs that give us piano rock fans exactly what we demand: solid rhythm section led by a rocking piano and melodic vocals. I imagine they’re a great live band, and they clearly get how to write, record, and release music on their own. Here’s to hoping their next EP is a bit more polished (perhaps an IndieGoGo project can raise some funds), which I would gladly pick up.
Listen to Crackle for yourself, and sate all your Murnie needs here.
After ten years together, Custom Built Empire (CBE) has finally released a record (literally), and while the album title Mission Statement is certainly appropriate for an 8-song EP, a more appropriate title might be “Finally Grows Up.” For while ten years is a long time to make your music available to the masses, CBE has finally put together a great sounding record that encompasses everything they love: delivering crunchy rock for however long they damn well please.
CBE falls squarely in the genre of “thinking man’s rock,” reveling in odd time signatures and extended song lengths familiar to fans of Tool and Mastadon. The dual guitar attack build solid walls on which to stack interesting melodies with lyrics about unusual people and their bad habits (my favorite song, “Robi,“ is about a crippling Robitussen addiction – bet you haven’t heard a song about that before). But the key appeal of CBE is the bass and drums; for fans of rocking rhythm section, CBE is not to be missed.
Songs like Flutter, Relentless, and Waking Sleep highlight incredible bass/drums interplay that is thoughtful, powerful and locked-in like the best of them. If your favorite part Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Mastadon or any other complicated hard rock band is the rhythm section; if you are, like me, always in search of a bass/drums combo that “gets it” by providing unique and challenging grooves; if you’re looking for a rocking San Francisco band to support (when they play their annual gig) – then CBE is a great addition to your music collection.
In the final analysis, the record sounds great all around, and is meant to be turned up. The Hit Wall Studio recording has a great professional sound that does not disappoint. That matched with a band that finally delivers the goods it has been promising for ten years means that Mission Statement is definitely worth the investment. Pick it up, turn it up, rock out.
More than ten years ago, I interviewed author Christopher Miller about his first book. Soon I’ll be interviewing him on his second, and maybe even third book. Check back soon…
October 2002
Pie Driver interviews Author Christopher Miller
I met Christopher Miller in the summer of 2001 up in Portland, Oregon. He had just sold his first novel, Simon Silber, Works For Solo Piano, and was contemplating a move to the Big Apple. In the brief time we chatted, I inundated him with questions about publishing, but never felt I got the time to really get the answers I wanted. After all, his novel hadn’t even been published yet. But the book was published in May 2002 and I ran down to my local bookstore first thing and picked it up. You should too. It’s a great story about an eccentric composer and his slacker biographer. A great read for sure. Pie Driver tracked down Miller recently and blackmailed him into submitting to an interview:
I’ve read the bio in the back of the book and talked a little about your history, but can you talk a little about the class you took at Washington University with William Gass?
It wasn’t a class but an independent study – Gass wisely refused to teach writing workshops, and I’m sorry to say that I never took his philosophy class. The independent study was a little disappointing because he was, or seemed, so utterly indifferent to my writing, and I’d admired his for so many years. It’s too bad, because there’s no one smarter than Gass, no one who has thought as much about style and structure, no one better qualified to mentor a younger writer with similar tastes. And I guess I went to Wash U. with some naïve idea that he’d take a special
interest in me, as if grooming his replacement.
Why did you take the grad school route?
Good question. I had vowed not to because I didn’t like the grad students I met as an undergrad, and because my father was a professor of literature and I felt duty-bound to strike out in a different direction. For a decade I did the starving-artist thing, working low-paying jobs in the so-called caring professions; when I applied to graduate school – already in my thirties – I was working at a group home for profoundly retarded adults, and I’d had enough. There’s a limit to how often you can hose feces off a profoundly retarded adult before you convince yourself that whatever bad effects graduate studies may have on other people, you’ll manage to avoid the pitfalls. I’m not sure I did avoid the pitfalls, but at least the shit I encountered in graduate school was only metaphorical.
How long did it take to write your novel?
About five years from start to finish, though I was working on other things too in those years, including a short novel that I started before Silber and am still working on, though I’m not sure it’s getting any better. It isn’t even getting any longer.
Describe meeting your agent and working with him to get him interested in your novel.
I met my agent through one of his clients, Deborah Eisenberg, who taught a writing workshop at Washington. I showed him the first 50 pages of Silber – all I had at the time – and he said he’d be interested in seeing the rest when it was finished, though that wasn’t for another couple of years. In the meantime I’d almost changed his mind by twice sending him the manuscript of
another novel, the hopeless one I just mentioned.
What was the hardest part once they bought the novel?
Probably the wait – almost two years between selling the book and seeing it in print.
How extensive were the changes they suggested, and were there any changes that you fought?
The most extensive change was to the ending, the last 10 or 20 pages, because my original ending was a mess. I knew it was a mess when I submitted the novel, but I was hoping I could get away with it. I’m glad my editor made me change it. As with the other changes he suggested, he didn’t try to fix it for me, just forced me to face the fact that as it stood it didn’t work, and then left it to me to find a solution. I didn’t really fight any of his suggestions, though I didn’t always find ways to follow them even when I wanted to. For instance, he kept urging me to include more of Norm’s aphorisms, and I wanted to–I think they would’ve been fun to read–but I couldn’t think of any more.
Why the move to NY?
I’d been reading a lot of Ben Katchor, whose comic strips make New York City seem like the most poetic place in the world.
How has it been?
I didn’t like it much while I was there, but now that I’ve left–I moved to Vermont last month to teach at Bennington–I’m suddenly incredibly nostalgic for NY. It takes me so long to warm to a new place–and I move so often–that it’s been years since I liked a place while I was actually living there. Who knows where I’ll be when I start to like Vermont?
Working on the second (or third) novel?
I’m working on two short novels, one about a small town where everybody is obsessed with food, and another I like to describe as a novelization of a non-existent David Lynch film.
What sort of work ethic is being employed?
I force myself to sit down and at least pretend to write twice a day, every day. I always drink coffee when I write, and I only drink coffee when I write. Coffee and writing are so inseparable for me that if I have an inspiration when I’m not drinking coffee, I don’t even write it down. “Naw,” I tell myself, “that one doesn’t count – I’m not drinking coffee.” I also chew Nicorette when (and only when) I write. I’m the only person I know who’s managed to addict himself to nicotine gum without first being addicted to cigarettes. It’s like getting addicted to methadone without ever
trying heroin.
Did any other authors/novels give you inspiration for Simon Silber?
I had been wanting for more than a decade to write an homage to Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov), and that book definitely served as a model for mine, just as it’s served as a model for half a dozen other books I can think of (Edwin Mullhouse, The Debt to Pleasure, etc). You could teach a whole course consisting of books that wouldn’t have been written if not for Pale Fire.
Top five books?
Maybe not my all-time favorites, but five books I’m feeling especially gung-ho about at the moment:
Hilaire Belloc-Cautionary Verses
Kazuo Ishiguro-A Pale View of Hills
Lydia Davis-Almost No Memory
Flannery O’Brien-The Third Policeman
Gilbert Sorrentino-Gold Fools
Favorite books of 2002?
Ben Marcus-Notable American Women
Lydia Davis-Samuel Johnson is Indignant
Martin Amis-The War Against Cliché
Any advice to aspiring authors?
Read everything (there isn’t much) ever written by Lydia Davis. If you don’t like her, you may be aspiring up the wrong tree.