They arrived today. One, I get to keep. I’ll be reviewing it in depth here on this site.

I’ve been charged with giving the other three to three people who will read the book and, as Chris says, “speak their minds in… innovative and impressive ways” once they’ve read it.

So. Who among you is best suited for that? I mean, I can think of three people right off the bat, but those folks are so similar to me in mindset and attitudes that the result might be a little too similar to my own eventual review.

In other words, all of my good friends in the podcast-novelist game should sit this one out. I’ve got that covered.

I’m looking for three people to surprise me. Maybe you don’t know anything about the Free model of doing business and promotion. Maybe you think it’s ridiculous, the bane of society and a detriment to economic evolution. Maybe you’ve always thought this was a good idea, but wanted to understand it more before you jumped in and tried it yourself. Maybe you’re using it already, but in a way I’m not familiar with or would never have guessed.

Are you out there? E-mail me before July 7, 2009 and tell me a little bit about who you are and why you want to read “Free.” Tell me how you’ll talk about it once you’ve read it — on your blog, in an article, in a newspaper or on the radio or television, or some other way.

I’ll mail a hardcover copy of “Free” to each of you via UPS before July 9, 2009. Be sure to let me know when you receive it, and once you’ve read it, let me know where I (and Chris) can see what you’ve said about it.

That’s it! I’m looking forward to sharing “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” with you.

That’s when my wheels started turning, my friends.

Let’s try something together that will help boost sales and raise awareness of the book. I’d like each of you to visit your local public library and ask if they have “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” in their inventory.

If they do, awesome — check it out and take a picture of yourself at the library with the book and send the picture to me.

If they don’t, ask them if they’ll order it for the library and hold it for you once it arrives… then check it out and take a picture of yourself at the library with the book, as above, and send the picture to me.

The goal, of course, is to get “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” on the shelves of every library in America and the world (school libraries count!), and to check it out so that it has a history of being read at that library, since they will “discard” books that don’t have circulation. Think you can help with that?

Here’s what I’ll do to make it fun:

• For every ten pictures I receive proving that a library has stocked “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era,” I will randomly select one person to receive a free one-year subscription to my serial fiction webzine, “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights.”
• For every fifty pictures received, I’ll randomly select one person to get a free one-year subscription to “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights” and an autographed copy of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era.”

Some Rules

Because the goal is to get the book in as many library systems as possible, you can do this more than once… but keep in mind we’re not counting individual library branches but library systems. For example, the Denver Public Library system services many different library branches.

Also note that your picture must show proof that the book is part of the library system and that you checked it out… no fair just taking your own copy of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” into the library and taking a picture, you scamp.

This campaign will run at least until I receive ten pictures… if there’s lots of success, we’ll keep it up! Please spread the word about this campaign, any way you can.

Get to it! Go visit your local library and get “Brave Men Run,” or get ‘em to get it for you!

Here’s the where and when:

• Eclectic Books
  39520 Murrieta Hot Springs Road
  Murrieta, CA 92563
  +1 (951) 445-4320
  Map
• Saturday, July 11, 2009
• 2:00 PM Pacific Time
• Facebook Event Page

This is a new independent bookstore selling both new and used books plus items from local creators. There’s lots of seating and they even have free wifi! They’re making a leap of faith with little ol’ me, so if you plan to attend, please give them a call at 1-951-445-4320 and let them know, the sooner the better!

What I’ll Be Doing

I’ll be reading selections from “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era,” “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights,” and my latest short story, a Sovereign Era tale called “The World Revolves Around You” that will debut at this event.

I’ll also talk about how authors and other creative types can build world-wide audiences to promote and sell their creative endeavors, taking questions from the audience and of course signing books!

Spread the Word!

If you’re in the Southern California area or know someone who is and who might be interested, download the flyer, print it up and pass it around! I appreciate it!

After the Signing

There will absolutely be an “after-something.” I’ll find out from the proprietors what’s around there, and anyone who wants to is welcome to join me for some food and whatnot. How often do I get to see you guys? Let’s make a day of it and have some fun.

See you there!

He made this video for me… at first I thought, hey, that’s cool, James went to the trouble to record a little congratulations message about the launch of my new serial fiction webzine, “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights.”

But… I think that was just an excuse. Something’s up with James Melzer, and frankly, I’m concerned.

I’ll let the video speak for itself. I guess we’ll learn more on June 17, 2009, but between you and me, I hope it’s nothing serious.

Now, James and I speak on the phone (or Skype or what have you) infrequently, but when we do, we tend to go on for a while. When we talked in the official capacity for this interview, that pattern held. However, the Unmortem Report is intended to be a fifteen to twenty minute podcast, and we gabbed for much longer than that.

Solution? The “edited for time” version of the interview is about twenty five minutes long and can be found at James’ site and in the feed for his podcast. This bonus episode of Sonitotum features the “director’s cut” of the interview — over seventy minutes of conversation!

We get into some fun stuff about my creative process and the creative process in general. I had a blast! You will, too, I think. If you enjoy this episode, please consider subscribing to James Durham’s FETIDUS - The Damned Heir podcast novel and his Unmortem Report, included in the same feed.

Me, I’m celebrating for a few reasons.

First and foremost: J.C. Hutchins is a friend — and I don’t mean just an Internet-friend / see ya on Twitter and Facebook kind of friend, I mean my life is better for his being part of it — and I love to see my friends succeed.

Second: “Personal Effects: Dark Art” is a damn fine book. No, I’m not just saying that because “Hutch” is a buddy. I’d be doing my friend a disservice if I misrepresented my opinion of his work — I’m not his mother; I don’t put everything he does up on the refrigerator door with a gold star. Plus, what good would my own word be if I gave you anything other than my honest opinion? ‘Nuff said.

My Review

I had the privilege of reading a pre-release electronic version of “Personal Effects: Dark Art.” The tale could be shelved in the Mystery / Thriller section, but it gradually turns into… something else. J.C. Hutchins wrote the book, the concept and setting is co-designed by alternate marketing and gaming guru Jordan Weisman… the guy who brought you the “I Believe in Harvey Dent” campaign to promote “The Dark Knight” movie.

“Personal Effects: Dark Art” features art therapist Zach Taylor — he’s a young guy, probably not too long out of whatever schooling one must endure to become an art therapist, and Hutchins depicts Taylor’s relative inexperience and youth with a delicate and sympathetic touch. I got the feeling Zach Taylor wasn’t too far removed from being the one in the shrink’s couch.

Taylor works in a facility that’s not unlike an underground version of Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum minus the green-haired clown: Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital, otherwise known as the Brink. This is an institute of mental health built into the side of an abandoned quarry — most of the place is actually underground. I’ve visited people in real-world psychiatric hospitals, folks. These places are not fun under the most sunny of circumstances. To build one with no windows takes a creative approach to healing that could only be found in fiction. Thankfully.

After a breakthrough with a patient gets Taylor some publicity, he’s given a new challenge: a blind serial killer. How do you use art to break through someone’s psychosis when the patient can’t even see the canvas? With the pressure on from antagonists in his personal and professional life, Taylor’s got to figure it out.

Naturally, there’s more to the plot of “Personal Effects: Dark Art,” but the idea of an art therapist trying to treat a blind killer several floors below the surface of the earth should be enough to get you going. I mean, seriously… you have to want to know more with a premise like that!

Characters That Live On and Off the Page

The mystery is compelling and thrilling and ultimately disturbing… but none of that stuff works unless you have characters you can care about. Zach Taylor is interesting enough, but Hutchins has taken care to surround him with supporting characters each deserving of their own books. His girlfriend is a hipster computer geek and video game columnist. His brother is a reckless emo-hippie who uses the cityscape as his own personal monkeybars like a skateboarder sans skateboard. Even minor characters like old family friends are defined with selective details that make reading “Personal Effects: Dark Art” an immersive experience I enjoyed a great deal.

An Alternate Reality Experience

Speaking of immersion… the novel is only part of the “Personal Effects: Dark Art” experience. While the text of the book stands on its own, Hutchins and Weisman have created a world that extends beyond the pages and tickles at the edges of our own. The book includes physical documents — “personal effects,” get it? — belonging to the characters. You can hold hospital admission papers, funeral cards, notes and other documents in your hands for a tactile element almost unique in fiction.

It goes beyond that. The book give you opportunities to explore. If a phone number is in the book, try calling it and see what happens. Visit the web sites the characters talk about. Dig around. There’s actually an entire secondary story happening in and around the events of “Personal Effects: Dark Art.” Let youself go far enough down the rabbit hole, and you may end up knowing more than the characters themselves.

Since I read a .pdf edition of the book, I haven’t had a chance to play with the “extra-literary” elements of “Personal Effects: Dark Art.” I’m looking forward to the book showing up in my post office box this week and really going to town.

I want to stress, though: you don’t need to do anything more than read the novel to enjoy “Personal Effects: Dark Art.” The extra stuff is just that — extra. “Personal Effects: Dark Art” is well worth the read, all on its own, and you should go buy it right now.

Video Testimonials

Like me, J.C. Hutchins’ roots are in the world of podcasting… specifically the subset of podcasters who have released their novels and short stories in podcast form. To help promote “Personal Effects: Dark Art,” Hutch recruited many of the “stars” of podcast fiction to record a little video testimonial — a “vlurb” — and I was honored and pleased to be part of that!

Check it out:

Featured in the video are the following authors in order of appearance:

• Philippa Ballantine — Chasing the Bard, Digital Magic, Weather Child
• Scott Sigler — New York Times bestselling author of: Infected, Contagious, Ancestor
• Seth Harwood — Author of: Jack Wakes Up, Jack Palms 2 & 3, Young Junius
• Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff — Author of: Number One with a Bullet, Shadow Falls, Diary of a Madman
• Christiana Ellis — Author of: Nina Kimberly the Merciless, Space Casey
• Matt Wallace — Parsec Award-winning author of The Next Fix, The Failed Cities Monologues
• James Melzer — Author of: The Zombie Chronicles - Escape
• Stephen Eley — Editor of Escape Pod, and publisher of the horror fiction podcast Pseudopod
• Mark Jeffrey — Author of: The Pocket and the Pendant, The Two Travelers
• Mur Lafferty — Author of: Playing for Keeps, the Heaven series, co-founder of Pseudopod
• Phil Rossi — Author of: Crescent, Tales from the Vault, Eden
• Matthew Wayne Selznick — Author of: Brave Men Run, Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights

Check out all of their work — they’re all incredible talents (even that last guy…) If you want to see more on-screen testimonial from some big-name authors, actors and horror luminaries, you can see a lot more vlurbs on J.C. Hutchins’ website.

Go get “Personal Effects: Dark Art” by J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman!

We were in the 7-11 to play Earthshaker, our favorite pinball game. Back then, convenience stores had arcade games, you see. It was her turn, and I looked over at the Los Angeles Times and saw this:

I remember Theresa and I were dismayed and offended by what was going on in China. I also remember looking at that picture of one desperate man holding off the storm, however temporarily, and thinking, “I get that.”

(Insert cheers and hosannahs and cries of “It’s about time” here.)

Why the Change?

What can I say? I’m always experimenting, always trying things out… and I always try to listen to my audience when they’re kind enough to offer their opinion.

The ads I served on this site were from a site called Project Wonderful — an neat concept and very DIY / creator friendly. I checked out every single site of every single ad I allowed to appear, and believe me, I rejected many more. My intention with Project Wonderful was to accumulate enough income from those ads to turn around and serve some of my own. It took about eight months to earn $10.00. I burned through that in a weekend of “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights” advertising. That’s hardly worth it. So, no more banner ads on the right sidebar or on the footer of the page.

The ads I served in the RSS feed of my blog were from good old Google Adsense. I’ve been enrolled in the AdSense program for many years and I’ve activated ads on various sites in various ways off and on now and then. I’ve earned just over $6.00 total in all that time. Let’s face it, no site I’ve ever run has been the kind of mega-ultra-SEO’ed traffic magnet you have to have to make any money from AdSense. So that’s done, no more, probably forever.

Then there were the ads in my Twitter stream. These were from a UK company called Magpie, and as with Project Wonderful, I personally checked out and vetting every single potential ad before they appeared. I rejected about three times as many ads as I approved, and the ads I approved only showed up in my Twitter stream (clearly marked with the #advert tag) once every twenty tweets. Even though the majority of you guys said, “hey, go for it” when I asked if I should try Magpie, great googley moogley did some of you complain and raise your indignant fists when those ads actually appeared! Ultimately, the infrequency of ads I felt comfortable running meant I barely made any money on them. I’ve canceled my Magpie account and didn’t make enough to cash out, so that’s done, too.

Honestly, as much as I value your opinion and I respect the folks who spit and hissed about my monetization efforts, the ultimate reason I’ve decided to eliminate unrelated, non-endorsed advertising as a source of income in this time when I really, really need sources of income is a simple one: ads aren’t worth the screen real estate they take up or the social capital they erode.

Other Models

As I intimated above, I am open to accepting advertising from people I know and respect whose products and services I can personally endorse. I don’t have any rates worked out or anything like that… every month, this site averages about 4,000 page views from 2,000 or so unique visitors who spend about two minutes here. If we know each other and get along and you’ve got something to advertise, tell me what that’s worth to you and we’ll figure something out.

Also, I’ve got a number of affiliate arrangements with companies and individuals I personally use or find worthwhile. I’ve moved all that stuff over to the Mall page — if you’re going to shop for books, movies, independent music, media downloads, writing software and pretty much everything else under the sun, please consider bookmarking this page and using the links that are there. I’ll get a little kickback — from four to fifty percent, depending on the service you use — every time you spend money from there. Don’t underestimate how much that could help me out while not taking anything away from you.

The primary monetization model I’m adopting is the one that matters most to me: neo-patronage. I make stuff, I do stuff… you pay me for the things I make and do… or you pay me to keep making and doing things in a general sense. In the coming weeks, I’ll be making some changes and additions on this site that will reflect my renewed commitment to that approach.

What Is Neo-Patronage?

The definition of neo-patronage found at my colleague Kristopher Young’s site, Another Sky Press is so clear, it’s Google’s number one search result for the term. You should check that out, and you should buy books from Another Sky Press.

I’m going to lift mightily from what Kris and company have already said, with my own take mixed in:

Neo-patronage is the practice of compensating an artist for works they’ve created and works they’ve yet to create. Through direct and easily executed payment methods made possible by PayPal and other systems, it’s simple and affordable for many individuals to contribute small amounts to the support of an artist’s creative endeavors. Unlike the classic one-to-one patronage of the Renaissance, under the neo-patronage many-to-one model patrons do not have control of an artist’s creative direction or the automatic right to ownership of everything the artist creates.

I’ve played with this in the past, but soon I’ll be rolling some things out on this site to emphasize this approach. While I haven’t worked it all out just yet, I’m planning a number of different ways and different levels folks can become patrons if they would like to do so.

For those who don’t want to support me through neo-patronage, the opportunity to hire my services or purchase my books, music and other creative products will still exist.

Stay Tuned

Watch the blog, Twitter and Facebook for announcements and new features as I work all this stuff out. As always, your ideas, comments and criticisms are not only welcome, they’re necessary to my process. Thanks, in advance, for your thoughtful engagement.

Well, the first of what will hopefully be many temporary and short-term gigs with the United States Department of Commerce Census Bureau ended on May 9th. I spent the next week getting my unemployed legs back and diving into client work that had taken an unfortunate but necessary back seat while I enjoyed gainful employment with Uncle Sam.

One of the first things I did was try to re-instate my unemployment insurance. No, I’m not a moocher, thank you very much. I’ve been paying unemployment insurance with every paycheck since 1985. You pay insurance so that it’s there when you need it. I need it.

Except… whoops! If your last job was as a government employee — and I was one for six weeks — you have to go through a whole different set of paperwork, and you can’t do it on-line. You have to print it out and (gasp!) fax or mail it in! I don’t know about you, but I can fill out a form on a website and click “submit” with great faith and confidence, but ask me to put something in an envelope and give it to the postman and I get very nervous. And our fax machine? About twenty years old. Plus, can’t you just imagine the fax machine on the other end? They must get reams of faxes!

I decided to fax the forms and mail them, just to cover my ass. Much to my surprise, I received my new claim form not four days later. Faith in System: Revived. Next check should arrive next week.

Of course, the dole doesn’t bring our household income up to the level to which we are accustomed, and by that, I mean “the level we need in order to stay out of the poorhouse.” So I invoiced my clients, something I had put off while I was making a regular paycheck those six weeks. I bet it made some of them happy… and it brought me a nice bit of padding. Now, I’m invoicing every two weeks so my bank doesn’t empty out and my clients’ banks don’t get broken. Should work out better for all concerned.

One other thing has been instrumental in helping my wife and I survive financially this month: “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights.” Membership subscriptions to the site, my new ongoing episodic serial fiction webzine that launched on May 1st (where have you been?), took care of about half our mortgage payment for the month. This is why I’m asking folks to pay for the fiction I put on that site. No joke: when you give me money in exchange for the words I write, it helps keep the roof over the heads of me, my wife, our two dogs, four cats, and turtle. I’m not running around buying video games and porn with that cash, believe me. Besides, you can get porn for free on the Internet… as I understand it, anyway.

Most of the last ten days, weekends included, have consisted of trying to balance the varying needs of four different clients while making time to write installments of “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights.” I’m trying to get two months ahead of schedule on “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights” so that I can also work on some other writing stuff… still trying..! I also just did my second-ever for-pay voice work, and some pro bono narration and voice acting for various podcasts has been done and needs to be done. Deadlines loom.

There are no less than four books I have read with the understanding that I will review them on this blog. I need to write those reviews. And post them, too — I bet the authors expect me to post them.

It hasn’t all be nose-to-grindstone, just mostly. I’ve allowed myself some relaxation time, mostly in the form of pulling my hair out over the NBA semi-finals games, but also by exercising (not enough), socializing briefly with a couple of friends, and spending at least a couple of hours straight with my wife every day.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Right now it’s after eleven at night, I know exactly what I have to do tomorrow (lots) and I don’t have much energy left to expend on tonight. So I’m writing this; saying hello to all of you.

Hello!

Postscript: a few days ago I got an idea for another blog. Stop me. Don’t let me do it. Or, subscribe to “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights” so that I can afford to pursue every creative whim that comes into my skull. There are two thousand of you that swing by this blog every month… that’d about do it for me if every one of you subscribed for a year. What say you?

Post-postscript: Yeah, I do pimp the shit out of “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights,” and it probably grates on some of you because I’m asking you to exchange coin for content. Bear with me. I’m the busker under the bridge, guitar case wide open at my feet, ready to play you a song. It’s a good one, I promise.

“Hey Everybody” is also your one-stop infotorium for all things J.C. Hutchins. If you’re not already closely watching this author, new media pioneer and creative hurricane, you really ought to subscribe to “Hey Everybody” and his new podcast fiction project, “Personal Effects: Sword of Blood.”

Enjoy the episode!