Monday 4 December 2017

Indie Author Tips #2 - Establish Routines by practicing interviews

Or The Ignorance of Being Me


When I whisper to people and my dogs that I'm a writer, I like to pretend they are interviewing me so when that time does come I can distinguish myself from the real writers out there with my well thought-out answers that appear completely spontaneous.

Invariably, one of the questions my future interviewers will ask me is what is my process? They then might barge into my psyche with all the delicacy of a whale in a tuna factory by asking me where my ideas come from.

I imagine I'd lean back all reflectively in my chair and really give this a good mental mulling. I might say something slightly condescending like 'That's a good question'. Then I'd be like BAM! THERE'S YOUR ANSWER! and that answer becomes VIRAL and next summer I am receiving an Nobel Prize for an award they made up especially for that answer which of course is given to me.

...

Anyways, I like to really get my write-on with a good and loud adrenaline song. I crack open TNT by AC/DC, a song which needs some re-introductions in hockey rinks across the nation. I don't know which song it could replace... maybe this one which admittedly is a good song for when the home team gets scored on and is indicative of our kinder, gentler emotionally fragile NHL.



 So once I've got the TNT, oi, oi, oi in my veins, I look around for something else to do - usually I start in the bathroom and list off my unfinished projects that are 95% finished, which coincidentally feels about the same for a lot of the stories. I should look into that correlation.

Then, with an unneeded coffee in hand, I wander back down to my desk and consider what to attack at that moment. For this, a little Queen/David Bowie Under Pressure helps. Often it is a purge of the the Daddy Longleg spiders (fun fact; actually aren't spiders) trying to exist in every corner of my room. Next, I might wonder what it would be like to have some type of debilitating disease. Yesterday, I learned of something called xylophagia which is obsessive eating of paper. So then I might google that or an in-depth analysis of Birdman, a subtle nod to the heading of this post. It's really anyone's guess at that point.

Thankfully, I have Wake-Up Call by Maroon 5 next on my playlist which again reminds me to focus on my original intention, which was doing some productive writing. I refocus and open up some word documents, look into my heart and wonder why I'm not getting any younger. Follow that up with When I Grow Up by Garbage. I regress a little, think Garbage is an awful title for an indie book writer but a ironically great one for a book of poetry. Because art likes that type of irony...

Follow up that song with You're So Vain, the original by Carly Simon. It grounds me once again, reminding me I'm not nearly as good as I think I am so don't get too far ahead of myself by doing fake press interviews for my dogs. This would've been fun to play as the first dance at my wedding. But I'm not that brave and my wife, god (and I) love her, sometimes gets me and sometimes doesn't. With the betting odds of being only 50-50 I think I did the wise thing by not suggesting it. But.

Finally, right before I end this blog post and get back to my true intentions, my fingers nicely warmed up, I plug into Ahead By A Century by the Tragically Hip. This is a reminder, self-consciously deprecating, that while many people might not get the concepts or story lines of a world undone by legalizing marijuana, maybe in a century people will look back and say 'Wow, that jay royston guy, he sure nailed it. The world was actually destroyed because some guy in the Rocky Mountains invented a marijuana that could hypnotize us into mindless drones through the airwaves."

Then some literary critic or crazed super fan will spend too much money on a replica of the Nobel Prize I won a century earlier for the inaugural 'Saw It Coming' award and find this post hidden away in the Internet and all this reading would have been worth it.

not life size.
My dogs have now wandered off and fallen asleep. Time to get my Karma on...

PS - Thanks for reading. I'm also now a Twitter virgin looking for someone to teach me what to do  - @metjayroyston

Friday 24 November 2017

Indie Author Tips #1 - Self-promote on Social Media



I'm supposed to be writing. I'm also supposed to be marketing. I'm supposed to be doing research to qualify to go back to school; show job opportunities, industry growth, etc. I'm supposed to fix up an RESP mess that dates back nearly four years. I'm supposed to clean the house, walk the dogs, just be a good overall person in general. Plus, maintain good hygiene.

None of the above is easy. I'm not about lists. I prefer attainable goals. I prefer staying under the radar but love being in yours. I love writing on my own terms which is painful and slow and counter-productive to be self-sustainable in the craft. If I could (and sometimes I do), I'd concentrate on writing what comes into my head, a self-therapy of why who I am where I am because frankly, I've been confused since high school.

I made choices out of practicality, impulse and convenience, not necessarily out of some overall plan. I've jumped the gun on projects and jobs I never should have started. And under it all, I believed if I only tried hard enough, the planets would align and everything would make sense. And you know what, if I'm being honest, sometimes they did. For a little while.

But to follow a plan, that's tough for me. This post isn't spontaneous, it is part of 'the plan' I should follow according to the 'Indie Authors For Dummies' forums I follow. I'm supposed to create a following, to toss out posts like these on social media to try and remind you who I am and that I write books for you to purchase at selected institutions. Then I hope you like or link this post and your friends will check me out, like what I write and like me and so on and so on. Then they follow my page on Facebook or Twitter and I get a Netflix series deal by Christmas.

I simply don't care for self-promotion and I'm trying to adjust to a world of selling myself.

True story. I published a magazine way back in the 90s. It was hard, hard, underfunded work and I was severely under-educated in the field. I taught my way through it. I juggled house bills to pay my printers, I bought bus tickets to different cities and slept on friends' couches. The next day I'd walk all around these cities doing distribution, trying to build that small readership base. Then we were sort of evicted from our house (long irrelevant story). I started working other jobs to make the bare minimum of payments on my increasing VISA. I was in my mid-twenties and still full of cynical hope.

I remember one crowning moment; a film industry book store that was in Gastown, Vancouver. Biz Books. Owned by two women, one named Patricia. Anyways, I'm at the end of my nut, barely keeping my shit together and I go to drop off the critically panned (in my head) 'Monster Truck Film Issue'. I go in, tell her I have the latest issue and she (god forbid) opens it up and begins to read the inside pages RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

Now that has never happened. And you know what happened next? She laughed at one small, buried little joke in the legalese you find in the header of all magazines. And she noticed another joke and laughed. It was awkward. Then she asked about a letter in Chinese I'd printed. I told her the truth, we didn't know what it said but it came to our address so we included a note with it asking for a Chinese translator. She absolutely loved it and called her partner over so they could enjoy the magazine together, again, right in front of me. It was surreal. 

But in that moment I realized I loved I wrote something which made someone laugh weeks later. It was an odd rush at the time, a brief belief that maybe, with a little more time I could make this work. But as my bank account and self-confidence was stressing, it was too little too late. That was twenty years ago.

Now I'm in my forties and yes, I am still full of cynical hope. Travelling by buses and crashing on couches has been changed by the Internet. I'm still trying to adapt to that. Yet it's still the same thing, spending time away from what I love (writing) to do something I'm not comfortable with (self-promotion).

Next, as part of the 'master plan', I'm going to post this on Facebook and hope that you, dear reader, will like this page so your friends whom I don't know and may never meet will check me out. Maybe they respect your tastes enough they will like my Facebook page, download a free sample of my work here and then maybe buy a bigger sample here.

Full disclosure, I then get a small royalty from that sale - about 30%, paid at the end of the fiscal year.

And if you and they like that sample you all can follow me on my new Twitter account here where I will start posting other entertaining shit because that is what life is all about.

Being entertained.

Good times.
-jay






Sunday 12 November 2017

Breaking Dad #3

Breaking Dad 3


A friend of mine has a six week old boy, his second child. His daughter is two years old. Dad is always tired. So is Mom. Neither child is sleeping through the night. In an effort to soothe his older child, he tries to sleep with her on her baby bed but he doesn’t fit. If he leaves, she starts up again. And if she is sleeping, his baby is awake. It’s a nightmare of quick naps, thin patience and long cries. I can’t speak for the babies. 

He told me this with bags under his eyes and I laughed in sympathy.  Memories of warming bottles at 4am, of falling asleep on the couch with our first baby on my chest rose. If there was a peep out of the baby monitor, one of us would be ready. Honestly, it was usually Mom.  But there were occasions when Mom was simply too tired and it was up to me to step up to give Mom’s breasts and mind that little extra rest she so desperately needed. Sometimes we would play ‘rock, paper, scissors’ of who was going to get up. Other times, we’d both lie in bed pretending not to hear the baby monitor. We waited, hoped the baby would go back to sleep or the other would give up first and go feed the baby.

In the days it was not much better. Both the babies had troubles falling into a sleep routine, as did we. And they cried. Oh boy, did they cry. Bottles didn’t help, burping, changing, extra blankets, less blankets, pacifiers, rarely seemed to help. I’m sure every Dad and Mom can relate to that frustrated feeling of having done everything you can think of to quiet a screaming child and still the crying continues.

And then we found something miraculous… Baby Einstein DVDs.

Seriously, I don’t know the magic behind it but I believe those DVDs are the reason why many parents today are still together. Once we put a Baby Einstein DVD on and the little sheep or lion sock puppet appeared, it was library quiet. The kids would be memorized. There was no plot, no dialogue, just pictures of toys and shiny, happy people. For added serenity and sanity, the music is mostly classical music, from Beethoven to Mozart and those other guys... anyways, it's baby whisperer magic. Try it, get some sleep. 

Now some parents out there might be skeptical, they might be on the ‘no babies should watch TV’ train and think that I am simply bad parenting. However, this anecdote isn’t for those people. This is for those Dads (and Moms) who are at the end of their sanity, who are still trying to figure out how to make their babies stop crying. Do what you have to do. 

Admittedly, this is only one story of what worked for us. But for those Dads trying to quiet a baby at 4am and simply want some quiet, what do you have to lose? Go to the thrift store or youtube and find Baby Einstein. You're already not sleeping. 



Thursday 2 November 2017

Breaking Dad 2 - Road Tripping

Breaking Dad 2- Road Tripping

-jay royston



Road Trip.

Very few words bring a clenching to my chest like ‘road trip’ does. Family road trips are a fundamental right of parental passage, a litmus test of patience, dedication and perseverance.

Years ago, I spent many hours driving here and there across Western Canada. I was young and lacked career ambitions which made me a perfect customer to gas stations and roadside coffee diners across this great land of ours. I saw cities and mountains, lakes and oceans. It was a great time to feel alive, to feel free as a bird as the song goes.

And then I became a parent and I now have about as much free time as a lone rooster in a hen house. Many times I have considered what it would be like to just go ‘for a drive’ without having to remember to pick up milk or tomorrow is garbage day or worry about what time I should be home so I can enjoy some moments with the kids before they fall asleep because frankly, I love to hate those moments I secretly love.

Now instead of it being simply me and the highway, it’s me and my wolf pack. And instead of my one bag of essentials it is now eight bags of essentials, divided into really essentials and the not-so-essential-that-it-needs-to-be-in-the-front bags of essentials. 

Plus my wife insists on cleaning the car before every trip. I always argue it is a pointless endeavor as by the time we stop for our first break, it looks like we have lived in it for three months. That is because the kids pull out every activity we have packed for the eight hour drive and are then bored with them before the first gas station fill up. It doesn’t matter - road trip.

And while I used to spend lucid moments driving, admiring and contemplating how amazing this country is, I now contemplate what my daughter means when she says behind me that she ‘got some weird stuff in her underpants’. Music which I would play for hours on end now barely makes it through two songs without me having to turn it down to answer some random question directed at me from the back seat from one of my baby wolves.

But these are the moments future memories are made of. I have to remember road trips are a right of passage for parents and children alike. Children are supposed to complain about it being too hot/too cold/too far. Parents are supposed to tell them too bad/not long/and make them play ‘look at that’.

My father really enjoyed playing ‘look at that’. He would say it without explaining what it was we were supposed to look at, as if it was blatantly obvious that mountain in the distance was any different than the other mountains in the distance. All we usually saw was the tops of the trees along the highway. If we were really lucky, he would point out a dead animal on the side of the road; ‘look at that, a dead bear,’ he would say as he drove slowly by it, allowing us a close-up view of nature in all it's gory glory.

I don’t point out animal fatalities to my kids though. There are things we learn from our parents; they were our number one teachers, just as we are to ours. Hopefully, we remember those things we didn’t like from our youth such as staring at broken, dead animals on the side of the highway. And we remember not to tell our kids to ‘look at that’ as if it was the reason why we are on a road trip in the first place.

We go on road trips because we are family and we must all suffer adventures together. At least that is what I tell my kids.


Wednesday 25 October 2017

Breaking Dad 1 -Baby Dragons

Baby Dragons.

Netflix had been on long enough. I told my eight year old daughter to shut off her show that long ago stopped teaching how to train your dragon and do something else. In her typical child-like summer boredom, she said there was nothing else to do.

“Fine,” I said, in full-on Dad mode. “I’d like you to go to your room and write a story.”

 To make this part short, she went to her room and found something else to do as I made dinner.
Over some classic Dad cooking, I asked if she wanted to do anything for her day camp talent show happening the next day. She said her talent was going to be ‘audience participant’ and simply sit and watch the other kids perform.

I asked how her story was going and she said she didn’t have any ideas for one so she had played with her dragons.

“I have an idea,” I prompted, “what about a story about how one of your dragons tried to bite off your Dad’s foot which is why I am in this cast?”

She looked at me funny, mainly because she knew I really sprained my ankle in a freak trampoline fight accident with a ball that more safety-conscious Dads would probably have said "get that off there before someone gets hurt.". 

“Uh, I don’t think so,” she said in the same voice her mother would use, “you stepped on a ball.”

“Well, I want to read your story before bedtime, so you better get on it.”

At bedtime, I hobbled into her room and read her short story. It was good; there was a beginning, middle and end. It was about dragons but no mention of me or my ankle cast. I could live with that.

“You know,” I said, as an idea came to me along with the thought I may be the greatest Dad in the world “you could read this to your day camp for the talent show.”

“I can’t do that, Dad,” she said, shaking her head. “Writing isn’t a talent.”

I went immediate poker face. We all know kids have this way of really cutting deep into someone’s psyche, but they can hide their social rudeness behind their age and innocence. “How come you are so fat?” I’ve heard younger children ask, “Why are you so old?” another question to a relative. It happens.

Writing isn’t a talent?

I saw her side; talent shows tend to focus on active performances; singing, dancing, gymnastics. There aren’t many popular shows for the many other sides of culture; writing, drawing, painting. 
I believe my daughter has lots of talents. Parents should notice the natural talents their children have and encourage it.

“Writing is a talent,” I told her, trying to hide the hurt in my thoughts because I am obviously biased. 
“Creating is a talent. I’m sure a lot of kids would like to hear your story. And you know what? I bet it would make some of them want to write their own as well.”

I wish I could end this story with how I wanted it to end. I want to say she went to that Talent Show, stood up in front of her classmates after they sang and danced. I wished I could say she told her simple story of a dragon bullied by other dragons until she was helped by a girl who made her brave enough to scare away the other dragons.

But she didn’t stand up and read that story for her talent show.

Maybe next time she will. All I can do as a father is to remind her anything she creates is a talent be it writing, painting, or building. 

It doesn’t have to be what all the other dragons are doing. 


Wednesday 12 July 2017

Shitty working title or the relevance of irrelevant things happening to you.

Shitty working title in progress but not going much further than this...

This is just a reminder of 2 odd things that happened laterly referring  - the Motherboy Incident and the USS Indianopolis.

Motherboy

I'm in a funk, I'm thinking i will watch some AD, -go for some tried and true comedy instead of attempting to go down the Netflix rabbit hole of potential 'funny' shows I have or haven't heard about. I'm thinking maybe I should watch Motherboy (my own mother/son issues perhaps?) I don't know. But later, in front of Netflix I change my mind. I randomly pick an episode of something called Lady Dyanmite, starring Maria Bamford, who played the sketchy addict in AD season 4. I notice that it was executive produced by Mitch Hurwitz, creator of AD. Good start, I think.

The episode is called I Love You. In it there is a scene in a record store and i'm not really listening to much to the dialogue, drifting off in my own self-loathing thoughts when I notice behind Maria's friend is a poster of MOTHERBOY!!  I'm like 'holy shit!'

I take it as a sign - I need to watch Motherboy. Perhaps there's some message in there I am meant to hear/take away. So I decide to immediately stop LD and switch to AD. Also somewhat of a surprise is that Motherboy is already queued up. Ok, maybe last time i was binge-watching AD (many months ago) I stopped at Motherboy and simply forgot that was the next one i was set to watch. Whatever.

I watch Motherboy, not having any epiphany to help me out of my current state. I go back, finish Lady Dynamite. Near the end, she has a breakdown (she's always on the edge of a breakdown it appears) and she starts yelling "I'M A MONSTER" which strikes me that is also what Buster screams in Motherboy.

I'm now worried that was supposed to be my epiphany; I'm a Monster. Or is it the sheer idiocy of the circumstances; Buster and Maria are nothing close to being monsters in the true sense but yet that is what they consider themselves. Is that also what I feel/think?

The USS Indianopolis Incident.

I'm at the beach with my client (care aide for someone with a mental disability who is under a 24/7 court-ordered supervision. We go to the beach. I tell him of my fear of fish nibbling my toes as I swim, which leads to my recollection of a US Navy ship which sunk in WW2 and all the crewmen who survived basically floated in shark-infested waters for a month or so before being rescued. I couldn't recall the name of the ship at the time, thinking it was the USS Missouri.

Next day, I'm again on Netflix and there is a Nicholas Cage movie staring at me; the USS Indianopolis. 'that's the boat' I think, 'what a coincidence i was just talking about that'. Cue to today where I am again sitting in front of Lady Dynamite, deciding to give it another go after the Motherboy thing.

At the end of this one, for reasons not related to the actual episode there is a character doing a voice over for a animation piece. The joke is it is a song a shark is singing, about how he only eats 'seamen'. In the ocean around him there are a bunch of sailors, looking panicked. The shark starts eating them. In the background there is a poorly drawn ship - the USS Indianopolis.

That is all.


Monday 5 June 2017

Getting old with Weezer



First, I’ve never written a concert review before. In fact, I hardly have ever read them. The gist of them seems simple enough, so I’m going to try one.

One thing I think most published reviewers don’t talk about is the $ factor; after all, they don’t have to pay for the tickets. I once went to a Leslie Nielson play about Clarence Darrow. All I had to do was call up the ticket office, told them I was writing for a magazine and they left a free ticket at the pick up window for me. The show was great (to me) because the only other thing I was going to be able to do that night for free was go for a walk. So I think most reviews should begin with the reviewer stating how much (or if) they paid for the ticket.

My opinion (and I believe yours) of any show would change vastly if I paid nothing for it versus if I paid $100 for it. If I paid $500 for a ticket, I’d be expecting to get a ride home by one of the band members but that’s neither here nor there. So with that caveat, my beautiful wife bought us tickets for Weezer as a Valentine’s Day gift.  We had a rule about not buying presents on Valentine’s but she broke it and spent $77 and that’s another different topic altogether. To the show!

Monday 27 March 2017

Shit HAPPENED - or fuckit, I'm doing a cleanse.

***This post deals with extremely graphic bodily functions. If you don't believe everyone poops, this article is not for you. That said...




Ow ow ow ow, I'm thinking as I'm sitting on the toilet, again. I have destroyed my asshole . 

And all because I finally decided to do something about my chronic exhaustion, bad diet and dad belly; I mentally snapped and purchased a cleansing kit, one of those dietary-type powders that is supposed to help your metabolism or something.

I remember, there was this time, nearly fifteen years ago when 'cleansing' was the 'in' thing to do. Maybe it still is but my life and social circle has changed from knowing who is starring in the next Tarantino movie to knowing who all the pups in the Paw Patrol are. 

I knew about 'cleansing' because there was this girlfriend of a drinking buddy who was the group buzz kill. She'd be the only one not drinking and although nobody asked she'd find some opportunity (such as the waitress saying "would you like a drink?") to tell everyone she was on a cleanse. 

She said it as if it was something to be proud of. But not matter how many times she ‘cleansed’ she was still always a bit of a dick. We were all pretty happy when they finally broke up. 

Now, nearly twenty years and twenty pounds later, I've decided to get serious about my health. No matter what you might think now, I’m here to tell you your body changes after 40. I start to think of the bathroom consequences of many of the foods I am about to eat. God help my toilet and asshole if I start craving hot sauce again. Funnily enough, I just watched an episode of Teen Titans GO! that perfectly summed up my evolution of addiction to spicy food. 



Monday 9 January 2017

Shit happens

December 15th, 2016

Today was officially the last day of a 10 year social services career. It ended quietly, perhaps fittingly the way it should have; just me and one client. The other one who is usually there had committed himself earlier in the week; hallucinating and hearing voices. He will return next week, a change in his meds and the side effects that go with it. I'm glad I'm not there for that. Instead me and the other guy spend my last shift going to the mall, grabbing some snacks and watching TV until shift change.

It was a good time, basically just baby-sitting a young-at-heart adult. He's a funny guy and our running joke was "I want my two dollars", a line from Better Off Dead I kept throwing at him because I bought him a coffee the night before and I knew full well he would not ever pay me back. I showed him this clip on youtube so he'd better understand why I kept saying that to him.


Now, nobody ever pays a care aide worker back, except in the occasional back-handed compliment like 'I could never do the job you do'. That's bullshit. Anybody can do the job I do, much like anyone can do the job you do, if they chose to want to do it. I don't kid myself, what I do isn't rocket science or political espionage. It was simply trying to make someone's life better for a few hours a day. Often, whose life you were trying to make better wasn't the person you thought it was. Every job I've been in I've been told never to lend money or buy something for a client, much less buy them something expecting it to paid back. But sometimes, the best thing I could do for them (and my own sense of self) was to reach into my own pocket and buy them a coffee or a burger. That is the only real words of wisdom I can say I learned after 10 years.