Mobile Me
It’s been quite a week. Seriously. Like a year’s worth of stuff happened in the last 7 days.
I had been planning for last week to be a quiet one where I could get a lot of writing done, but due to an almost slapstick convergence of events, I was forced to put it off again and again.
Sunday: My plans for a peaceful week of writing began to derail when my sister Maritza had her baby over two weeks early (Welcome Freddie! Uncle Peat loves you and is going to inundate you with superhero crap!). Also, Cassie wasn’t sleeping, and was being crazed.
Words written: 0
Monday: Plans to write were further put off by going to the accountant to plan my estimated taxes for the year.
Estimated taxes are an unspoken Hell known only to freelancers, and I wish it on no one. Why? Because it’s a guess. A freelancer has no what they’re actually going to make in a given year to come, but they have to guess anyway, and pay taxes based on that. So you’re left with the winless choice of guessing low and paying less taxes, but risking owing a big chunk of money at year’s end, or overpaying, and feeling broke all year only to find that you didn’t have to and maybe could have afforded that trip to Aruba, after all.
But I digress.
I got home from the accountant to a message on my answering machine from The Daily News. They saw the piece in AM New York two weeks earlier about how I wrote the majority of The Warded Man on my smartphone, and wanted an interview. As I reached for the phone to call them back, it rang, and it was News 12 Brooklyn, asking if they could send over a film correspondent that week. Later that night, something I wrote like two weeks ago on a reviewer’s blog opens a Can of Worms and sparked a big (and kind of fascinating) internet debate.
Words written: 0
Tuesday: The Daily News sent a photographer out to meet me, and we rode the subway taking pictures. The Racy Romance Reviews debate is in full force, and I am joining in. That night, my mother in law and her boyfriend came to visit, stopping for the night on their drive from Boston to North Carolina.
Words written: 0
Wednesday: I was on page three of the Daily News, and on NY1’s “In the Papers” section of the morning news loop. People I hadn’t spoken to in years were suddenly getting in touch, saying they saw me in the paper or on TV. That night, my computer crashed. Sometime after that, Switched.com picks up the story. Traffic on my website spikes. I am oblivious.
Words written: 0
Thursday: Brittany Oat from News 12 shows up at 8:30am to interview me and again film me at the subway stop, writing on my phone, and yes, I am actually writing in those scenes! I’m writing about how friggin’ bizarre it is that I am being interviewed for the news. It’s like I woke up on Bizarro World. Maybe I’ll post exactly what wrote later. I think I also noted that Brittany is pretty.
I get back home and see that a few other blogs like The Gothamist have picked up the story as the News 12 spot airs. (It really was a great piece, but I haven’t been able to find it online to show people. Working on it.) Laptop Magazine asks for an interview.
I then begin the ugly process of backing up urgent files on my computer and preparing for a hard disk wipe/Windows reinstall. Went out for a drink. Came home and pulled the computer off life-support. Began resuscitation.
Words written: 0
Friday: I see that a bunch more sites have picked up the “man writes book on a cellphone during subway commute” story, including Fantasy Book Review, but I don’t have time to explore, because I finally have the chance to meet my nephew. We pack up and head out to my sister’s place, leaving my computer is installing hundreds of updates. Away most of the day. Dinner out with my parents. Cassie is a terror when we get back, and is up until all hours.
Words written: 0
Saturday: Computer more or less fixed, I start exploring the web. My agent has just gotten back from London Book Fair and has posted pix of the awesome Painted Man displays in the UK right now, where the paperback is a bestseller. That is so damn awesome.
I note that the Racy Romance Reviews debate is still going strong (I think I commented a good three times, myself), and the debate has been picked back up off my blog and inspired posts by Tia at FantasyDebut, James at Speculative Horizons, and Ana/Thea at Booksmugglers, which was the site where the whole mess started in the first place. Crazy.
I then see that the smartphone story has been translated into Polish (also here), Spanish (also here and here), Russian (also here), and Norwegian, in addition to being picked up on windows mobile blogs and other tech blogs like Geek.com, Cellphone Magazine, Flexta, dialaphone, and ixplora. It gets to the point where there are too many links for me to even follow them all to their sources (many of them are pingback comments on my post Page 3 Girl). Suddenly I am “gimmicky cellphone writer guy”, known the world over, and no one is talking about the book itself.
That was weird. I mean, sure, it’s all true. I did write on the subway almost every day during my commute, but it was just a means to an end. The book was what was important. It’s what I was pouring my heart and soul into. The smartphone was just the pitcher. People saw that, right?
I worried people didn’t see that.
I felt like the power of the internet had just bitch-slapped me senseless, or stuck a needle of heroin in my eye. It was heady and addictive and over quickly, leaving me drained and confused.
Near as I can tell, that’s what it feels like to go viral. Even on this flash in the pan scale, it felt like my head had exploded. I can’t even imagine how Susan Boyle feels. By this time it was Saturday afternoon, and I looked up and saw it was sunny out. I needed a break, so I turned off the computer and went for a walk in the park.
Saturday was a SPECTACULARLY nice day in Brooklyn. Mid 70’s and sunny. The park was gorgeous, and I walked a couple of miles, inhaling deeply, finding my center. Eventually, I plopped down on the grass, feeling the sun’s embrace as it touched parts of my skin that had not known direct sunlight in months. I felt renewed. Relaxed. And I finally had a chance to write.
Good thing I had brought my smartphone.
Words written: 725
I wrote one of the Polish “smartphone story”. Honesty, it was first time, when I hear about you and probably many people also don’t follow the news about writers and books. I had no time yet to get and read “The Warded Man”, so I wrote, that it seems to be good, because even here in Poland it is bestseller.
I agree, that the book is more important, but for some people “the pitcher” is also interesting. I think, that after that big wave of news about you, more people will get the book to find out of if it is really good. The fact, that you will be recognise sometimes as a “smartphone writer” it doesn’t matter. Many writers have got different stories about them and their books. It’s just another way to promote. You don’t have to defend youself, the good book will do it.
What a week! Glad you’re getting back to finding your center – but it’s also great to see all this media coverage. Hey, anything to spread the word about the book is a good thing. Now, maybe we plan a trip to the comic store so you can get more writing done. Ha!
Random Idea Comment- I wonder if the idea of spoken wards will ever come up, if as man discovered writing they discovered a way to fight demons surely it’s possible to rather than to use wards as a visual representation of wherever magic comes from it could be possible to say the ward, eg a downward stroke could be Fei, so a downwards stroke and then a line joining that to another downwards stroke could be Fei Raj Fei (the sounds are nonsense) this would obviously work different to normal wards which use the magic of the demon and use that magic the strike the demon, it would come from somewhere else IE the person. In this way they could be introduced without unbalancing the dynamic because it took 4 years of absobing magic from demons for Arlen to become what he is and as he only absorbs a fraction of the magic that is used for him to use spoken wards too often would surely result in him becoming very weak
Anyone thing this would be a good idea or has anything to add to it?
Ok, I have DocumentsToGo on my Treo. I’m going to try this cellphone writing thing. Currently, I use a notebook. I mean, crikey! How low-tech can I be?
Thanks for the link!
So long as they spell your name right, brother.
So long as they spell your name right – and get Warded/Painted Man into the story!!!
I’m thinking this sort of coverage is still good coverage…
At one point I had my mobile/cell phone filled with plot points and additional story ideas. Only lost most of them once when the phone died before I could retrieve my precious thoughts from it.
One time too many of having said idea – and not making note of it, and the habit of making a note anywhere and everywhere possible.
I’m wishing I had a smartphone (or similar) at the time…
Glad to see that your week ended up yielding at least some words written!!