www.rscottbakker.com
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day: To be oblivious is to be heroic for so long as your luck holds.
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It’s supposed to be the other guy, that guy, the no-conscience shill who sees capital opportunities no matter where he turns. But no, it turns out I’m that bum. And now my name, the one I inherited from my grandfather, only to have rescinded when that all fell through, stranding me with the second, and a prescient mother who insisted I sign the ‘R’ on everything I did, leading to innumerable sideways comments, mostly from educators (because then, as now, I was big for my age), now my name, the little crane that has plucked me from every crowd, hauled my soul up by the hair every time I have sinned, has become computer code, commercial coordinates, pinning me like a butterfly, or better yet a beetle, too ugly to be decorative, yet calling out my wares all the same. Makes me feel webby.
I’ve gone on and on about how I needed a skull for Three Pound Brain, or at the very least a toupe, something to disguise my cerebral excesses, convince that steady stream of window shoppers that pass through these lobes (generally to flee), that I can actually write a ripping yarn as well. And now I’ve gone and done it. It’s the beta version, and I’m groping for quora, because this shit is like tear gas to me. It all feels obnoxious, like the real fifth element is greed. It all feels like I’m aping the moves of those far more graceful.
Forgive the semantic origami. Funny how tones come across you, how much defense you can pack into pixels on a screen. Art, like all great adaptations, fortifies.
On a different note, next Monday Three Pound Brain will feature an awesome post by Benjamin Cain, another soul bent on exploring the intersection between pulp culture and philosophical speculation on our incredible shrinking future. Think Spinoza, World War Z, and full-frontal Futurama. According to Ben, Nietzsche forgot to shoot God in the head…
Three Pound Brain 
Well, if you want reach beyond just your own circle…or is this simply for commercial endevour? Does that really match with you, or will income always be a side effect, even an accidental side effect of pursuing something else?
Looking past commercial endevour, well I imagine (maybe I’m wrong) alot of audience expect this sort of front. The professionalism of it is an affirmation. You wanna reach out to these guys, you don’t do it dressed in the rough. Even if the audience dresses in that exact same rough, lol!
That said I dunno if I see it from their angle, but such fronts seem static and cold. I know having a constant series of blog entries about minutae…well, it’d probably feel less like reaching out to another audience and more like becoming that audience. On the other hand, it brings things to life. As alot of other posters here have mentioned, even putting the aphorthingie of the day on to it’s front page would engender active life upon it. I’m looking at the Jim Butcher site as I speak.
Might be funny to create a fictional entity who’s exploits are blogged about on a regular basis there, who’s maybe called your PA or agent or something that seems book related. But given they are fictional – well, it gets more interesting than simply affirming.
On the nitty gritty: I don’t think the book scroller is intuitive. If I want the books on the left, I move my mouse to the left side of the screen – not the center.
Eh, now the above kinda looks to me an embaressment of me acting as if I know how to make money – except for the book scroller. On that, sorry, I’m just right!
Thanks, Callan! I have it set up to pick up TPB posts tagged UPDATE and LITERATURE, so it’ll only be as static as obsessive I happen to be with the wank shite.
That’s a clever mechanism! Seems bang on!
There’s room for both I think. Surely there must be something of the shill in every blind brain. Besides, we know that the TPB is where the REAL Scott goes to play.
As for the site itself, my favorite part is the wiki. Saves me from having to lug out Thousandfold and flip to the appendix every time I want to reference some particular bit of arcana. Reading here how you feel about the website and looking at your pose in the picture in the “About” section just makes for a funny juxtaposition. That and the king-sized lampshade you hung on the donations link. I agree with Callan that the book-scroll mechanism is a little counterintuitive. But since opening the books section gives you access to all of them, I’m not sure that’s such a big deal.
And speaking of the blurry line between art and business, I remember you posting several years back about The Passage by Justin Cronin. Have you picked up the sequel yet or was it one and done?
I gave up on the Passage. Having a little one and writing commitments has forced me to ration my reading far more than I would like. I yearn for the good old days, lolling with books until the wee hours. I’m up at dawn now, ready or not!
God bless audiobooks and a middling long commute or I’d never get any reading done these days.
I visited the Bejamin Cain link and look forward to his guest post.
Some feedback regarding your author website:
– I find something “off” about the red font color used for your name and “I’d rather be rich than ugly.” Maybe it’s a combination of the font color and the background image. I’m color blind so this could just be me.
– Regarding the books shown, could you switch the order around so that “The Darkness That Comes Before” is before “The Warrior Prophet?” That way the fantasy books will be shown in series order. And maybe use cover art from the same editions? I
– The map of Eärwa is great. Any chance place/landmark names will be added?
When’s the Twitter account coming? 🙂
I fear twitter…
Some great points that I’ll definitely pass on to my guy. The map is actually a background template for a historical atlas I’ve been working up for quite some time.
Weren’t you the type that refused to wear logo’d clothing? I seem to remember that, and sympathized… no wonder self-promotion is such a suspicious prospect. anyway, the website looks cool though I suggest you change out the background gray (such as in the books section or authorial photo) for a velvet purple or something more appealing to the eye.
The new geographical map is pretty sweet but where’s the rest of it?
also, what program did you use to construct that version of Earwa?
Danke, naiv. Yeah, where is the rest of the map? I’ll have to ask what happened.
I did the map, one fricken pixel at a time, using Paint, believe it or not.
OMG, massive pixel art!
Seems appropriate somehow though, given the setting…
Just a note on that – if you click on the map, it brings it up in it’s own page – with no back link. Sure, there’s the back button, but…there is web code out there to bring them up where hitting escape closes it again. Or just an old fashioned link below the map.
No, trying to say ‘it’s layered…see, once you go in, you can’t get out – what you click is all there is!’ isn’t good enough, heh! 😉
” It all feels like I’m aping the moves of those far more graceful.”
I know that feeling. I get it every time I try to write fantasy.
There is something pornographic about advertising. The goal is to seduce those passing by, to encourage the sampling your wares in the hopes that ultimately they will be paying for them. Like a prostitute with her legs spread wide with the promise of fulfillment for a single night. And we feel special. “Who, me?” Yes. You. I want you.
Some day soon the only talent left will be advertising. At least you got the goods.
I whinged about this recently on another forum – back in the days of the campfire story, decades or centuries ago, the leverage of bargaining for story was more a haggle. There had to be a back and forth. Now there’s so much entertainment, that audiences can just say, without grounds to just dismiss them instantly, that you should be ‘compelling’. No further information other than that. The old campfire story teller could read an audience, and audience hungry for a source of story, and react to that. Now the audience is ghostly, absent, not there to give any indication of the story, yet where you might find a forum talking about story, it comes down to the mindreading ‘be compelling’ vague directives. It’s ceased to be a human interaction of haggling and instead both a debauched and yet supposedly in the audiences eyes a lofty principle of ‘be compelling’. It’s debauched because as you say, it’s whorish, give over everything, carnally (given how much it’s inner self given over) and maybe just by statistical chance it’ll hit their little ‘compelling’ button g spot. Yet, perhaps tying into the ‘what you see is all there is’, it seems to folk that asking for compelling is actually a higher order thing to ask for. Practically holy. How demented a supply and demand situation is that?
I should probably actually write something before I bitch about the dealio. Did finish the 50k of the nanowrimo, atleast. Not a finished story, though.
I’ve heard lots of advice to target your writing to the person doing the reading (whether that be the “gatekeeper” or a more nebulous-yet-particular audience) as best you can, as whorish as that sounds. But when you stack it up against the sheer overwhelming odds against you, what starts off as whorish starts seeming merely pragmatic. I still tend not to follow the advice though.
This is the big problem with the collapse of intellectual property. Since you can’t derive income from the dessemination of content, you have to start SELLING THE CONTENT ITSELF.
I’m not sure the problem is necessarily that you have to be compelling but that you have to be IMMEDIATELY compelling. Attention span shortening is hurting the medium as much as anything is.
I wouldn’t sweat it too much, Scott. I understand wanting to be a purist, but as a fan, I think you shouldn’t shy away from trying to get a little more notice, You have something of a cult following right now (meant the most positive sense of the term and coming from an avowed cultist). I’ve read a few other series whose audiences are light-years larger with stories, worlds, and prose that are inferior. I know you’re not the most accessible writer, but that doesn’t stop me from believing you deserve more attention.
I am just a reader, and I don’t know squat about the publishing world and what a website beyond this blog will or won’t do for you, but it feels like a good move to me. And it looks pretty good. It’s sharp and concise and doesn’t look cluttered or ghetto.
But at the end of the day, I’m just a reader, I suppose. And I want my Consult.
“I’ve read a few other series whose audiences are light-years larger with stories, worlds, and prose that are inferior. I know you’re not the most accessible writer, but that doesn’t stop me from believing you deserve more attention.”
Well said, Triskele!
Thanks Triskele. This is the pep talk I give myself. The sad fact is that a great deal of my antipathy likely has more to do with my incompetence in this regard as with any ‘purity of intent.’ The idea is to keep exploring new media, keep reaching out, and hope for the best. I’ve had a few ‘new market thinker’ types tell me that having a cult following is actually a very good place to be in this day and age. But fuck me, kids make Christmas expensive. I could’ve happily lived the student’s life perpetually, I think. Children change everything. The trick is one of making that change without harming the vision. A tricky trick, I’m sure.
Self promotion is cool by me. But then again, I’m a corporate technopriest renting whatever he has for a soul to the highest bidder.
Anyway, the site is good.
Danke, 01. You remain my most esteemed accelerationist!
At the very least, it provides an outlet for purchase and patronage – real cool. By the way, on the About page, it doesn’t mention Disciple? Cheers.
We shall see! Thanks for noting the oversight, Mike. It’s on the list…
Also – figure the dashboard at wordpress allows you to see new posts wherever they’re posted, hope this isn’t lost in the ether – your new e-karma link is no longer redirecting to the Paypal donation page.
Danke Mike. I passed this along and I think it’s straightened out.
Amended. I had probably checked it in the midst of your advocate’s editing.
There were no cartoon boobs on your site. I am disappoint.
I think the new book scroller is more intuitive – but I’ll give my petty grumbles (and try and say it’s the little bits of polish that allure). I like when you click one book from the center, it rolls to the middle very nicely. But click two books from the center and it judders to the middle. And the half hidden in shadow book at the edge you can’t even click on it – c’mon, surely this is your audience, the ones who wanna click on such a half obscured book! 🙂 Also perhaps re-enable the middle book to be clicked on and take the user to the relevant book page for it, as it was before IIRC, rather than just the small pop up. The pop up is good, but…eh, petty of me again, it seems kind of ephemeral. In addition to it there needs to be a page to give a more solid form. The various praises for the books aren’t just tool tips, after all!
And I still wonder if a scientific test were conducted where pirates were forced to pay for a media or go without it, whether the majority would actually pay or just pass? But that’s a bit outside of site construction!
My gosh, the map section kicked it up a notch or three! I’m not sure of the best dimensions for desk top wallpaper, but you might want to ask your web site guy, perhaps also list maps resized for wallpaper with a logo in the corner (okay, can hear your teeth grinding – doesn’t have to have a logo…but…). Desktop wallpapers end up being a kind of advertising that shows up every time they turn on their computer and…now slow down, I’m not going to donate just to pay to replace ground down teeth!
Yeah, I’m getting pretty close to being VERY happy with it myself. Now if only the search optimization would kick in…