May 11, 2024

Man, this business of self-publishing is complicated. My book will be somewhere between 325 and 400 pages, depending on how many words-per-page are supported on the printing template. I've been studying two different paperbacks as examples: "The Orchard" by Charles L. Grant, which I've previously mentioned and which has a low word-per-page average of 250-300, which makes it extremely readable, and then there is "The Stand" by Stephen King, which has about 400-450 words per page (usually 450), which is a lot (the average paperback has 350), but with "The Stand", the wpp has to be high because the book is already 1200 pages; think how long it would be if the wpp was 350! It would be too thick to bind. So there are all these technical considerations. You have to know about something called a "gutter". That is the extra margin on the side of the page that meets the binding, and it needs to be spaced far enough away so that the words don't get crammed down into the binding. You can't open a thick book, such as The Stand, as wide as you can a thin book. This means your words need to be farther away from the binding on the inner margin. That's your "gutter", as they call it, and I am just learning all this stuff. My total word count will be somewhere between 140,000 and 150,000, and I am hoping they (whichever platform I use) will allow at least 400 words per page, otherwise I'll have a book that's over 400 pages long, which won't be cost-friendly.

My main concern at the moment is converting a Google Doc to a 6 x 9 PDF format, which is what is required for most self-publishing platforms. If I can do that, and not mess up in setting the margins and the gutter, etc., then I'll be in business. I've gotten good at formatting, which (as previously noted) is simply line spacing, paragraph spacing, and indenting, and - as also previously noted - it's kind of an art form because you can use different breaks, in sentences and paragraphs, to create tension, or comedy or a surprise. You don't wanna use them too often, but you don't have to have uniform spacing throughout. I've got the first 100 pages formatted, so I'm almost one-third of the way done. Then I'll hopefully be able to do all of this "conversion" stuff on my Chromebook. I don't have experience with things like "exporting" files, but I guess it can't be that difficult or Amazon KDP wouldn't have a million authors, though I have been reading "upload horror stories" in my Googling of how to do it.

The good news is that once I learn it I'll be off to the races, with the first book out and the second one needing one last revision. I'm also working on my cover for the first one. Canva is a pretty cool site. I've been experimenting with their templates and imagery. Basically, though, I've been praying to The Book Gods, because I've worked so hard on this thing and I really wanna get it out there. I've had an absolute blast writing it, and that of course is the fun part. Even editing is fun. But yeah, every day, it's : "Oh, Book Gods, help me convert to 6 x 9" or "Oh, Book Gods, help me align my title on the spine". There's so much doggone stuff to learn.

In music news, I''ve been watching Steve Vai videos and I can't believe what he can do with a guitar. He's like a magician. You can barely believe your eyes. Your ears are a different story. While his playing ability is beyond belief, it exists in the context of his music, which is not my thing, except for two pieces, both available on Youtube in videos you have to see: "For the Love of God", performed live with orchestra (on the SteveVaiHimself channel), and "Teeth of the Hydra", in which Vai astounds you by playing a three-headed guitar monstrosity, jumping between a trio of necks, one of which is a bass, and playing all three parts in one composition. In the realm of overall extreme technique, (not just fast alternate picking), I know of no one who can do what he does. However, for the ultimate combination of playing ability, the all-important musicality, and (the most crucial component) songwriting talent, give me Eric Johnson. He is truly off the charts, and so is his music.

I watched a Shawn Lane video that is so fast that the dexterity makes Yngwie look like Mark Farner. Lane was likely the fastest player ever, who used alternate picking and not tapping. I mean, watch the video. It's ridiculous, like hummingbird notes. Just go to Youtube and enter "Shawn Lane sick lick".

I actually saw Shawn Lane when he was just starting out. This is way back, on October 4, 1979 (according to Google). I went with Grimsley to The Starwood to see what was billed as Black Oak Arkansas but was really Jim Dandy and some hired guns, one of which was 16-year-old Shawn Lane. No one knew him at the time, including us, and he isn't well known even now. This was before the explosion of "shred guitar" which took off after the advent of EVH, when Mike Varney put out those Metal Massacre compilations in the early '80s. I saw the real Black Oak Arkansas at the California Jam, so this Starwood show didn't compare, but I always remembered the kid on guitar because he played incredibly fast. From my Googling, I learned that he'd only been playing for three years when we saw him, but he was a piano prodigy before that. Lane died in 2003 at the age of 40 from the effects of lung disease brought on by psoriasis, but no one ever played faster. The speedy Paul Gilbert called him "terrifying". Again, it's not my thing, but these videos are worth watching just to see what musicians are capable of in the technical sense. And speaking of Paul Gilbert, watch his video by going to Youtube and entering "Paul Gilbert Crazy Solo". It's more hummingbird guitar, almost comparable to the speed of Shawn Lane, but as with Lane, there isn't a song to go with it. Nor does the guitar tone impress, but holy smokes how can anyone play that fast?

Now, for music I do enjoy (and in keeping with our recent theme of progressive rock), I'm listening to the self-titled debut album from Hatfield and the North. The late Pat Forducchenburger was a big fan of these guys when this album came out in 1974, and he enthused even more over their second release, "The Rotter's Club" in 1975. At the time, I found Hatfield too jazzy for my taste. The same was true, later on, of National Health. Both bands featured many of the same players, including the great Dave Stewart, whom I'm embarrassed to say I'd never heard of until 2020, when I discovered Egg on my own initiative. All I knew about Hatfield was that Richard Sinclair of Caravan played bass. But now, because of Egg, I've become a huge Dave Stewart fan and I buy everything he's on. Ditto guitarist Phil Miller. 

Egg, Hatfield and National Health all have interchangeable musicians, with drummer Pip Pyle in many of the latter two lineups. I also learned about Alan Gowen in this way. He was another great keyboardist who founded the band Gilgamesh, but died young from leukemia.

Anyhow, Hatfield and the North is our progressive band for the day. I've also been listening to "Au-dela du delire" by the French group Ange, and though it's an acquired taste, I don't think any progressive collection is complete without it. And, as a bonus, the album title reminded me of the show "Dellaventura" starring the great Danny Aiello. Do you guys like him? His show premiered in the Fall of 1997, right after I moved in with my Mom, so it will always remind me of that time. "Dellaventura" only ran for half a season, it was cancelled after eleven episodes, but Mom and I loved it, especially Aiello's tag line at the end: "If you need me, I'll be around." Danny Aiello passed away a few years ago, but I imagine he's still around because we need him more than ever, and after I was reminded of his show by the Ange album, I Youtubed it and - lo and behold - found that someone had videotaped all eleven episodes of "Dellaventura" all those years ago, and had saved the tapes and uploaded the episodes to Youtube. So, I'm in the process of watching them. They take me back to 1997, an amazing time in my life. I like to think Mom is watching with me....

I also watched another movie, Hitchcock's "I Confess", starring Montgomery Clift and Anne Baxter. "A Place in the Sun" got me on a Monty kick and he's great here as a priest wrongly accused of murder. The actual killer confesses his crime to Monty as the movie opens, in a confession booth, and because of his vows, Monty can't (and won't) go to the cops. And because the killer wore a priest's cloak and was seen by two girls leaving the scene, Quebec detective Karl Malden thinks Monty did it. Malden finds out about a secret Monty's been hiding, of a past affair with Anne Baxter (a politician's wife). Malden thinks the affair is ongoing, but it isn't. It lasted only until the war. Monty wasn't a priest then, nor did he know she was married. Baxter still loves him in spite of her husband, but he's 100% committed to his vows. We are only shown this through his eyes. Monty never states his feelings about any of this, but he's such a tremendous actor that we get it. It's a perfect storm of circumstances that all comes together to get him charged with the murder of a man who's been blackmailing Anne Baxter.

I've owned this film on DVD for about fifteen years and have seen it perhaps five times. It's a perfect movie in which every scene counts, and there are no throwaway lines of dialogue. To me, Anne Baxter was as great as they come (All About Eve), and here, we revisit the eternal and obsessive pull of True Love once again. Her love for Monty at first causes him to be accused of murder, and he's willing to go to The Chair before he will implicate her in an affair which isn't what Malden thinks it is. Hitchcock shows them in "dreamy" flashbacks, before Monty became a priest, in gauzy, black and white slow-motion photography that reminded me of David Lynch, who I think was hugely influenced by 1950s melodrama. As we've noted, the theme of obsessive love is explored in many of his films, and we also saw it in "A Place in the Sun." The word obsession usually has a negative connotation, but in films such as this, a question is posed: when the obsession is True Love, must it necessarily be a bad thing, or is it caused by a pull known only to the spirit, the pull of an Unbreakable Bond as in Romeo and Juliet or Sleeping Beauty or any of the great love stories, a pull that cannot be denied? This is partially the theme here. The other part is dedication to vows and ideals. Monty knows who the killer is from the start, but as he tells Malden, "I can't say". As a priest, he literally cannot reveal the killer's name, nor that he knows anything about him. Speaking of Montgomery Clift, they need to release "Raintree County" on DVD. That was the movie during which he had his horrible car accident, and you can see the "before and after" on his face. It's also a great Southern saga, co-starring Elizabeth Taylor. I saw it once on TCM, and I've been looking for a copy ever since...

I don't have any 1989 news at the moment, though once this book is published (hopefully in August), we'll be full steam ahead on that subject. I'm concerned at the moment about a friend whom I haven't heard from in some time (more than six months), and whose phone number has changed or been discontinued and who hasn't been active on social media for over a year. I pray he is still with us...