Hey y’all,

Two performances coming up this week that you might be interesting in coming to.

First of all, Hecho a Mano is playing at the Workers’ Defense Project’s 4th Annual Music & Movement dinner. We’re going to be premiering at least two new songs, which is a lot for a single 45 minute set! Come on out to enjoy yourself and support a good cause at the same time.

Thursday, June 7th
7pm – 10pm

And then on Saturday I’m playing again with my favorite band in Austin (except Hecho a Mano, of course) — Orquesta Trabuko — at the Salsa y Bomba festival. This is going to be quite a night of dancing, so bring good shoes. https://casita.prfdance.org/2018/05/celebrando2018/

Saturday, June 9th
6pm – 11pm

See you soon!

“Do you believe that Donald Trump and Barack Obama deserve the same amount of respect?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because they are both presidents of the United States.”

“So we should afford them respect because they chose to run, and win, the presidency? We should respect them because they took this action?”

“Yes.”

“Can we then say, more broadly, that we should afford people respect based on the actions that they take?”

“Yes.”

“Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump have taken actions other than becoming president. Should we also consider these actions when deciding how much respect to give them?”

“…”

“Moreover, as these actions have been very different from one another, is it possible that these two men should then be afforded differing levels of respect?”

“…”

“Finally, is it then possible that Donald Trump’s actions have led him to be deserving of a different level of respect from, say, Colin Kaepernick, than Barack Obama?”

“… … really I just meant that people should respect anyone in a position of power, because I’m one of the 30% of individuals in any given society who harbors a subconscious inclination toward authoritarian hierarchy and I needed a rhetorical prop to beat up on liberals with.”

Zach Weinersmith (of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal fame) was here in Austin for the Texas Book Festival this morning. His talk dealt mostly with Soonish, but at the end there were a few interesting nuggets about his creative process.

1. Zach reads 3-5 books a week when he’s not on a promotional tour.
2. The reliability of the comic comes from setting aside an hour every day to write, even if that time is spent staring at a blank page.
3. When stuck, it’s vital to read something that’s difficult for you to understand.

He expanded on these a bit at the signing.  I’m paraphrasing, but:

“Some people say they read a lot, but it’s all fantasy and science fiction.  That’s fine, but maybe go back 200 years to the source material that those things come from.”

Hey y’all, long time no see.

It’s been quiet around here because I’ve been working on a new manuscript.  Good news: it’s almost done!

Draft 4 is complete, and I’m looking for a handful of beta readers (anywhere from 5-10) to read the manuscript and provide some feedback.  I’ll be sending on the file this weekend, and then compiling feedback the weekend of May 28th.

The manuscript is about 275 pages (82,329 words / 300 words per page in your average paperback = 274.43 pages).  It’s a science-fiction adventure story about a washed-up war “hero” who (in a fit of reckless, drunken self-loathing) saves the life of a wanted alien convict.  Things get complicated when they realize that they fought on opposites of a brutal war . . . and if you want to know more, you should drop me an email about being a beta reader!  Seriously, the link is right up there ^.

The gig doesn’t pay much, but I’ll buy you a pitcher of beer if you’re in Austin sometime.  Scout’s honor.

And if you aren’t interested in doing that, I’ll be putting it up in chapters here (just like the last one) sometime in June.  Er, June-ish.  Summer, at least.  Let’s call it summer-ish.

Hit me up.  davidsmcwilliams@gmail.com

“All of the best stories are traveling stories.”

So proclaimed the tipsy Texan on the night train to Munich. We were sitting on the floor in the bicycle compartment, drinking Heineken out of glass bottles supplied by the steward. It was an hour and a half before my 23^rd birthday.

I asked him to explain.

“Stories are interesting when the characters change, right?” he asked me. “Well, what’s the easiest way to get characters to change? Send ’em away from home. They can’t help but change if you do that.”

We exchanged traveling stories until the small hours of the morning (one of which carried the germ of an idea that turned into Lela’s American Cafe). Later, the train broke down, and I lost track of him in the shuffle of carriages and replacement locomotives. The next night, propped up on an air mattress in a Vienna basement, I noted what he had said in my journal.

“All of the best stories are traveling stories.”

And you know what? I firmly believe that this anonymous Texan (I neglected to note his name and the beer makes things hazy) was right.

Now, of course there are lots of good stories that don’t stray from their home counties. I’m not going to argue that (although many are at least internal journeys). But time and time again, I’ve found myself sucked into books at exactly the moment that the protagonists are forced or finally allowed to hit the road. The pretense can be flimsy, the setting shallow, or the characters flat, but if the author can just get them out the door I’ll forgive a lot.

That’s the essence of storytelling: change. Everything else is details.

–

Tolkein wrote thousands of years of history for The Lord of the Rings, and yet the trilogy covers only the few months in which Frodo and Sam are on the path to Mordor. Coincidence? I think not.

Luke gets less than one day on the moisture farm before George Lucas burns the whole thing down and sends him out into the galaxy. Do we care about the years of agricultural drudgery that preceded Star Wars? Of course not.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a traveling story, else why would we have the iconic red-line-on-map scene breaks?

Treasure Island has a few static chapters at the beginning, but they’re just setup. The parts of the story that everyone remembers happen after the map is found and a ship is procured.

And Brian Jacques (whose Redwall books I consumed voraciously in intermediate school) always features a brave hero who must make a difficult journey in time to come back and rescue the good creatures of Redwall Abbey.

Watership Down is a traveling story. Ender’s Game has a strong traveling subplot (the Dream Game). Paulo Coelho’s career-maker, The Alchemist, is a traveling story. Huckleberry Finn is a traveling story. On The Road and Roughing It are traveling stories. Looking at my bookshelf right now, I see Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, In Patagonia, Shantaram, and Two Years Before The Mast. You get the idea.

Storytelling is change, and traveling stories can’t help but change.

–

So I decided to write a traveling story.

Of course there are swords, horses, power struggles, ancient ruins, and the shambling brain-hungry undead that have run the risk of becoming a little stale as of late (they’re overused, but I don’t care). I was reading World War Z and A Song Of Fire And Ice around the time that I started this manuscript, and both of those influences are there. I’d also visited a few of the old Templar fortresses in Spain, built to protect the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, and that’s in there too.

But it’s really a traveling story. A young woman leaves the only life she’s ever known in order to save her friend, ignorant of the fact that the journey will change her in ways that are both permanent and unavoidable. It’s the same story that’s been told a million times and will likely be told a million times over again; the story of a hero on a quest for their deepest desire.

The zombies are incidental.

So that’s what I’ll be putting up in this space, section by section, starting next Friday. Two-Minute Tuesdays will continue as well. Enjoy, and I’ll see you then!

(Update: get started right now with Part 1).

. . . because I’m in the middle of my annual personal review.

I’m writing this from my parents’ house in Michigan where it’s been a fairly warm, soggy Christmas (Detroit had the smallest amount of December snow in the past 125 years).  Today, though, with a high of 21 degrees, I’m feeling a bit more at home.

Anyway, I started these annual reviews a few years ago after reading about Chris Guillebeau’s own review process.  The things that are worth doing in life invariably consist of a large number of small, repetitive tasks, and it’s easy to get side tracked if you don’t keep the larger picture in mind.  You can learn more about the annual review process via this link.

I have big plans for the coming year (including a manuscript that should be appearing in this space soon!).  Best of luck on your own reviews and I’ll see you all in 2015!