Try everything once. That’s what most people will tell you, even though, I’m almost positively certain, there are some things that should never be tried (such as forcing yourself to make it through one full sitting of Fantasia). Tolerance for one of Disney’s most boring films notwithstanding, it is rather ironic that the ones who are often suggesting to try things, to go out on a limb, and to do something unique probably haven’t ever done it themselves. What’s wrong with this picture?

Think about it. So many teachers out there may have written a book about how to be successful in business or how to manage a small company, but how many have actually started a company or made a fortune from the stock market? And how many music profs have sold a single record or toured? How many lit professors urge us to write this way or that way, yet they’ve never had any of their work published? It makes me laugh. A similar phrase comes to mind: those who can’t do, teach. Now, I mean no overwhelming disrespect to teachers…in fact, my becoming a writer is a direct response to a series of writing sessions forced upon me by a teacher, so I am eternally grateful for their role in the lives of children and society. However, something is clearly wrong when the ones who are teaching the classes in universities, calling the shots so to speak, are not in the profession they claim to possess so much knowledge about. Book knowledge and real-life knowledge are sometimes two very different things.

As a writer, I try to look at the world as a sea of possibilities. Wait, scratch that. Sometimes I see the world as black and white, as scummy, ruined, bleached-out, wrecked, etc. I’m guilty of being cynical, I’ll admit; still, there is a part of me that looks at the what-if. You have to if you have any hopes of becoming a writer who leaves any kind of imprint on the world.

So, in marketing a book, there are so many different ways to get the word out. Sometimes it seems impossible, daunting, a never-ending task. And that’s partially true. But it’s not all hopeless. I mean, writing is not a 9-5 job. It’s a needy freaking mistress who demands breakfast in bed, three facials a week, foot massages, and endless reruns of Grey’s Anatomy. But you need to give this mistress what she wants. Or else. Don’t be afraid to try something new. Fear is for sissies. Kickstarters are cool, and they seem to work for bands, but will they work for authors? Who the heck knows? But why not try? Virtual tours are good, and sometimes costly, but will they translate into impressive sales? Maybe. Traditional tours are also costly, time-draining, but fun and profitable at times. Will it work for you? It’s possible. You can write another cliché book and have it flop, or you can be Nicholas Sparks and literally write the same story over and over again and make a gagillion dollars. The bottom line is this: if you don’t try, nothing will work; if you keep doing the same thing and it’s not working, maybe try something else.

Stop being that professor who has a lot of talk and theory but no experience. Get out on the grind and hustle. Experiment like a mad scientist. Get out there, whether it’s on facebook, twitter,  or goodreads. Or maybe it’s attending film festivals, book conventions, comic-cons, churches, schools, whatever, in order to spread your fire in any way possible. Nothing is off-limits. Okay, maybe pawning your children, and pawning your relatives’ children…but other than that, nothing else is really off-limits.

Just remember that “they” figured out a way to sell us something that was free, and it worked. Bottled water, anyone? Someone else’s failure may be your key to success. Now, go bottle some water and figure out a way to peddle it to the masses, you big schemer, you.

-spread fire, not toolery,

-Evega

www.estevanvega.com

twitter: @estevanvega

facebook: we are arson

I did three book signings this weekend. This has been typical fair for me for the last, well, for a while. I have a schedule that is opposite my friends, and family, and in some ways I love it, but in others I’m not much of a fan. On the upside, I get to meet new people, potential fans, and share my passion with them, all while trying to make a bit of money doing what I love. On the downside, I sacrifice my weekends. But hey, no sacrifice, no victory.

I often wonder when it’s “gonna happen.” And that gonna happen thing changes definitions every year, month, week, day, minute…you get the idea. At first, it was “when is Arson gonna get published?” Then it became, “when is Ashes gonna get published?” Now, it’s, “where the flip is that movie deal?” Lofty goals? Not at all. Pretentious? Perhaps. Either way, I’m sort of an impatient person, so at least I’m consistent. You must know that I’ve been writing since I was in fifth grade, and I started writing my first book when I was 12. I’ve been at this writing thing going on 12 years. So for me, it’s taken me some time to build traction and momentum.

But it’s happening, about as fast as clouds move.

While at the signing, a man came up to me and bought a book. It didn’t take any kind of persuasion; in fact, I didn’t even finish telling him what the book was about before he said he wanted it…under one condition: I had to offer some kind of encouragement to his wife, who is also a writer. It seems that she has hit a brick wall. And believe me, this happens more frequently than any writer would like to admit. But it’s part of the game. You gotta just send a mental wrecking ball through it. Of course, it helps when you have a construction crew (family, friends, other artists) who are there by your side encouraging you. So I sent his wife a note and told her it wasn’t gonna be easy, because that’s the truth; but all the sweat, frustration, and creative energy expelled would reap rewards, in time. And this letter came from a young kid who still hasn’t hit Stephen King status yet, even after 10 years in the biz.

So why am I so confident it will happen? What do I have to believe in? And likewise, what can she believe in? Well, that’s simple…the possibility of impacting a generation. The chance to take what is in her head and put it in somebody else’s. And that’s magic.

I was reading in my car today (while parked), and I looked up for a moment to glimpse a dark sky. Clouds loomed over the parking lot, releasing a slight drizzle onto the concrete world. And I found myself thinking: “This is what life is like. No, this is what writing is like.” It’s not an easy journey, but it’s like a cloud’s journey.  It has a definite beginning, and it will have an end. Those clouds I watched from a distance began somewhere, and they were moving—slow to my eyes—but in the grand scheme of the universe probably quickly, toward a destination. They are a part of the cycle of existence, and they only know how to do one thing: to keep moving.

So it doesn’t matter that you hit a brick wall or 7 brick walls. It doesn’t matter that you got rejected or that you think what you’ve written, painted, sung, believed in seems like nonsense.

Remember the cloud. Remember that you are also a part of the cycle. And remember to keep moving. No matter how long it takes. No matter what rains may come. No copouts.

E

www.estevanvega.com

twitter: @estevanvega

facebook: we are arson

Why is fear so fascinating? I was recently pondering thinking about this after seeing The Cabin in the Woods. It was a really cool, interesting take on the “typical” slasher movie. Of course, the story has cliché elements to it, such as the jock, the slut, the brainiac, the diverse character, and the stoner. Oh, and a bunch of things that seek to end their ever-so-meaningful lives.  All of this has the makings of a very shrug-of-shoulders, eat-tons-of-popcorn, jump-in-your-seat kind of thrill. We know people are gonna do stupid stuff that ultimately ends in their grisly demise. We know there’s gonna be a lot of creepy night shots with even creepier men roaming the woods. We know the “good” person will make it out, but the cool thing about Cabin is that it does away with many of the conventions of typical horror pictures. Ultimately, it makes fun of them.

It’s hard to miss the overwhelming sense that, as a society, we’ve stumbled a bit into the depraved category. In many ways, we’ve lost our sense of fear. Sure, there are things that make us jump, but in many ways, very few things deeply terrify us. (Except, of course, the scarecrow dude from Jeepers Creepers; he will always and forever creep me out.) But, to some degree, studios know that our tolerance for fear has increased. Therefore, they often seek the shameless gore approach, because it holds shock value. But movies like Cabin and Funny Games are unique and interesting because they poke fun at humanity’s need for violence, at our obsession with death (even though, at the core, we’re all afraid of it), and our insatiable lust to witness our fellow man or (insert derogatory name for loose woman here) in peril. We get some kind of satisfaction from seeing victims in jeopardy. Perhaps this is because it’s not us, and we know we’re still gonna make it home safe and sound, assuming no evil entity reaps our souls first.

But why the fascination? I love horror movies. I love thrillers. I love eerie, dark stories. But why? Is it because I’m just a little sick in the head or a skosh depraved? Probably. But beyond that, I think it’s the shock value such entertainment brings. Now, I do appreciate gore in small and necessary doses. I much prefer being terrified, though. I think part of us needs that unsettling feeling swimming in our veins, that compelling which makes us rush toward our houses at midnight, because we think, for whatever reason, that Jason is chasing us from the car to our front door. Obviously, he dropped out of the sky, probably left here on earth by little green men. Either way, it is that spike-of-pulse sensation that keeps us crawling back to the theaters or to the books for more. And while Cabin in the Woods uses dark humor to poke fun at all of this, even to the point of making people’s lives seem like little more than expendable videogame characters, the filmmakers are still victims themselves, victims because they too are adding to the clutter of the system. And I, depraved writer that I am, will still inject little doses of eeriness into the things that I write as well. Why? Because I’m a twisted fre…I mean, because it’s fun. Because I like making you feel a bit unsettled, and because maybe that’s how you know you’re alive. Because I like the feeling I get when I write a scene that may make me jump if I were to be dropped into it.

Fear is just a four letter word, or maybe it’s something more. Maybe it’s as much a part of our genetic makeup as love or happiness. So the next time you’re walking through the woods at night without your cellphone or a flashlight or wandering from your car to your front door, the keys jangling as you search for the right one, know that it is I who is to blame(insert maniacal laugh here)…and probably you for ever reading my stuff. Shame on you.

Spread the fire!

evega

twitter: @estevanvega

facebook: we are arson

Hi…we are part of the clique…wanna join?

It never ceases to amaze me how needy we are. How insecure. Writers, or creative people, especially. (I’m never immune to this, trust me.) We need to be told our work is cool or provocative or boundary-shattering or perfectly morally gray. As earthlings, we seek to fit someplace. We search for this sense of belonging all our lives, even if it’s a subconscious quest. We want there to be life on other planets. We want there to be a God behind those clouds who looks forward to the minutes when we shove all our problems onto his plate. We want to know that we’re not alone.

Simple enough.

But when it comes to creative minds, by joining a clique, we abandon the ones on the outside of that bubble—people who may be just like us. It seems like if you are signed to one of the mother ship publishers (the Big 6), then you can join. Privileges of your yearly membership include but are not limited to: wearing an eerie cloak at night, flipping off traffic lights when you don’t agree with the color, spending more time in Starbucks pretending to look cool writing but really just looking like a tool, performing séances in Latin, or sacrificing small, defenseless goats to make sure your book appeases the fickle reading masses. If you get signed by the Big 6, it means you’re in the club, buddy. You can now take their mark. You are among the elite, the gods of writers. Your stay is temporary, of course, but while there, so much awaits you.

Before I even got published, I sort of recognized that there was a distinction between the writers who got published for real and the ones who published their own stuff or got some rinky-dink indie press to see some value in their words. But over the years, the stigma is starting to shift some. Yes, a plus side to getting signed to a mother ship imprint is access to the reading masses. That means, the publisher, because they’re consuming so much of the royalty, can afford, if they believe your book is the next Hunger Games, to shell out thousands upon thousands of dollars in promotion. It’s easy to guarantee a book is a success if that’s the only book you shove in front of readers. Think about it. If all that is ever at in front of me are average-looking brunettes, I’m gonna think that’s all I can expect to end up with. But suddenly, a smokin’ hot blonde walks in, one who employs pristine grammar skills and who tosses her hair just so…all bets are off. (Just so we’re clear, hot chicks come in all varieties and colors. Please choose responsibly.)

A few years back, when ARSON came out, I noticed a group online called the 2010s. It was made up of authors who had a book releasing that year. Catch was that you had to be signed to a mother ship publishing house. Well, that meant I was out. I could not be a member of their elite country club, even though I was so looking forward to the wearing a cloak and sacrificing a goat bit. (I had a day marked off on my calendar and everything.) I wasn’t good enough to be among the gods of the mother ship. My prose wasn’t digestible enough perhaps. My plot didn’t follow the typical route perhaps. I used third person POV and jumped from character to character, and an author who does that loses the effectiveness of its principal protagonist. Shame on me. Or maybe I used too much supernatural. Maybe there wasn’t enough supernatural. Or, dare I say it, my cover had too much to do with the actual and wasn’t pretty enough; just too damn horrifying. Oh, and I am vulgar beyond salvation. Yada-yada. For whatever reason, I couldn’t join the clique, but as time went on, I realized I didn’t really want to. Granted, the intense promotional push that comes with mother ship publishing (assuming they think you are the next Steph Meyers) is attractive to a writer who may be on the rise to getting noticed but still under the radar of many. It seems that sometimes a mother ship deal turns the writers who sign to these cloak-wearing alien abductors into uppity tools. I have tried to get in contact with many of these writers on these mother ship imprints. They are polite but unwilling to do anything outside of their publisher’s scheduled events. It’s a bubble they think keeps them safe, when in reality, it just alienates them, and maybe that’s how they like it. Kinda lame. It’s like once you’re inside the bubble, you develop this crazy notion that all the normal earthling writers who “haven’t sucked from the nip of success” are diseased or something. It’s silly.

This all makes me think of the film How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

So, all of this ranting about cloaks and country clubs and innocent goats and mother ships to say this: MAYDAY! Give it time. It’ll crumble. This is earth, right? You know, it might be time for writers, creatives, and all you other normal folk, to turn from many of your preconceived notions and abandon clique.

Spread fire, not toolery,

Evega

Twitter: @estevanvega

Facebook: we are arson

spread fire,

evega

twitter: @estevanvega

facebook: we are arson

The Power of Story by Josh Olds

They’re just words.

That’s the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard. Just words…that’s like saying someone is just human. Like words don’t have power. Like Story isn’t a means of revolution. Like life isn’t poetry lived out in the flesh.

It’s absurd because life is story. And when we flimsy humans settle in as Storytellers and create our own universes with words and ideas and paragraphs and paradigms, we flip the mantra. Life is Story…but Story is Life. To engage with Story is to engage with the thoughts and ideas and themes confronting those fictional characters, to discover a life we probably wouldn’t be able to explore anywhere else, and to open ourselves to being changed by the narratives we encounter.

The best teachers are those who teach in Story. There was a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth especially good at it and he confirmed the message of the parables he told through the Story of his life. That’s not to say that all Storytellers make teaching a moral or lesson the primary objective of their story. In fact, writers that do that often end up with stories that suck. The message has to come out naturally from the narrative. It has to be imbedded into the story as the background theme, just as one’s worldview runs as the background framework to one’s life. And just like one’s worldview, the message of a story manifests itself even if the author’s not paying attention.

For those of us who are Storytellers, this imposes upon us a solemn responsibility. We are the leaders of an exploration. We are the creators of a drama or a thriller or a mystery or a romance or any other type of novel that inevitably reflects something of life. Even if we write just to entertain, our writing has a message. Readers follow us into the world we’ve created and—if we’ve done our job well—become the characters we’ve created. They feel the tensions and the questions and the elations and the sorrow and the pure emotion of the Story. Story has the power to change people. It can give them a fresh perspective, take them to extremes that reality will not allow, offer them new experiences, challenge their thinking, or upset the status quo. Stories take facts or statements or questions and present them in the context of life, even if it be fictional. Which sentence below holds more power?

Statement: As many as one in four girls will be sexually abused before age 18.

Story: Eight year old Jenna learns in Sunday School that God is a Father, but is he like Jenna’s father who molests her every night?

Didactic teaching can give a clear and true message but it takes a Story to get to the heart of the matter and pull at the reader’s heart as well. The fact we as Storytellers can make a few abstract marks on a page and potentially leave such an impression on those who read it is almost magical. Story is power and as such the Storyteller should wield it with responsibility. So go, tell your story, entertain those readers, change those lives, start a revolution. The world belongs to the Storyteller.

EV: I’ve known Josh for a few years, and I asked him to write a post about something he’s passionate about, about story. His website is Lifeisstory.com, and there he reviews books and goes a little deeper than the cursory…he explores them fully. What’s amazing about story is that, like he said, they truly can make a difference to a people, a society, a generation. A story really can start a revolution of the soul, and that is a gift. Writers have influence, and that’s so freaking cool. So, I’ll let Josh be Morpheus, I’ll be Neo (because bending backward like a supafreak is awesome and stopping bullets with his hand is just so legit), and um…you can be Trinity. Hey, she is kinda Bad-A if you think about it. Go start a revolution on the page, like, now. And thanks, Josh, for dropping in and feeding us some wisdom.

Spread fuego!

evega

twitter: @estevanvega

facebook: we are arson

Josh Olds mini-bio:

Josh Olds is a student of Story, a character in the narrative of Life, and a creator of his own stories. Some call him the Madman. You can find him prowling about at Facebook (facebook.com/lifeisstoryreviews), Twitter (@JoshOlds), and even (God help him) Pinterest (pinterest.com/lifeisstory).

MUSIC BOX:

Esther is getting old. No, she is old. Aging with every blink, with every breath.

After a life full of power and purpose, she is met with the harsh reality that she is now obsolete, and her fragile moments are short. On the eve of the last night in the city she has called home for years, Esther and her lover Jacob share their fears and their romance for this world over one last meal, as they wait in fearful unrest for what is coming.

Burn Something,

Evega

www.estevanvega.com

twitter: @estevanvega

facebook: we are arson

Growing up in our home, my dad was an elaborate storyteller. He would make up stories to put us to bed at night, leaving the protagonist on death’s doorstep before he would abruptly get up, kiss the tops of me and my brother’s head, and tell us that he will share more of the story the following night. Despite our groans and protests, he would always leave us wanting more. While his cliff-hanger endings were a slick parenting trick to get us to easily climb into bed each night, he later admitted to me it was also so he could dream up the next sequence in the story.

Despite my love for good stories, it was true stories that arrested my attention when I was younger, particularly sports stories. When I found out I could get paid to watch sports and all I had to do was write about it, I was all in. I started writing a column for my local daily newspaper at age 16 and then eventually attended the University of Georgia, earning a degree in newspaper journalism.

But the mundane task of reporting statistics began to bore me. Every game had a story, but I wanted to tell people stories. What I discovered is that there were plenty to tell. I once interviewed a girl who hid under the bed as she watched her father murder her mother. I interviewed a beast of a high school football player whose real passion was illustrations (he’s now a pro-bowl star in the NFL). I interviewed a coach whose father had seen him play or coach in every football game he’d ever participated in during his lifetime—and it was an hour before kickoff for the first game he wouldn’t make after passing away a few weeks earlier. I’ve asked probing questions that made pro athletes tear up, not out of anger but out of how much the pressure of the game was getting to them.

These were all fantastic stories to tell but they never really allowed me to plunge deep into the soul of the subject. What makes them react the way they do? What past hurts have influenced them to turn out this way?

I still enjoy telling true stories, but there’s something about fiction that’s deeper than fact. Fiction makes us think more about our humanity in ways that very few true stories can. Fiction makes us examine our souls and we ride along with a character through bizarre twists and turns. Fiction makes us see things about ourselves that we never noticed. And that’s why I am slowly making the switch from the genre of truth to the genre of fiction. Neither one is less true than the other nor any stranger. But fiction can tell a story that sticks with us and challenges us to be better people. That’s what I want my craft of writing to do—make people think deeply and hopefully become better as a result of pondering what they read.

EV: First off, Jason’s cover is excellent for his thriller target market, and he was wise to use a pen name for his fiction as a way of differentiating between his genres. Also, I love Jason’s perspective. Fiction can sometimes be (and often is) just as true, if not truer than fact. It’s fun. It’s free. There are no rules in excavating human emotion, human truth. It has a power to it that is unquestionable. Granted, fact is cool, but in my opinion…fiction be cooler!

Spread the fire, and go snag a copy of UNDER YOUR SKIN, and be sure to check out the official book trailer for his novel below…I hear it features Bumblebee, or Bumblebee’s cousin.

Under Your Skin Book Trailer

evega

twitter: @estevanvega

facebook: we are arson