The Cyber Author

There just isn't enough time in the day. Not if you have a new book out. Used to be you would do a few signings and some radio interviews, maybe a little television. Not exactly a leisure pace, but you felt like marketing a book had some tempo, some sense of progression. Now there is just not enough time in the day. The online beast of publishing has reared it's head and will not go away. And he is never satisfied. Start your day at six AM. Start with your blog. I am the Editor in Chief for Speak Without Interruption http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/ and I am a National Examiner writer on National Culture http://www.nationalexaminer.com/ and I write my own column http://www.williamhazelgrove.blogspot.com/ called The View From Hemingway's Attic. This takes about two hours and then I have to get twittering. This is sending out bits of information for my twitter followers. Now we are almost four hours in and I had just finished the first wave of writing and twittering.But it is time to do a podcast of my latest essay. This takes another half hour. Now it it time to return emails. This takes another thirty minutes. Now it is time to consider bloggers who will review my new book. It is noon.
The feeling of never being able to get it all done is omnipresent. There are so many ways to go for the modern cyber author that it can just stop you from doing anything. It is a lot like being at the crossroads of a highway with ten different options. You could concentrate on getting reviews from the thousands of book bloggers. This alone could burn up your entire day. How about linking your website with other websites? Another time burner that could easily cost you hours. Of course you could look toward mainstream media and concentrate on sending books to the newspapers or television shows. Or you could get into Search Engine Optimization and spend your day bookmarking your blogs and sites and trying to determine what keywords will bring you the most traffic. Don't even think of going on Facebook or Myspace. There is the potential to get sidetracked into social networking and nothing will get accomplished.
This is something new and no one really knows what the result will be. It is all too new. We all hear of the books that become bestsellers because of bloggers picking a book and it takes off like a rocket. When my novel, Rocket Man came out I envisioned the cyber world getting behind me in exactly this way. It has worked for me, but I didn't figure on the days without end where you could literally be online twenty four seven and still not get it all done. I just hope there will be an end of some sort soon. This has been going on for six months and some day I will have to start writing again.
William Elliott Hazelgrove's new novel, Rocket Man was just published by Pantonne Press and chosen as the Best Book of 2008. http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf

The ER of the Arts--The final episode

A friend of mine from high school just appeared in the final episode of ER. I have never watched one episode, but I watched the final three hour show in support of this old friend. His name rolled in the credits and it was prominent. So then we waited through the special retro portion of the show until the real two hour show began. We didn't have to wait long. My friend was suddenly there in a shot and then he was gone. We waited through another hour of the show for him to reappear. My wife said she thought that was it for his character. I said no, there had to be more. Then towards the end he appeared again and said a few lines. That was it. Here then is the hell of the arts, a blip on a television show that lasts not two minutes after toiling for years. What makes it worse, is this guy was the best actor I ever knew.

We don't want to go down the road of statistics. They are too depressing. For the Authors Guild it is something like poverty level for ninety percent of the writers. The rest eek along and the golden one percent haul it in. Probably something like for every one writer you have heard about, a hundred thousand that will never see the light of day. In acting it is much the same. In all the arts it is much the same. There simply is not enough to go around. Talent is not enough. Timing, luck, connections...just about every variable in the world plays into the lottery of Who Wants To Be A Star, A Bestseller, A Rock star. Brutal reality is the word here. The brutal reality is that most artists will die in obscurity.

This fact does lessen the nobility of the act. Artists generally do not have a choice. They just are. There is no logical reason to choose a life in the arts. The pay is horrible, the hours long, the rewards few. So why do it? Therein lies the rub. Like my friend who managed to get on a show watched by millions (no small feat) he will continue acting long after the ER's of the world come and go. Artists are driven by their passion. If there was no passion then no one could stick to the road of thudding rejection, impoverishment, and alienation from a society that views most artist as suspect slackers. Get a job! Please!

So I watched ER to it's inglorious end. I had never watched the show and frankly if I ever seen another one it will be much too soon. Everyone dies. Every one is about to die. The situations are hackneyed and schizophrenic. But that's television. They way I see it, the show was lucky to have my friend. He's much too good an actor for television.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

So we were sitting there at dinner when on comes a revolution. The young Englishmen were in the streets in London getting bashed by the Bobbies. Blood streaming down foreheads and shouting young men being pulled back into the crowd put me back to when I was kid watching the college demonstrations for that Indochina war that never quite worked out. The footage stopped dinner and everyone stared in silence while the British Police in riot gear tried to get the young Englishmen to behave like well young Englishmen. But they wanted to behave like the Young Americans from forty years before.

Remember that Bowie song. Young Americans....young Americans.. It was an anthem to the students taking to the streets and screaming Hell NO WE WONT GO. Bowie was tipping his hat, saying at least the Young Americans are doing something. Seems the Young Englishmen have had enough and don't like the fact the Banks and Big Business are getting bailed out and lavishing employees with million dollar bonuses while they lose their jobs and their homes. Those touchy Young Englishmen. Don't they know that demonstrating is passe in the twenty first century. They should take some lessons from their cousins across the Big Pond and just chill and send a an email.


We used to carry that mantle of outrage, but we have become so wired or placid or bored or turned off or just don't give a damn that the best we can do is blog or email or that moment of organized outrage..the Webcast! But those Englishmen seem to have had enough and have taken their rage to the streets. It was eerie seeing all those people in the streets with the billy clubs swinging and the riot geared police trying to take the streets. It did look like anarchy. It did look like populist rage. But this was England! Weren't we the ones who had the tea party and said no taxation without representation? Weren't we the ones who made the world safe for democracy? Weren't we the ones who tell the world where to get off with our flaming youthful indignation against the old order? Seems like everything else, even our fiery disrespect for the powers that be has been usurped by someone else.


David Bowie is going to have to pen another song if we don't wake up soon. But this time he won't have to look across the ocean. This time he can just turn on the telly and watch those Mad dogs and Englishmen raise hell.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Pragmatist

So he fired the CEO of GM. Don't look for him to cry over that one. Obama grew up the same time I did--in the heat of the sixties. We grade schoolers had only one question--what was everyone so upset about? We thought all that demonstrating and carrying on was ridiculous. For my part I wore a Nixon T shirt. You couldn't get more practical than that and I came from a family of privilege in Virginia. Imagine the pragmatist in a black man who bulls his way into Harvard then to the top of the law review.

Smart. You bet. You got to be smart to overcome those odds. You can't look to the main for anything. So don't look for him to cry over the Unions when he busts them in bankruptcy because GM is going bankrupt. Shareholders and workers be dammed there is a new sheriff in town and he will bring the new economy with him. What do you want him to do? Give the fat white guys another chance? They had many and blew it and one thing a pragmatist knows is no one really changes and no one gives up power. You really think GM is going to come up with great fuel efficient cars on their own? I don't think so. Why pay for the milk when you can get it for free? And they have been getting the milk for free for so long we are talking generations who were on the tit.

Political Pundits call it suicide. Hang the unions around the Democrats neck. The party that busted up GM. So what. Somebody has to do it. GM couldn't make the changes without concessions and the pragmatist knows nobody gives up power and money unless they have to. And the Unions will have to in a bankruptcy. So its bye bye Obama according to the talking heads. Maybe so. But if you are a black man running the free world you can't bet on the status quo. The only chance you have is to actually do the right thing. You have to bring in the new economy because it is the only chance you really have. In case you haven't heard, the old economy is DOA. Aint no one buying overpriced cars that eat gas anymore. So really, what's a smart man to do?

You get rid of the old wood. Start with the car companies and work your way down. Auto workers will be upset. Welcome to the displacement party. We have all been displaced. Publishing, real estate, brokering, banking...we are just warming up. If you think you are slipping through this transition doing business as usual then guess again. That would presuppose there is still some gas in the old economy tank and there really isn't. Even the quick fill ups by the government don't last because that world is gone. There are no buyers. So even if Obama was a different man and went along with all the goofy old white guys and gave GM ten more restructuring band aid the result would be the same. A desert of economic demand. There is none. Not for the old models anyway.

So here we are. Canned the CEO of GM and he is just warming up. Listen up bankers. You are next. Welcome to the new economy. Dreamers need not apply.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com