The Soring

For 2017 I resolved to finish a novel I had been working on/not working on for several years and to write one short story each month. I have more than met my goals. The novel is finished and going through edits and rewrites and I have 14 new short stories and revived and revised three old stories. 'The Soring' was written in June and was sold to Crimson Streets at the end of July.

The story was inspired by a freelance job where I came across the horrific practice of 'soring' Tennessee Walking horses. Most of ya'll know I am a huge fan of Fort Worth and Fort Worth history. 'The Soring' is one of the few stories I have written not set in Fort Worth, but, the hero, Major David Broiles, is a Fort Worth transplant to LA. Of course, if you know a little Fort Worth history yourself, you'll know why he is nicknamed Major, even though he never even had a cup of coffee in the military. 

I hope you enjoy reading 'The Soring' as much as I enjoyed writing it, and please, check out the other fine stories in Crimson Streets. The editors and publishers are stand up people that obviously recognize quality writing.

Major David Broiles was an erstwhile motion picture producer turned drunkard. He did the occasional low level surveillance work for McGee. After securing a little liquid breakfast, Major scrambled to meet McGee for a job. It seemed simple enough. All he had to do was watch one apartment for comings and goings, particularly, that of a chemist who may or may not have stolen a formula. After McGee gives him the low-down and vacates, things are very quiet. Too bad for Major David Broiles it won’t stay that way. With awesome art by Jihane Mossulim, you can read it only at http://www.crimsonstreets.com/2017/12/10/the-soring/

Basic Economic Questions of Writing

Writing for the sake of writing is all well and good. Writing because you have stories to tell or purely for the sake of the craft is fine but if you want to pursue writing as a career, you must write with purpose and that purpose is to get paid.

With that in mind, writing, like all businesses must be carefully thought out. Professional writers have a business plan. They think about marketing, production and efficiency.
I’m not saying place business ahead of the craft, but take into consideration the business elements when thinking about the craft. Consider not just plot, character arc, and structure but also market, distribution and production. Who are you writing for if you want to get paid? Ultimately you are writing for readers but your first readers, unless you go straight to self publishing, are generally editors. What editors of magazines and journals and book publishing houses are looking for is a tricky proposition.

Start with the basic economic questions:

What are you producing?
This is the part where craft is king. What are your strengths as a writer? Think about length (short stories or novels) and genres. Most people write general fiction. General fiction or literary fiction is a crowded market, making it tough to break through and sell.

How are you producing?
How much time can you realistically spend writing. How productive do you think you will be in creating finished product to send out into the market?

For whom are you producing?
What is your market? Do you want an agent? Are you targeting a book deal or magazines? When you have fully explored the ‘what’ question, the ‘for whom’ question becomes more clear.

I will discuss this topic in more detail in coming weeks. Point I am making in this post is more writers need to seriously consider the business of writing.    

Moses and the Angry Filmmaker

Back in 2010 I had the good fortune to be co-director of the Fearless Film Festival. Fearless was a short lived short film festival associated with Main Street Arts Fest, one of the largest arts festivals in the country.

The featured speaker that year was a writer and filmmaker named Kelley Baker.

Kelley hails from Portland, Oregon and has been in the film business for many years. He is known as The Angry Filmmaker and has written the landmark book on the fine art of extreme low budget filmmaking, The Angry Filmmaker Survival Guide. 

Kelley tours the country showing his films and lecturing on filmmaking and for years traveled with his dog, Moses. We had booked Kelley and Moses in a nice downtown hotel that accepted dogs. I was looking forward to the festival, everything seemed ready.

Of course, everything was not ready. We received a call from Kelley the day before the festival kicked off and were told that the hotel had neglected to tinform us dogs were indeed welcome to stay at the hotel, as long as they were under 15 pounds. Moses was a black lab who’s head likely weighed more than 15 pounds.

Scrambling ensued. Calls were made. Did I mention the film festival coincided with Main Street Arts Festival? Not only were no hotels available that accommodated large dogs, no hotels were available.   

It was finally decided that Kelley would bunk with me for the weekend. It wasn’t ideal, I’m a bit of a private person, but the show must go on.

Friday afternoon Kelley’s big white van pulled into my driveway. Kelley got out, walked around and opened the side door and Moses slowly climbed out. Moses was a road dog and had racked up a lot of miles. The old boy had trouble getting around, Kelley had to help him up my front steps, but he was sweet, smart and adorable.

Friday evening at Fearless passed without fanfare. Good attendance and the programs were well received. We returned to my house and sat on the porch for hours, talking films and work.

Saturday was to be the marathon. The programs kicked off late morning and ran until almost midnight. Moses had to be cooped up all day inside my house. Kelley assured me Moses was used to being inside for great lengths of time and would be fine. 

When we returned to my house shortly before midnight, I walked up the porch, opened the door and, without describing what I actually saw, knew immediately that Moses had passed on.

I froze. I did not know what to do. To be honest the next few minutes are a blur. I felt awkward and somehow, at least indirectly, responsible. Kelley felt worse, of course. He had lost his best friend and traveling companion. We muddled through.

Kelley is one of those rare people you are fortunate enough to meet in life who instantly feels like you have known forever. He is a good and hyper creative man. Over the ensuing years I have picked his mind about filmmaking, writing and the struggle of being an independent artist.

His new book is entitled, Road Dog. You guessed it, the book is about his years on the road with Moses. It is funny, informative, honest and heartwarming.

Kelley is on the road again and will be in the Fort Worth and Dallas this October. Look for dates and more information in the coming weeks. In the mean time, order his books and films and make plans on meeting him when he rolls through Fort Worth and Dallas. You will not regret it. 

Here is the press release for the book: 

Road dog

Kelley Baker

Available March 2017

328 pages, Paperback

ISBN 9781540713520

$ 17.95 USD

“As Eat, Pray, Love is to love and spirituality Road Dog is to the raucous, independent, and contented life.”

      - William M. Akers, author, Your Screenplay Sucks!, Mrs. Ravenback's Way

“Often funny, sometimes touching and always entertaining, Kelley Baker’s Road Dog is a great read that will make you laugh a lot, cry a little and appreciate the important people (two legged or four) in your life more.”

                                        - Nic Brown, author, Werewolves, Zombies & Leprechauns: Tales From the        World of Werewolf For Hire.

A Man, His Dog and The Open Road. What Could Go Wrong?

With no distributor interested in his independent films, Kelley Baker, the Angry Filmmaker, ripped a page out of the punk rock handbook and went looking for his audience in a used minivan with his faithful 120 pound Chocolate Lab, Moses. Every fall and spring they traveled the country showing his films at art house theaters, film festivals, colleges, and biker bars.

Logging over two hundred thousand miles, they encountered a collection of Fellini-esque characters including two hyper-intellectual pro wrestlers in West Virginia, a lying Chicago hotel desk clerk who cost Kelley his home, civil rights workers knocking back rum at Hank Williams’ grave, and a way overzealous drug sniffing border patrol dog outside El Paso, Texas.

Kelley gave an audio workshop for employees of a porn channel, got yelled at in a haunted bar in Memphis, was asked to leave the Prayer Tower at Oral Roberts University, and drove twenty-four hundred miles in three days so he wouldn’t miss his daughter’s choir recital. Moses swam in two oceans, fifteen lakes, and enthusiastically marked thousands of spots from sea to shining sea.

At the end of it all they found a lot more than an audience.

                                            About the author

A graduate of USC’s film school, Kelley has a BA and an MFA in film production. He is an author, (Road Dog, The Angry Filmmaker Survival Guide: Part One & Part Two) and an Independent Filmmaker. He has written and directed three full‑length features (Birddog, The Gas Café, & Kicking Bird), eight short films, and quite a few documentaries. His films have aired on PBS, Canadian and Australian television, and have been shown at Film Festivals including London, Sydney, Annecy, Sao Paulo, Sundance, Chicago, and Edinburgh. He was the sound designer on six of Gus Van Sant's feature films including, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, and Finding Forrester, and Todd Haynes film, Far From Heaven.

To learn more about Kelley and his work we invite you to check out his website, www.angryfilmmaker.com, for more information.

Belonging

Writing is, in most cases, solitary work. It is easy to get stuck inside a bubble. However, if the goal is to publish, and most, if not all writing should be done with the goal of publishing, then a writer must exit the bubble, at some point, and seek an audience.

The first audience a writer seeks should be friendly, but critical. An important part of the writing process is feedback and in most instances, the best initial feedback is from other writers.

I have belonged to a critique group for a couple of years. These writers have provided me with essential feedback. This group has been an essential ingredient to my growth as a writer.  There have been, over time, six to eight other writers in the group, all strong writers with a good critical eye. I have learned from their feedback of my stories and from reading their work and watching their progress as writers. We push each other, encourage each other and find emotional support.

General audience readers, friends, family and the like are great and serve a purpose, but it is not as valuable as belonging to a group of people that understand writing and the process.

Find a group, it is not always easy, you may have to join a few or even several to find the right fit.

Make it a priority, it will make you better.    

Heath Dollar: Across the Texas Line: Book Contract: Waylon County

Congratulations to my friend and compadre, Heath Dollar. This collection of stories is going to knock people on their ass.

Heath Dollar: Across the Texas Line: Book Contract: Waylon County

The Lindbergh Baby and Blank Stares

I've been writing all day, which means the laundry is done, dishes are washed, and I finally changed the burned out bulb in the shower. When I told my daughter I had changed the bulb she was shocked and asked how many dead bugs I found in the globe. I told her I found 17,612 dead bugs and the Lindbergh baby.
Blank stare.
I need to update my references.

Writer’s life, a constant struggle.

I’m writing the next to last story arc in We’re for Smoke: Outlaws and Outliers in Fort Worth. It is the story of a woman named Mary Rea. Mary married into a prominent family in Fort Worth with a long and storied background in law enforcement. Mary’s story is sad, she suffered from mental illness her entire life. Mental illness was poorly diagnosed and treated at the turn of the last century. Mary was luckier than most, since she had money she was merely shunned and ignored. If you were from a lower case you were likely put on the streets or dropped off in jail.

I have had a hard time wrapping my mind around Mary and the other major character in the story, Judge Swayne. The Judge figures in other story lines and should be a strong character throughout the entire book. Problem is he is not. I simply cannot find his voice. I don’t know why, he should be low hanging fruit for a writer. He has a strong personality, he was Fort Worth’s first progressive voice. He moved the city into the 20^th century in many, important ways, both from the bench and as a major player in the good ole boy circle. For whatever reason he seems to fall flat with me.

Mary Rea also is giving me a bit of a fit. I’m not sure how to properly portray her illness and situation. I have been putting off writing the section for weeks, waiting for them to make themselves better known.

They have not shown themselves. So I soldier on. I am putting words on paper. Telling their story best I can. I am hoping for that eureka moment when maybe they will take over. It has not happened yet.

It is a great feeling when you slip into a story and it flows like a river.

But a writer, writes, so I’m writing. In film if things don’t go perfect on set, the catch phrase is, ‘we’ll fix it in post.’ In writing, when the first draft is less than hoped for, well, there is always a second draft.

Or a third…

Or fourth. 

No excerpt this week. It is not ready for daylight.