I Only Posted Twice in November

Take that, NaBloPoMo!

And I didn't write any novels, either.

But I did write a chapter about intersex classification for an anthology on LGBTIQ library service. And I read several great books. And FoxyJ and I celebrated our eighth anniversary. All in all, it was a good month. I just didn't tell you about it. But rest assured, I love you anyway.

They like us, they really like us!

Thank you to Katya for letting me know about this very nice review of the Fob Bible. And of course, thanks to Dallas Robbins for writing it.

Coming Soon to a Library Near You

(Assuming you live in Orem, that is.)

Fob & Foxy Plus 3

I don't think I've ever watched an entire episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8, but I find myself fascinated, along with the rest of America, with the recent(ish) announcement of their separation. In the first place, my heart goes out to both of them and to their kids, because I have an idea of what that's like (from both the parents' and childrens' perspectives). Secondly, it's got me thinking about when Foxy and I made a similar announcement (though to a much smaller audience) a couple years ago. I've also been thinking about our separation because over on A Motley Vision they've been discussing "Abraham's Purgatory," a short story of mine that is so strongly linked to that period of my life.

I'm not sure I have much to say beyond that, except that it's been on my mind, and I'm happy to still be married to FoxyJ, and I'm happy that she and I can own that decision as ours alone and not something anyone else told us to do. I also hope the best for Jon and Kate and their family, whether that means their separation becomes permanent or that they get back together or whatever, and I hope that when you talk abou them--if you care to--that you remember they're real people and deserve real compassion.

Strolling Down Main Street and Hoping Not to Get Hit By a Trolley

The Queen of Outer Blogness, C. L. Hanson, has kindly offered me the opportunity to showcase the Fob Bible on Main Street Plaza. Being the egotistical fellow I am, the excerpt I chose to post is my own short story, "The Changing of the God."













Hey, why are you still here? Get over to MSP and read the story!

Even More Fob Bible Goodness

Tyler Chadwick at A Motley Vision wrote a very nice review of the Fob Bible. A commenter noted that Tyler's review did a much better job of explaining what the Fob Bible is than anything she'd seen previously, so if any of you have been wondering what exactly is this thing Mr. Fob keeps trying to sell you, I'll let Tyler explain:

The Fob Bible, an anthology of stories, poems, closet drama, and email correspondence, positions itself within this general tradition of enhanced, altar-type, family Bibles, though with a significant revisionary difference: instead of constructing a new apparatus intended to direct our study of the scriptures in specific, predetermined ways or offering a new translation of a text that has already been translated repeatedly, the contributors to The Fob Bible have re-imagined well-worn Old Testament stories, revisiting Eden and its surrounds, the Deluge, the final moments of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham and Isaac’s ascent to Moriah’s pinnacle, the relationship between Isaac and Esau and Esau and Jacob, Joseph’s—then Moses’—journey into Egypt, Balaam’s bond with his ass, Samson, Solomon, Rehoboam, Naaman, Ezra, Job, Jeremiah, Daniel, and, of course, Jonah and the giant fish.

These postmodern visitations reshape each historically privileged narrative and narrative voice from the perspective of the less-privileged story, the unheard voice, offering new characters—or familiar characters recast in new molds—the opportunity to speak and, in the process, to influence the world “in exciting new ways.” For instance, Danny Nelson gives voice to Job’s wife, a woman unnamed in the canon whose scriptural screen time amounts to one line of dialogue and two obscure references, three slight appearances from which she is sometimes judged to be “bitter, angry, and wrong.” Yet, Nelson gives the woman a name, “Hadasa,” the whole cast of human emotions, and a book of her own, a space in which she (or Nelson’s version thereof) can flesh out her poignant account of Job’s tale, which is, in the end, their story and deserves to be told in her voice, too.

Tyler goes on to talk of the "revisionary proclivity" of the Fob Bible, attributing this to the fact that all the writers are Mormon, part of "a Christian religious heritage founded on a restorationist theology." Though I don't consider myself Mormon anymore, I like Tyler's take on this idea, and I'm happy to attribute any revisionary proclivities I might have to my Mormon heritage. It makes sense. But don't take my word for it; go read Tyler's review. As Theric points out in the comments, the review itself is a work of art, and we don't just say that because he says nice things about us. (But it doesn't hurt.)

Drive Carefully

Because the Fob Bible hits the streets today! Order your copy now. (By way of disclaimer, I haven't ordered my copy yet only because I'm moving next week and don't want to lose it in the mail.)

According to the official description, The Fob Bible is "The Old Testament re-imagined through poetry, verse, closet drama, e-mail, and short story." I would add that said re-imaginations strike just the right balance of thoughtful reverence and humorous irreverence toward the source material to please believer and non-believer alike. And that it's really good.

And anyone who can tell me the difference between poetry and verse wins bonus points. There's certainly enough variety of poetry and verse in the book to warrant two labels, but I'm just not clear on the distinction.

Fob Bible Release Party Recap

Thanks to those of you who stopped by the party. To those of you who didn't make it, you can still relive the fun here. The highlights of the party were live readings of a few excerpts from the Fob Bible, which I'll happily repost for you here.

FoxyJ reading "Capitulation: Forbidden Squirming" by A. Arwen Taylor:



Me reading an excerpt from "The Changing of the God" by B.G. Christensen:



Eric reading "Them Bones Them Bones Gonna -- Walk Around (a bar song)" by Theric Jepson:



Lady Steed reading "Philistina" by Danny Nelson:



Me reading "Wings" by Sarah E. Jenkins (sorry, Sarah, I'm not a great poetry reader):



And finally, Eric reading the illustration captions as if they all go together in a long, nonsensical story:



Now that we've whetted your appetite, buy the book!

Ere you left your computer this evening...

Did you think to stop by the Foblog after 6PM PDT to check in on our Fob Bible Release Party and say hi? (Click the link Foblog link to sign up for an email reminder.)

Also, don't forget to pre-order your copy of the Fob Bible!

Fob Bible Goodness

The Fob Bible will be released on June 1st and is now available to pre-order. Whether you order because you want to see Old Testament stories as envisioned by literary geniuses, because you don't want to feel guilty next month when I ask you what you think of it, or because you want to donate money to the LDS Humanitarian Fund, rest assured that you're making the world a better place for you, me, and poor kids in Africa.

To celebrate, we'll be throwing a release party this Friday, May 29th, at 6pm PDT. Can't make it to the Fobcave in Davis, CA? No problem. Pop into the Foblog sometime Friday evening, see what's going on via liveblogging, say hi via comment, and pour yourself a glass of sparkling cider to celebrate with us.

Cheers!

A QUOTIDIAN BOOK OF SCRIPTURE
CONTAINING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE JUICIEST PORTIONS OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT

—sans, for obvious reasons, Judges 19—

translated through means of memory and nightmare
out of the pre-translated tongues (being mainly English):
and with the former translations ignored,

or—in special cases—
dictated but not read,

by His Fobbiness’s
special command, in perpetuity,

worlds with very definite (and sometimes good-looking) ends,
albeit of a feminist bent in places,
with far too many references to behemoths and leviathans,
and thus, being indebted to the grace of your most gracious progenitrix,
published in the year of the FOB seven
(using the Jepsonian calendar for its ease of dates).

Fully Authorized Fob Version

Plain and Precious Parts

A year and a half in the making, the Fob Bible is nearly here. On June 1st, a collection of prose and poetry inspired by the Old Testament and written by members of the Friends of Ben writing group (and illustrated posthumously by Gustave Dore) will be available to purchase here. In the meantime, whet your appetite with selections we call "Plain and Precious Parts of the Fob Bible"--you can read it online here, download a free copy for your eReader here, or buy the Kindle edition for $0.99 here.

The stories, poetry, and drama in this anthology are written by some of the best writers I know, including fellow bloggers Theric, Tolkien Boy, Melyngoch, and editorgirl. The hard copy (once again, available June 1st) will feature three stories of mine: a slightly revised version of "Abraham's Purgatory"; "The Official History of the International Society for the Spiritual Attunement of the Friends of G.C. Benefield, Chapter 34," which serves as an introduction to the world of the five-book YA superhero fantasy series I'm currently working on; and "The Changing of the God," which features a conversation between Old Testament God and New Testament God. Of my three stories only "Abraham's Purgatory" is in the "Plain and Precious Parts" sampler, but you'll also see there a wonderful collection of pieces from my friends and fellow writers that explore Bible stories you may or may not be familiar with in creative and thought-provoking ways.

All proceeds from the sales of the Fob Bible will go to LDS Humanitarian Services, a charity whose Mormon heritage reflects that shared by most of Fob and whose humanitarian goals we are all happy to support, regardless of our current relation to the church.

A Year and a Half Later...

The rough draft is complete. 144,659 words; 437 pages double-spaced.

This is not the first novel I've written, but it is the longest (twice as long as the previous record holder) and by far the most ambitious. It will also be the first one that I make publishable and therefore publish.

Now begins the heinous task of doing just that.

Kindle Thoughts

Having played with it for a couple weeks now, I can say definitively that the Kindle 2 is pretty darn cool. As far as the reading experience itself goes, I much prefer holding a lightweight device with a paper-like screen and flipping pages with the push of a button to holding a real book and flipping manually.

The really cool thing about the Kindle, though, is the infrastructure they've built up around it. With wireless service included in the cost of the device, it's incredibly easy to browse the online store, buy books, and read them without dealing with the hassle of downloading first to my computer and then synching files to the device via USB cable. I especially love that everything has free samples--the first chapter of books or the first two weeks of a magazine subscription--so I can get a better idea of what I'm spending my money on.

There are only two things that are holding me back from using the Kindle exclusively for all my reading. The first is that I'm not in the habit of buying books--generally I borrow from the library, and if I'm going to buy a book it's either that I can't get it at the library or that I like it so much that I think I'd like to lend it to friends in the future. Owning an electronic copy of a book negates the possibility of lending unless I want to lend out the whole Kindle, but for books I can't get at the library the Kindle is a great option. As it happens, I currently have a job that frequently gives me Amazon.com gift certificates, so getting in the habit of buying books is more economically feasible than it has been at other points in my life.

The second thing holding me back is that a good deal of my reading time is devoted to comic books, which are not largely available in Kindle format and even if they were, its black-and-white and just-a-little-too-small screen make the Kindle less than ideal for the medium. If Amazon or someone else were to produce a similar device with a larger screen in full color, though, I would love to see the world of monthly comic book publishing go digital. I likes me my new comics every Wednesday, but who needs boxes and boxes of old comics cluttering their house? If they were digital I'd always have them available, without the clutter.

For the time being I mainly use my Kindle for reading the two magazines I've subscribed to: The New Yorker and Narrative. I enjoy The New Yorker primarily for its fiction and Narrative is actually an online literary journal I could read for free on the web, but it's worth the three bucks a month to be able to read short stories when I'm, for example, watching my kids play on the playground, whereas I would never ever sit down at the computer to read those stories because I spend all day at a computer and when I have non-work-related computer time it's for writing my own fiction, thank you very much. Considering that what I write is prose and until a few weeks ago all I was reading was comics, I think it's a very good thing that the Kindle has got me reading prose again. And fairly good stuff, at that, as literary writing goes.

One of the things that excites me most about the Kindle is that I can load my own documents onto it. This means that when writer friends send me their novels to read, I can do so on my couch instead of at the computer, and that when, for example, I finish my current book and want Edgy to read it, I can send it to him electronically, he can make comments on it on his Kindle, then send it back and I can read those comments on mine. Trees around the world rejoice.

2008 Report Card

The good thing about posting my yearly goals on my blog is that it helps me remember what they are and I feel a sense of accountability, as if all my hundreds and hundreds of loyal readers are anxiously awaiting to see how I do. The bad thing is that remembering is not the same as doing. Mostly what it means is that I spend much of the year feeling guilty because I'm not making much progress on my goals and thus am letting down all those hundreds and hundreds of loyal readers. With that in mind, here is what I did not do in 2008:

1. Drop body fat level down to 15%. I was doing pretty good with this for the first half of the year and seemed to be making progress. I worked out consistently and for a few months denied myself after-dinner treats, and the scale showed small but significant results. Then we spent a month and a half moving and then settled in here where I fell into a depressive slump where all I wanted to do was read comics and eat, and then the holidays arrived and by that point I just didn't care. When I checked my body fat on Thursday the scale said 22%, which is where I started the year. But today after lifting weights and jogging I checked again and it said 18.5%, so I'll go with that. And I just bought a membership at the UC Davis gym so before long that 18.5% will be more than a midday fluke.

2. Finish the novel I'm writing and sell it. I did neither of these things. Just like the first goal, the summer totally killed the momentum I'd built up over the first six months of the year on this one. But I started writing again a few weeks ago and I'm excited about the book again and, all things considered, I did accomplish a lot that first half of the year--the book is about halfway done and clocking in at 222 pages (72,025 words), which means it'll end up being about twice as long as the longest of the previous books I've written (I write YA, so short is the norm). And in my completely objective opinion, this is shaping up to be by far the best book I've ever written.

3. Finish school (forever) and get a good job. Yay! I actually did this one. Sort of. I did finish school (forever) and I did get a good job; it's just not the full-time librarian career-type job I had in mind. But that's by choice, as the part-time work-from-home job I did get is ideal for our current life situation. And there's a chance both job and life situation will be changing this year, so we'll see what happens here.

4. Have more compassion. Yeah, this was totally a passing phase. I've had moments of compassion, to be sure, but between political events and a six-month marathon of being irrationally angry at my kids, I've had some real low points here.

So that all adds up to something like 37%, or a big fat F. Woot!

Bonus Points:

While I haven't done so well with goals, I did phenomenally with my New Year's resolution. I have responded (at least with a general "thanks for the comment") to every single comment posted on this blog. I'm glad I did, too, as it made me feel more like this is a social activity and not just me practicing verbal masturbation while people watch. (Isn't that a nice image?)

Also, this year I saw the fruition of 2007's writing goal, which was to "make five writing submissions, or one successful submission, whichever comes first." I did not make five submissions in 2007, but I did submit a paper on the last day of the year, then found out a month or two later that it was accepted, and then just last week I found out the article has been published in the most recent issue of Knowledge Organization. So watch your local academic library specializing in library and information science for "Minoritization vs. Universalization: Lesbianism and Male Homosexuality in LCSH and LCC." It's a real nail-biter. (And just in time for the above-mentioned possible job change, which entails sending out CVs, now fortified with added publication.)

And, because I'm a masochist, watch this space for 2009 goals, coming soon. As soon as I figure out what they are.

Gender Confusion

My friend Dandypratt sent me a link to GenderAnalyzer, an automatic tool that guesses whether a given website is written by a man or a woman. It's 76% sure that I'm a man. Of course I went through and plugged in every blog I could think of. A couple interesting results:

• GenderAnalyzer is 64% sure that FoxyJ is a man. Wouldn't that make for an interesting twist in our story? Boy, we really fooled you all, didn't we?
  
• GenderAnalyzer is only 58% sure that Samantha Stevens is a woman, noting that she's fairly gender neutral--apparently Tolkien Boy needs to do a better job of impersonating a female.
  
• GenderAnalyzer is 98% sure that Theric is a woman. I know that Th. often posts comments using his wife's Blogger ID, but has Lady Steed secretly been writing her husband's blog all this time?

Apparently the trial run has proven the tool to be less accurate than anticipated; there's some speculation as to why here, as well as plans to try to improve the process. I'm curious to see if they're able to make this work accurately, or if it ends up being the case that there simply isn't that significant a difference between men's and women's writing.

Gods Behaving Badly

I've been on a comics-reading kick lately, which means I haven't devoted much free time (and I have a good amount of it now that I'm no longer in school) to reading prose (or writing prose, but that's another matter entirely). Edgy's review of Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips, though, piqued my curiosity enough to not only read prose but to read 300 pages of prose that is not young adult fiction.

This epic story of Greek gods living in a dilapidated house in twenty-first-century London and the mortals they drag into their power struggles is utterly delightful. Phillips's reimagining of the mythic gods is at once cleverly original and true to the source material. If Homer were writing today this is exactly how Artemis, Apollo, Aphrodite, and all the rest would look and behave. On top of that, though, Phillips adds a layer of humor that makes this fun to read and an engaging plot that makes it difficult to put down. The story is filled with twists and turns that surprise while at the same time feeling entirely natural and logical. Perhaps I'm most impressed by this because it's a weakness in my own writing, but I'm in awe of the way Phillips allows her plot to be driven by well-developed characters; she fleshes them out completely, lets them do what they want to do, and the story is built naturally on the consequences of their actions. The novel opens, for example, with Artemis and Aphrodite forcing Apollo to swear not to harm mortals, and everything that happens afterward depends on that simple act, with the conflicting motivations of major and minor characters adding layer upon layer of complexity to the butterfly effect of events.

And I even liked it despite the fact that library gave me a copy with the other cover.

Wondering

A couple weeks ago FoxyJ checked out The Prestige from the library. A very cool movie, but the first thing I thought when I saw the cover was "Hey! It's Batman versus Wolverine! And look, there's Alfred!"

Then shortly after that Ken Jennings posted about "superhero crossover" movies where actors who have starred in superhero movies show up together. Besides The Prestige, Ken alluded to Wonder Boys as the movie that made one of his blog readers proclaim, “Holy smokes, Spidey and Iron Man are doin’ it!” So of course I went right to the library website and put Wonder Boys on hold.

As it turns out, this movie has more than superhero sex that should have made me like it more than I did. Besides having some great performances by Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., and Katie Holmes (Batman's girlfriend, by the way), this film has the Mr. Fob advantage of being about writers and writing. Once I realized this, I was excited--I'm a writer, so maybe this movie would somehow speak to the depths of my soul and tell me something wonderful and profound about writing. Perhaps it was this high expectation that left me feeling most disappointed in the movie with the aspects that had anything to do with writing. I don't know what it was* specifically, but it felt to me like a movie about actors pretending to be writers, not a movie about writers.

I remember feeling similarly about Finding Forrester, which like this was a great movie but felt somewhat artificial to me as far as representing anything like the world of writers that I know. Is it just that these are particular representations of a larger topic that I have a particular experience with, and because the particulars don't match up it seems fake to me? Or is it that they just don't do a good job of being movies about writers? My friends who (like me) are pretentious enough to call yourselves writers, have you seen movies about writers that rang true to you? Have the rest of you had similar experiences with movies about some other subject in your personal domain?

And is this why I was also disappointed by Unbreakable, which everyone told me I'd love as a comic-book fan, but ultimately felt like the work of an outsider to the genre?**


*After writing this post but before publishing it, I've figured out what I don't like about the portrayal of writing in either of the films mentioned above. In both writing is made out to be this magical process that somehow transcends the experience of mere mortal non-writers, but I don't know any writer for whom this is the case. You come up with an idea, you force it onto paper (or onto the screen), it's crap, and then you work and work until it's less crap than it was at first. There's nothing magical about it.

**Notice how I nicely brought the post back to the theme of superheroes, which is what I'd started with but otherwise had nothing to do with anything? Isn't that wonderfully literary of me?

In the Mail

From the assistant to the literary agent I sent a query to a couple months ago:

Thank you for your query concerning your novel FOBS AND FOES. Your work sounds interesting and I would be happy to read some of it. Please send the first 50 pages of the novel, plus a brief synopsis...

This is still about twelve huge steps removed from actually getting the book published, mind you, but it's a step closer than I've ever gotten in the past.

If you're one of the people I've been ignoring this weekend, it's because I'm working on making those 50 pages and synopsis as pretty as they can be.

A Wannabe of All Trades

See if you can spot a pattern:

• When I had a good English teacher in ninth grade, I decided I wanted to teach English.
• When I had a good physics teacher in eleventh grade, I decided I wanted to teach physics.
• Whenever I read a good comic book I want more than anything to write (and/or draw) comics.
• When I read Maus and Persepolis and Fun Home I wanted more than anything to write a memoir in graphic novel form.
• After I saw Batman Forever I made plans to write and star (as Robin) in the next Batman sequel (and heaven knows it would have been better than Batman & Robin turned out).
• When I had great English professors in college I decided I wanted to be an English professor.
• When I've had great library and information science professors I've briefly considered getting a PhD in LIS--albeit very briefly before discarding the notion as foolishness.
  
• When I listen to hip hop I want to be a rapper.
• When I saw Scratch, a documentary about turntablism, I wanted to be a turntablist.
• When I see great movies I am overcome by a desire to be an actor.
• When I hear Barack Obama speak I want to be a politician.
• When I read blogs that get enough hits to support their authors off the ad income I want to write amazing blog posts that will gain me fame and fortune.
  
• When I read young adult novels I want to be a YA novelist.
• When I read Harry Potter I decided to write a multi-part fantasy epic that would rival the Bible in all-time sales.

I just finished reading the complete run of Boondocks, a controversial syndicated comic strip about race and politics. Can you guess what my latest lofty aspiration is?

Nonfictional Novels

I've always been amused that just about every time I've seen a literary agent or editor give advice to aspiring authors, one of the things she or he says is, "Don't say on your query letter that you are submitting a 'fictional novel.' It's just a novel. All novels are fiction." It baffles me that this is such a widespread problem that agents and editors across the board feel the need to address it. I mean, seriously, are there people out there who really say 'fictional novel'?

I don't know, but apparently there are people whose definition of novel is broader than mine. The opening credits to the 1995 film The Basketball Diaries say, "Based on the novel by Jim Carroll." Um, novel? The Basketball Diaries is literally a collection of diary entries written by Carroll as a teenaged heroin addict. I don't think you can even call that an autobiographical novel.

Memo to the people of the future who will be adapting my blog into a major motion picture: Please do not put in the credits "Based on the novel by Mr. Fob."