I, Storyteller

I have recently started to slowly chip away at the look of my blog, figuring it's time for a few "home improvements" around here. No major renovation or face-lift, but just some tweaks to clear out some boxes that have been kicking around unused for a while and a good dusting of the cobwebs.

I'm starting at the "top" of the blog and eventually working my way down the very crowded right nav side-bar.

A few weeks ago I revised the header blurb. Just updated it from a "this blog is new" sort of feel to more of a "this blog has been around the block a few times" feel -- nothing much else.

I also removed a banner from the header that has been there since 2006.

My "I, Death" banner.



Sad to see it go, but man, it's been 3 years since that adventure in storytelling. I suppose I've been reluctant to remove it, particularly since it took me a while to figure out how to generate a "moving" gif for it.

But what a fun adventure it was.

I took a 1700 word story that I wrote back in high school and converted it into a "live" novella length tale told through the main character's blog.

With the story being told in real time as if Peter O'Mallick, a young man who discovers he was born with a bizarre "death curse" were a real person blogging, all I really knew when I began was that the story was going to end about 6 months later and in a specific way. I started it on January 18, 2006 and the final post was Oct 24, 2006, so I ended up stretching the tale into 10 months, partly because so many other plot elements ended up getting added to the story along the way that I had to wrap them up before the story could conclude.

Here's the first post:

It’s over. I can’t believe it. Sarah won’t speak to me. It’s as if she blames me for her father’s death sentence.

I can’t say it’s a new feeling, though. It’s like all my life death has consumed the people in my life. First my parents, then my best friend, now Sarah’s dad.

I’ve been where Sarah is now, but she won’t let me help her -- hell, she’s not even talking to me.
Ever since her father announced to the family that he had an inoperable cancer so far advanced that the doctors were giving him a 50-50 chance of living beyond one more month, she stopped talking to me, refused to see me and ignores my phone calls.

It’s been four weeks now. Four long, painful, horrible weeks. I think I’m going to die. I wish I was dead, actually, like so many of the people I’ve cared about.

Our school’s guidance counselor suggested that I start this blog in order to try dealing with it.

So here I am, typing, trying to come to terms with it. But I don’t want to write about how I feel -- I keep stopping and just sit here smashing my fingers down on the keyboard. I want to smash my fists down on the keyboard. I want to break something, smash something, throw my computer monitor through the fucking window.

This is bullshit.

I even tried audio-posting the first few posts in my "Prelude to A Scream" podcast. You can listen to this post and the next few (slightly edited from written blog to audio-blog format) here.

The story begins with a love-sick Peter O'Mallick harping on about his girlfriend refusing to speak with him. Once he begins using the blog as therapy to deal with this stress and some other stresses in his life, he starts revealing more details about why he believes he is cursed, and the reader begins to see a pattern emerging which support his belief.

Throughout the posts written between January 18, 2006 and October 24, 2006 there were lots of characters, plot twists and sub-plots that I never originally anticipated. And THAT was one of the cool things about writing a "live" story in that fashion.

One of the other really interesting things for me as a writer was that I had people leaving comments (some real people who I emailed to ensure they knew Peter was fictional, and some friends and other bloggers who were playing along entirely unscripted) -- not knowing what the comments were going to be, I actually had Peter react to some of them.

In fact, there was a "sort-of" scripted moment when, for a fund-raiser for Hamilton Literacy Council, I auctioned off a chance for someone to be killed off by Peter O'Mallick's death curse. For that, the "winner" participated by agreeing to begin taunting Peter in comments left on the blog. That was about the extent of it -- I told the winner (a blogger who happens to be named Pete who is now a buddy of mine) that his death would involve a camera (he's a photographer) and what day it would happen. Other than that, the whole death and taunting was ad lib.

Peter reacted to the negative comments, which got pretty ugly, and then had the following dream about his death. The next day, Peter realizes it actually happened when he sees a post about the other blogger actually dying -- he killed someone through the internet.

The whole experience of rolling out a story in real time in this fashion and reacting to input from readers as the story was unfolding was a lot of fun. It was a neat blend of writing and improv. I'd love to try it again some day, though, admittedly, it took a great deal of effort and work.

I'm actually surprised more writers haven't tried something similar -- the ability to tell a story in real-time and allow the readers to help the tale unravel and potentially affect the direction the story ends is fascinating to me.

I have since written the sequel to this novella and have attempted to package it into a novel-length work with the first third being a slightly revised version of the blog (to protect the innocence of the real commenters, for example), and the next two thirds to be what happens next.

In any case, I've removed the header banner from my blog, but am leaving the story up there. It's pretty much a first draft, which is kind of a scary thing to be putting online. (I usually never submit a story to an editor without having first re-written it half a dozen times) But for a first draft it's not all that bad, if I can say so myself. And I'm rather proud of the intriguing and twisting tale I was able to spin in that "first draft" release of the tale.

One, Two, Three, Four - Monsters Walking Cross The Floor

My son and I just watched Feist's appearance on Sesame Street doing a parody version of her most popular song.

Absolutely brilliant with such cute re-adapted lyrics as: "One, two, three, four, monsters walking 'cross the floor" and "One, two, three, four, chickens just back from the shore." I love it.

"Are you counting, counting with me?
One less than five; one more than three."

Can you tell I'm proud to be part of The Sesame Street Generation, as my blogger buddy Lime stated so brilliantly a few weeks ago?

Here is the video on YouTube.

Digital Sheep

Here's a ten minute keynote speech at Web 2 Expo delivered by Chris Brogan, author of Trust Agents.

This is a wonderfully short and useful talk about social media. I particularly enjoyed the one question Brogan asked which seemed to not get the response intended. "What is more sad than making digital sheep?" Perfectly stated, I thought. It's a beautiful play on words and reference to Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? with it's human-looking and human acting androids without empathy or feelings. It so perfectly captures the way that some companies and marketing efforts are using Twitter and other social media in a non-personal and non-humanity level sort of way.

Here are some other great key point that Brogan makes:

- "You should be listening far more than you should be worrying about what to say." [Which is pretty cool to consider that what's important in face to face conversation is ALSO important in social networking dialogues]

- And quoting from Emerson, says: "Go where there is no path and leave a trail."

Check it out, and if you gain something from it, you'll likely want to check out the book Trust Agents, which I quite enjoyed and learned a lot from.

Here Comes An Interesting Concept

Here's an interesting article by Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody.

Shirky makes some very astute observations about the nature of change, particularly driving home change and how it has affected physical bookstores. He makes some points that I'm certainly some booksellers would find offensive, but he definitely offers some good food for thought on the value, particularly the social value of the local bookstore.

"The local bookstore creates all kinds of value for its community, whether its providing community bulletin boards, putting rocking chairs in the kids section, hosting book readings, or putting benches out in front of the store. Local writers, harried parents, couples on dates, all get value from a store’s existence as a inviting physical location, value separate from its existence as a transactional warehouse for books."
- excerpt from Local Bookstores, Social Hubs & Mutualization by Clay Shirky

That's just a fun teaser blurb.

Go read Shirky's full article. It's definitely worth a read and definitely worth applying some further thought to.

52 Books

I recently finished listening to Six Pixels of Separation Podcast 176 (also Media Hacks #19) -- this episode is a conversation between Mitch Joel and Julian Smith (authors of Six Pixels of Separation, and Trust Agents -- two great books I read this year)

There are many moments in the conversation that are NSFW, mostly because Julian has a tendency be prolific with the use of four letter words -- that's just his style -- but, as always, there are some very thought-provoking concepts tossed about between the two of them.

One of the cooler things in the dialogue was Julian's mention of the 52 book challenge that he has taken for the past several years. Simply, his desire was to read a book a week for a year, and he talks about his continued attempts to do so.

That's just plain cool.

A couple of years ago, I tried to figure out how many books I actually read in a year and so kept a quick and simple journal of the books I'd read, the date I finished reading them and any thoughts I felt were relevant to jot down. It has been useful to look back on the list, particularly whenever people ask me to note a favourite -- this simple list helps fire off memory triggers.

Though I'm a gigantic book lover, I'm also a very slow reader. So my average annual book count ranges between 30 and 40 books per year. Not quite the 52 that Julian was shooting for, but something that I believe is a decent number, particularly for this slow reader.

One interesting point -- annually, I might read about 40 books per year. But annually I buy about three to four times as many (of course, those include books I buy as gifts, but could explain why my "to read" pile is so high that I often don't actually pick up and read a book I bought until several years later.

A decent problem to have, I suppose.

Weathering The Digital Storm

The editors of The Mark did a phone interview with me the other day asking me pointed questions regarding the subject of my article "The Future of Publishing is Here" and embedded a wonderful montage of audio clips about my speculation of the effect that the digital landscape might have on the book industry.

They did a wonderful job of encapsulating a 10 minute conversation into a juicy little 2 minute chunk in which I make some pretty bold statements about how I see digital actually benefiting the book industry rather than destroying it. Being the avid book lover, I, of course, couldn't help slipping in the mention of two books -- Chris Anderson's book Free: The Future of a Radical Price as well as one of my favourite new authors, Terry Fallis and his book The Best Laid Plans.

The audio clip opens with me saying: "Digital is here to stay, but that doesn't not necessarily mean books are gone," and going on from there to speculate about the huge potential the book industry is facing. Notice that I say potential and not Apocalypse.

The embedded audio player appears near the top of the article -- go have a listen if you can stand listening to my optimistic viewpoints.

HNT - iPhone Pics

Got an iPhone 3GS this week.

Thought my Palm Treo was useful and easy to use, but this iPhone is really something else.

Simple. Easy. Cool.

Could go on for days talking about it, but I'm still in discovery model, overwhelmed with all the great features.

For now, just going to post a picture of Alexander and I at bed-time. During the time we normally read, we used my iPhone to pay with some Disney apps and watch short cartoons. We won't make that a habit because we both love reading regular fun kids books for our nightly storytime, but it was still pretty darn cool.


The pictures the iPhone normally takes are clear and crisp and wonderful -- these are a bit blurry because they're the first and so far only self-pics I've taken on the iPhone - I was still trying to figure out how to hold it for a self-pic.

(Last week's HNT was taken on my Palm Treo -- admittedly, that pic is nicer, but the "trigger" on my Palm was easier to get to for a self-pic)

The Lost Children of Academia

"The lost children of academia." It sounds like the tagline for a cheesy b-grade movie about spirits haunting a hundred-year-old campus building and picking off tenured faculty one by one.

But it's a reality I've slowed uncovered since first moving from the "trade" side of book retailing and into an academic/campus retail environment.

- From my article in Canadian Bookseller magazine Volume 4 - 2009

That's how my latest article in Canadian Bookseller magazine opens and is a subject that has been milling around in my head for several years now. In 2006 I was an "outsider" to the campus side of book retailing, and though I came with plenty of years of bookselling experience, I was to discover there's a whole new world of bookselling out there with regards to the campus experience.


And I don't just mean the backwards and twisted world of textbooks. That's a whole different ballgame and I'm not going to go there no lest I get all sidetracked and on my "this needs to be changed" soapbox.

Just focusing on the general books or "trade" book side of the business, it's still an interestingly different game, particularly since trade booksellers in campus stores have three main audiences to attempt to please: faculty, campus staff and students.

Talk about a broad spectrum.

Talk about huge challenges for the booksellers on campus.

But talk about opportunity.

My article looks at the differences, but more importantly, looks at the similarities between campus booksellers and other independent and chain bookstores out there and attempts to help campus booksellers recognize their strengths and benefit from networking opportunities and resources that exist for them.

If you don't already read Canadian Bookseller magazine and you're a bookseller, you should. The latest issue not only has this article I wrote, but plenty of great content geared specifically for booksellers and book nerds in Canada. Not that it wouldn't interest people outside our great country, but it is geared towards bookselling north of the 49th parallel.

About The Mark

No, I'm not like that freaky character in Seinfeld who refers to himself in third person as "The Mark" -- I'm talking about Canada's daily online forum for news, commentary and debate . . .

The Mark - News & Perspectives Daily

I was recently asked to submit articles to The Mark -- they recruit contributors using two criteria: professional credibility and a connection to Canada.

What I like about the articles on this online news digest/forum is that they are less than 1000 words and are relatively digestible chunks of thought and perspective for today's reader.

My first article is called The Future of Publishing is Here and it debuted yesterday.

The "summary" phrase for the article is: Print on demand supplies books almost instantly while lowering costs, allowing local bookstores to compete with the Amazons of the world.

I could describe what this essay is about, but it's only 700 words -- you might as well just go read it yourself.

Here's my author bio page on The Mark. For it, they used a photo that my buddy and talented photographer Greg Roberts took several years ago when I was in need of some serious "author" pictures.

Photo by Greg Roberts

The photo was taken on Hamilton Mountain in the spring of 2004 (I believe) on the side of the road near the West Fifth mountain access. I think it's cool that in the background you can see McMaster University, where I now spend a good deal of my time.

And since much of what I'll be writing about in my articles for The Mark will be based on my real-world experience as a bookseller rather than pulled from the eerie depths of my imagination and fears, I've opted to write under my full name Mark Leslie Lefebvre rather than the pseudonym of Mark Leslie which I adopt for my fiction.

It at least helps ME keep the non-fiction straight from the fiction pieces.

Types Of Writing Satisfaction

I have found that there are two main types of writing satisfaction for me.

One is the act of finishing actually composing something in words. IE, either finishing the first draft of a story or article for the first time, or if not at that point, then the moment when you have finally finished the last re-write and are satisfied with the piece you have written.

The other type of satisfaction is actually submitting the work to a market. This usually occurs after having researched a market and finding the perfect home for your piece. There's a real sense of completion at that point which is different than the sense of completion you get when you actually create a story or article. (Note on this -- about half the time I write something first, then try to find a home for it, and the other half of the time, I know the home the writing is intended for and I write the piece with that market in mind) But regardless of which way I do it, there's still a degree of satisfaction with actually submitting the pieces.

It reminds me of a quote I saw last week on Twitter attribted to Greg Daugherty and which I quite liked.

"Rejected pieces aren't failures; unwritten pieces are."
- Greg Daugherty

I'll take the concept and modify it a bit to get to the second level of satisfaction and offer the following:

"Rejected pieces aren't failures; unsubmitted pieces are."

I know it might sound strange, but my "writing time" is spent within these two main chunks of time. Writing and Submitting. There are various levels of satisfaction related to each. But they definitely compliment one another.

Of course, now that I think about it, there are two other types of satisfaction related to the latter stages in writing -- they would be the satisfaction of making the sale, or having the work accepted by an editor and then the satisfaction of actually seeing the work "in print." I use the traditional "in print" phrase regardless of whether or not the work actually appears on a printed piece of paper, particularly given the fact that there are many electronic or online markets for writing lately and that in the last year, 3 of the 10 writing sales I made were to online markets.

Of course, another interesting factor related to the satisfaction is how each level of satisfaction builds upon the previous. There's an interesting sense of milestone accomplishment at each stage.

WRITING --> SUBMISSION --> ACCEPTANCE --> PUBLICATION

None of the later stages, of course, mean as much without the previous ones.

And while the satisfaction of the later stages can be large, they don't come without a huge degree of work and effort at the beginning. I'm trying to determine if the effort of work in the WRITING and SUBMISSION phase makes the level of satisfaction in the ACCEPTANCE and PUBLICATION phases any greater. And in all honesty, while it is VERY satisfying to have something I worked really hard at published, there are plenty of pieces of writing that I didn't spend much time on that I'm just as satisfied with when they got published.

Similarly, there are stories I had accepted the first time I sent them out and other stories that took half a full dozen cycles of submission to get into print. The satisfaction comes, I believe, in finding the "match" between story and editor.

And on a similar note, while the stages can build upon one another, because of the representation of more work and more effort, the later stages can also mean nothing without the work.

That is to say that, if, for some bizarre reason, I had something published that I didn't actually write (ie, perhaps been given credit for something I didn't do), it wouldn't have ANY meaning to me. Or if I wrote a bit of fluff that was published without actually being accepted, it doesn't mean as much (ie, this blog post didn't have to be vetted by an editor before it was published, so while there is satisfaction in the writing and submission of it, there's limited joy in the publication of it because there was no hurdle to overcome to make it to publication . . .

. . . of course, on that note, when it comes to writing that isn't vetted by a third party, such as blog posts, podcasts, etc where I can simply PUSH my content out to the world without having first had to convince an editor it was worthy of being shared, the satisfaction might come not from having achieved publication, but rather from acceptance of readers (ie, either the fact that the writing HAS actually been read and potentially commented on, etc)

That inverts my process a bit perhaps to something like this:

WRITING --> SUBMISSION --> PUBLICATION --> ACCEPTANCE

Hmm, and if you can't tell that this post (like most of my blog posts) is a rough draft that I simply compose then push out, then let it be known that I'm working out this simple concept as I write it, because I just realized that I completely forgot the 5th level of satisfaction from this writer's perspective. The CONSUMPTION and reaction of readers. I'll call this level REVIEW because it's shorter, even thought it doesn't necesarrily mean a "review" in the traditional sense of a "book review", but rather the fact that the writing is reviewed or consumed and potentially reacted upon. Again, it might be a traditional "review" or merely comments made by readers, or even the knowledge that it is being consumed (in the case of number of copies sold, number of times something is downloaded, subscribed to, etc)

So here are the 5 levels of satisfaction I have stumbled into through this meandering "first draft."

WRITING --> SUBMISSION --> ACCEPTANCE --> PUBLICATION --> REVIEW

Hmm. I might be on to something here. In any case, I'm satisfied with having toyed with these concepts and written something that I believe has at least a bit of merit. (This post has been a great warm-up writing exercise for an article that I plan on working on for a traditional market for my work) While I don't gain much satisfaction from the submission or publication process (hitting "PUBLISH POST" is easy and publication is instant, I might perhaps gain some satisfaction if this post inspires comments or reaction from readers)

So to that effect, to all the writers out there, let me know your thoughts. Am I being too simple? Too complex? What do you think? Similarly, readers -- what are your thoughts about this POV of the process from one writer?

Don't Know The Title Or The Author? Cool.

I've been a bookseller for almost two decades now. One of the most challenging (and yet most fun) aspect of being a bookseller is when a customer comes in and knows just a tiny bit about the book they're looking for. IE, they know part of the title or author's name or perhaps just the colour of the book or the fact that the author was on CBC radio or Oprah just a few days ago and a basic concept of what the book is about.

Putting your investigative bookseller hat on and doing your best to find that customer's book is one of the truly absolutely joys of bookselling.

Sure, you can approach it with frustration and get angry with the customer for being ill-prepared. But seriously, it's simple when a customer comes in and asks for the new Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer book -- no challenge there, no use of actual brain power or real bookselling skills. Your average big box warehouse or WalMart with extremely limited book knowledge can do that. And yes, I love being able to answer the easy questions, but I also quite enjoy the fun challenge of helping turn the lost and confused customer into one who leaves my store satisfied and with more knowledge and perhaps even the book they came in asking about in hand.

That's why I loved Josh Christie's recent blog post No Title? No Author? No Problem!

Back in the early days the challenge was a bit more difficult. I have evolved over the years into using Google to help me with such requests now, as well as various industry resources such as lists offered by Ingram and Bowker, etc. But Josh offers a truly wonderful resource on his blog, crediting Saikat Basu of MakeUseOf.com in this post and points customers to it as a very useful reference.

Something else I like to do is keep a handy list of other booksellers within a 1 hour drive of my store, particularly specialty retailers -- and rather than have the customer leave without any answer, I provide them with contact information for another local bookseller that I believe might be able to help them. For example, if I determine that the book they were searching for is out of print and I don't have it listed as available through my in-store Espresso Book Machine, I send them to a local used bookstore -- if the book is a business title, I send them to a local bookstore that specializes in business books.

That way, the customer can at least have left my store with a few good leads, which might be more than what they came in with.

HNT - Christmas (Lights) Came Early This Year

With the weather this past weekend having been in the high teens on both Saturday and Sunday, I thought it might be a good idea to climb up on the roof and get the Christmas lights and decorations up.

It sure beat last year when I was trying to scramble along the patches of snow and ice on the roof to get the job done.



The day's events began as all good Saturday mornings, should -- my son and I taking a trip over to Canadian Tire, where we acquired a few "must have" essentials for our day's work. The Christmas wreath behind me is one of the items we picked up.