Indie and Proud

When I was in the process of writing my first novel, the idea of self-publishing never entered my head. But by the time I had completed it and was wondering what to do with it, self-publishing seemed the obvious choice.

Like a lot of others, I tended to view self-publishing as a route for those who were not good enough to get a publishing deal. This was a bias that had been ingrained in me despite the fact that I have never held contemporary fiction in high regards. I am just as susceptible to lazy thinking as anyone else, and so the idea that acceptance by the authorities equaled quality found its way into my thoughts, despite the fact that my general observations have been the exact opposite. I have always tended toward the independent film or the indie rock band. If I am looking for a book to read, the last thing I would think to do is look on the New York Times Bestsellers List or read some trade publication that is supposed to tell me what is new and important at the moment.

The comparison to music says it all for me. I look at my music collection and find next to nothing from any of the major labels. Surely there are the established classics, The Beatles and The Kinks, just as my bookshelves hold Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky. But when it comes to recent music, bands like Änglagård and Echolyn stand head and shoulders above anything I can find on the radio, despite the obvious lack of resources. Let’s face it, the corporate influence dictates that the central focus be on the bottom line rather than the actual worth of the art being made. Rather than allowing an artist to express his or her opinion, focus groups, spread sheets, and people in cubicles dictate what the final “product” should be.

If you read only the first chapter of my first novel, The Amazing Morse, you will know that I express a dislike for “the corporate mindset that crushed wonder”. Virtually everything you read, see or hear nowadays is delivered through the corporate entertainment machine, or is a reflection of same. While I believe it is still possible for an artist’s voice and vision to get through, it is increasingly unlikely to happen, at least not through the major channels. Corporations rule the way we think today in the same manor the Catholic Church ruled European thought in the Middle Ages. So deeply engrained is the corporate mindset that we are not even aware how much it shapes our perceptions. So deeply engrained is the corporate mindset that I held a bias against the indie writer despite all personal evidence to the contrary.

So I am proud to consider myself an indie writer, happy to sit outside the mainstream and thus be in a position to see and critique the dominant paradigms of our day. My voice is wholly my own, uncensored by any person or persons that are part of the groupthink that is inevitable in our corporate era. Without the voice of the indie, the range of vision for our society will constantly shrink as the variety of voices will be silenced. In the place of innovative filmmaking, you will have a constant barrage of sequels to Adam Sandler films.

Yes, there are obvious advantages of having the financial and promotional backing of an established company, but the corrupting influences are too great.

Perhaps you have found the spelling error I had in the fourth paragraph and thought to yourself: “Strictly amateur. Assuredly, if he had an editor, that would have been corrected.” Well, perhaps it would have been caught. But the tradeoff would be that I would need to be branded as a particular type of author and sold to a particular market. My writing would then have to reflect what the market thinks is hot, rather than what I want to write. I would be just another commodity to be sold on the market. The edge of any point I try to make would have to be softened until it was incapable of offending anybody. It is not my intention to offend, but it is my intention to make a point, to tell the truth as I see it and permit the reader to decide what my opinion is really worth. I do not need nor do I want someone to change my writing in order to maximize profits and appeal to the proper demographics. I just can’t think like that, and if I could, I probably wouldn’t be writing books.

And that is why I am Indie and Proud.

I made a video list of my top 30 written works of fiction of all time that I thought I would share. Yes, it is extremely biased and I am sure I am missing a bunch. I pared it down to 30 so that I could say that each work belonged on any list of 100. Of course, everybody has their own opinion.

An Interview/Article by Lauren Baur

What follows is an article written by Lauren Baur about my first novel, The Amazing Morse:

Every child has that one dream, one fantasy, which reminds them of the magic in this world. And many adults, especially in the 21^st century, have found that magic to remain in their past. The new novel “The Amazing Morse”, by local author James Rozoff confronts this 21^st century mentality, “inevitability of technology”, and the magic in this world to create a page turning self-reflective work that will get every reader questioning and remembering their own idealistic self. James Rozoff did self-publish his first novel. It is an accomplishment he has been working towards since graduating with an English degree from Silver Lake College. It’s a new and interesting world, he explains, for those in the publishing business. Years ago self-publishing was the route definitely less taken by many artists, however Rozoff goes to explain how in the modern world, with its technological outreach and communication capabilities, it seems almost advantageous to promote your own work. Technology has created a world where self-publishing can reach a wider audience in a much faster pace. He mentions a local high school teacher who himself has a fan in Italy in lieu of the lack of acknowledgment closer to home.

He addresses how interesting it is to look around and idealize the time we are living in. That we have such favor to our own means and methods, and have a distaste and lack of reverence for those in the past, assuming them to be, as he quotes: “stupid”. He says it so bluntly to enforce the idea of who’s to say that in a hundred years, people won’t easily be looking back at our time thinking the same thoughts of our naivety. It seems Rozoff explains that technology is something accepted as an inevitability and a good, but perhaps this is not the case. The first chapter of his book, in fact, is a picture of the prison of a modern day cubical of a once dreaming artist; a magician. To best explain the main character Rozoff states he “is Atman and he is attempting to be Brahman”.

He chose this as the topic for his first novel, because his brother who is a magician had jokingly told someone that he was getting a book written about him. This sprung the idea for him and he decided to abandon for now the other story ideas he had been working on and gather all his attention and energy into one he had more interest in. He goes to state “I liked taking the idea of magic and making it relate to the era of Houdini; that there still existed the idea of magic then, when not everything was instantly available.”
He goes to say also, how interesting it is publishing in a world where he’s not even sure who reads anymore. And if they do read is it on a device that with one click can bring you to a movie or as he says jokingly “pictures of cute animals”. He is expressing how instantly gratifying this world is and the things that demand our time instead of the fantasy, the ideals, and dreams that do come with discovering what’s on the next page. He hasn’t kept up with a great majority of modern or contemporary literature so he definitely expresses taking the leap of writing a novel to bring up the issues of living in such a predominately modernized and technological world saying “I’d be happy with one person understanding what I’m trying to do. If I accomplish that, I won’t feel like a loon”.
He has been influenced by Jack London, Victor Hugo, and “of course” William Shakespeare. He goes to say “as far as contemporaries, I am very influenced by the independent musicians who are able to produce fantastic music without the backing of major record labels”. There’s a lot of honesty and truth in pieces Rozoff puts together as what has combined to become his muse for this novel. But it has been 20 years in the making. In fact it was about 20 years ago he had a followed a friend who, as he explains, had an “eye for the unusual” into an establishment with a sign predominantly displaying “psychic”. He said the uneasy feeling that still resonates is what began the idea for this project.

It’s an interesting and intense read that takes a very solid look at the lives we have created for ourselves as a whole. It is from the mind and hands of a local artist, giving even more meaning to those around this area who choose to pick it up. It deals with questions and concerns almost every person has brought up to themselves, and reminds one what it was like to have those dreams as a child, to accept the butterflies in your tummy, and use them as motivation and not bars on a cell of self-imprisonment in a climb-your-way up society. That is simply a small impression of the greater wonders that are expressed as the reader follows Morse through each turn of the page.

Rozoff currently is related to the Minds Without Boundaries writing group in the Manitowoc area. And he gives direct and sincere advice to all those going into English and other art forms. “Don’t over salt the fries and don’t put too much mayo on my burger. (jokingly) Seriously, though, the world needs English majors, it just doesn’t appreciate them. Science is a noble pursuit, but it cannot answer mankind’s big questions. Literature can take spirituality, psychology and philosophy, mix them together and find answers that speak to more than just the intellect”. His novel is available at the public library, Amazon, for Kindle and for Nook.

 

One profoundly disturbed individual

I admit it, I have never read a Stephen King story in my life. I have, however, seen a lot of the movies based on his books. And for me, one of the most frightening moments in of all the movies was when Jack Nickelson's wife looks at the manuscript he has been working for months on, only to discover that it merely repeats "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy" over and over again, page after page. It made her realize how absolutely deranged a person she was living with. I've always set that as a benchmark, a 10 on the crazy meter, if you will. While writing my newest novel, to be released soon, I have created a character that, at least to my mind, equals Jack as a profoundly disturbed individual. Here is an excerpt from that novel, tell me what you think:

“Go out and play. Far from here.”

That’s what his mom had told him. She had been uncharacteristically stern with him.

“There’s nothing to do.” He complained to his mom.

So his mother had given him a pail and told him to pick blueberries. She told him not to come home until the pail was full. But he had carried this pail with him for quite a while now, and while he thought he had collected plenty of blueberries, the pail seemed less than a quarter full. For someone so young, the pail was becoming heavy.

It was a beautiful summer day, the sun bringing light and warmth to everything around him. Being young, he was curious. The island he lived on was all he ever really knew. While not very large, there were still parts of it he had never seen. He was in such a place now. He was far from the village, farther than he had ever been alone before. He was searching this new territory for all its mysteries, poking his head into a hole in a tree to see what was inside. He looked down on the ground to see a knot of grubs near one of the roots of the tree, sucking nourishment from the moss that grew there. From the massive tree with a swing attached, to the grass that moved slightly from a gentle breeze, everything around him was alive. Birds chirped and fluttered somewhere above him while the buzzing of insects could also be heard amidst the rustle of leaves.

His eyes to the ground, he beheld it. It was hidden in the grass so that he could not see what it was. At first he thought it was a rock, but then he thought he could see something moving. But it was not alive. It was a baby bird, but the life that it should have contained was replaced with something repulsive and black. It was not merely dead, it was death incarnate, a young boy’s first encounter with the dark truth of existence. Although he had no experience with it, an instinct older than his species knew what it was he saw and made him recoil from it. It was just a baby, a young bird not yet capable of flight. It laid there, its body twisted in an unnatural position from its fall from its nest in a branch far above.

What had been new life a short while ago was now this. He did not know if it were merely insects that had been feasting on its body or if something larger had been gnawing at it. But whatever it was, it had eaten through its skin, revealing the strange and nauseating sight of its internal organs to the young boy’s eyes. The sickening reality of existence that had been covered by soft downy feathers had been exposed. And it occurred to him that all he had ever known of life had been proven false because he had not known of the reality of death. In an instant, one horrible instant, this creature’s life had been extinguished because of some small event. Some slight misstep or an unusually harsh gust of wind had ended this life without chance for reprieve. And the boy knew, beneath his tanned but soft skin, he too was full of the same soupy mess that was now poking through this bird’s skin. And he knew that he too could be brought to the same end with merely an instant of misfortune. This creature that had been nurtured by its parents now lay abandoned and forgotten, left alone to rot and be eaten by the lowly things that crawl upon the earth and suck upon the underbelly of life. And he realized that he too was very small, that he too was very fragile. And he was alone. He never knew what alone meant until this moment. And even though his mother had sent him away and told him not to come back until dark, he found himself running back to the village, leaving his pail of blueberries behind. He knew he would never find answers to what he saw, knew that he could only try to forget about it, drown it out with other thoughts and experiences so that his mind would not have time to think about it. He would live in the village and surround himself with the life he used to know, before he became aware of death.

It was very quiet when he returned to the village, even more so than when he had left. In the morning, the people had been talking in whispers, when they felt the need to talk at all. Now, there were not even whispers. Even the place where the little death was had contained whispers.

He looked towards the center of the village, and there he saw the villagers, sitting at the tables where meals would be eaten in good weather. But there was no movement, no noise of any kind. The people were like statues, their faces twisted in sickening smiles of pained madness. He saw his mother there, but she did not look at him. Her gaze was fixed crookedly towards the sky, a cup still grasped in her hand. All of the people, his uncle, his cousin, all sat like photographs, frozen in the past. He was alone, completely alone, with his newfound awareness of death. But death was no longer lurking in the grass, it no longer needed to hide. It was all around him. Everyone he ever knew was staring at him with death in their eyes. He gazed at the faces of those around him, contorted from the pain that had been their last moments. Their mouths were shaped almost in the form of smiles. It was though they knew something about death, something he did not. They appeared not to be frightened. Perhaps he could learn from them, if he could only hear what it was he thought they were trying to tell him. After all, they were still his family and friends. And in his need, he began to think he could hear faint murmuring, as though the dead were willing to tell him their secrets.

 

Influences Part 1

One of the coolest things about writing a novel is being able to share my influences with people. And man, have I been influenced; there have been many, many hands that assisted in shaping my brain matter into the form it is now. The first influential book I want to mention, however, is a little bit unusual, in that it is not a novel but a "how to" book entitled "The Easy Way to Quit Smoking", by Alan Carr.

 

It's hard to explain the effect this book had on me, but it went beyond helping me quit smoking. The book did not so much stop one from smoking as much as it brought one to a mindset where one perceived of stepping away from the nicotine addiction as not only supremely logical, but easy and fun as well. My addiction to tobacco was not some moral weakness of mine, but a trap I had fallen into and could find a way out of, with simple step by step instructions. Its influence is apparent in my debut novel, in the way my protagonist feels imprisoned by various forces beyond his control. His eventual liberation is comparable to the elation and freedom I felt when I smoked my last cigarette. I really can't explain to you the joy I felt at that moment, a joy that has spilled over into many different areas of my life and stays with me to this day. The comparison between smoking and escape artistry will be even more obvious in my next book, tentatively titled Perchance to Dream.

The Silver Sea

Here is a short story I wrote many years ago. It is very short, only a page long. Actually it is a dream that I had, which I recorded as best I remembered it. Although it is a favorite of mine, I've never known anybody to appreciate it. Thus I release it onto cyber-space, hoping that someone in this grand universe of ours might see in it what I do:

The Silver Sea

About a year ago I had the strangest dream. I was sitting up in bed, reading a book of short stories I had acquired a while back but had never gotten around to reading. I had just finished a rather lengthy story but, not quite ready for sleep, flipped through the pages to find a shorter one. The very next story was only four pages, so I began to read. “My name is not important, I am one of many…” it began. It was the story of an old man, one who had lived a long full life of adventures and experiences. Much good he had done in his life and much had he learned, yet one thing still eluded him. His life, he knew, was incomplete until he discovered the answer to the question that had troubled him throughout his life. And so he set out upon the last and greatest quest of his life: a quest for the meaning of life.

His search led him through many adventures which I can no longer remember, but in the end the trail led up a range of many high, silver mountains. Within one of these mountains he discovered a cave. Entering the cave, he saw a woman dressed in white, there as if for no other reason than to await his arrival. Intuitively, the old man asked the woman if she could help him in his quest. The woman said nothing but led his gaze off to the side of her where a glowing horizontal line appeared. As they both looked at the line, it grew larger, as though it was a large flat screen that rotated until the old man could see an image upon it. It seemed to him to be a picture of the silver mountains that surrounded him, their snow-capped peaks a bright white. But slowly the picture began to move. The mountains began to rise and fall as though millennia were moments. The motion increased further until the old man realized that the mountains were waves of a sea; the snow-capped peaks were white caps reflecting the light of an unseen sun. The sea itself was the color of purest silver. But as the waves pushed upwards, the uppermost tips that reached for the sky were of a white that paled the silver.

“What is it that you show me?” the old man asked.

“It is everything,” said the woman

“Then what is the meaning of life?”

The woman paused for a moment, smiled, and said: “To shine.”

The man looked back at the lake, saw the water moving endlessly, waves leaping skyward. The upper peaks shone brilliantly as they reached towards the heavens, then fell back into the silver as new waves reached their peak. The old man smiled, because now he understood. And so he began a new adventure, a new life.

“My name is unimportant, I am one of many…”it ended. As I finished the story, I smiled too, in appreciation of the old man. After a moment, I flicked back to the beginning of the story to read it again. I stopped short, deciding to save the story for another night. I placed the book on the table by my bed, turned the light out, pulled the covers over me, and woke up. I sat up in bed for a moment, wishing I had reread the story, and wondering what other stories I might have discovered in that book.

Here is a little sample from my work in progress. It is still a little rough around the edges, but I wanted to share:

Perchance to Dream Sample

“Really, Dave? Really? You feel the need to go out of your way to give yourself the heebie-jeebies?”

“I was hoping for the willies, but the heebie-jeebies would work too, I suppose. Come on Mindy, don’t be afraid. I’ll protect you.” With that, Dave led Mindy down a leaf-blown path into the cemetery.

The cold evening air did indeed produce upon his exposed skin an effect that caused goose bumps, but the feeling was a pleasant one. Any change brings a certain excitedness, a certain expectation that wasn’t all that far from nervousness. But the alternative was to not feel anything at all. That was the difference between him and those lying so peacefully below them in their isolated little boxes.

“See, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” Said Dave in an overly paternalistic tone.

“I’m not scared by a cemetery, depressed is more like it. It’s like when I walk through a cemetery…I don’t know, it’s like they’re all children who were punished with death for the sin of growing old.”

“What?”

“I mean, they’re all just children, really. We tend to think of people who have died as being who they were in their last moments. But they were all young once, too. They’ve all got years for when they were born just like they’ve got years for when they died. They were all babies once, looked upon with envy by widows who remembered being young. And their only fault was having lived too long.

“We’re all just children, really” she continued. “Children without parents to watch out for them twenty-four hours a day. Nobody really grows up, they just find themselves with more responsibility, they become slightly more functional is all. They start pretending that they’re grownups and they do it for so long they forget they’re just kids. When I was young, I’d look at pictures of my grandma when she was my age and it seemed like people were made differently back in those days. But it’s just the superficial stuff, hair styles, clothing, the technological advancement of the camera that was used. As I get older, I see that people don’t really change. I look in the mirror and I still see the same person I’ve always been. I look at you and you’re the same kid I knew way back when.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, you’ve changed obviously. But you’re the same, too. It’s like you’re the same person, but drawn by a different artist. When you were young, you were drawn by a cartoonist, but now you’re more of an oil painting. And when you’re old, it’ll be more like you’ve been drawn by a fine pencil, all thin lines and shadow.”

“I think Picasso drew your brain.”

“Shut up. I’m trying to be introspective and you’re being childish.”

“Yeah, but the idea of children being punished for living too long is a little unnerving. I mean, it awaits all of us. Me, you, every single person we know or ever will know is going to die, and there’s no alternative, no ‘maybe not’. There’s nothing between ‘it’ and us except a little bit of time, and that cushion is getting smaller every second. One day you’re going to wake up dead, and that’s it.” He paused, and then started to recite some lines of poetry:

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

“My grandfather used to recite that to us. He had to learn it in grade school, and he carried it around inside his mind for the rest of his life. I used to think it was a poem of defiance, like “rage against the dying of the light”, but it’s not. It’s an acceptance of death. All these years I thought my grandpa was being a tough old codger, but he was saying we should welcome death. I don’t know how that makes me feel.

“Fuck death.” Said Mindy, out of nowhere. “Fuck him. He’s a little girly man and he better not try fucking with you or me.”

“Yeah, fuck him.” Dave repeated. “It’s not about inevitability, it’s about the attitude.”

Dave’s hand found Mindy’s and he squeezed it hard. Despite the conversation, he felt unexpectedly, thrillingly alive. Death defines life. One can walk around in a daze, not even realizing the life that’s bubbling up inside at every single moment. But when the reality of death hits, so does the reality of life. He felt not only his own life force but Mindy’s as well, felt the flow of all the existence that was all around him. He felt powers bigger than himself playing through him, and it had nothing to do with anything supernatural. No, whatever it was was exceptionally natural, though it was immensely powerful. And as much as he tried to believe his will and mind were captain of his ship, he knew he was only dimly aware of the forces that moved him. To feel part of the greater whole made the idea of death less real, as though his body was but a storage space for the life that flowed through everything. Life was a cosmic force, and his human form was merely a tide pool that had managed to trap a tiny fraction of an ocean. He wanted to share his thoughts with Mindy, but found that holding her hand was sharing enough. He was alone in his thoughts even as he was together with her. But his mind was sharing something bigger than just another person at the moment. He wondered if Mindy felt the same thing, but found no way of broaching the subject.

He felt as though he were atop a mountain at that moment, looking down on all that was. Doing so, he could see himself and the foolish, small ways he often looked at life, trapped as he was in his small single self. Although he rejected much of modern-day life, he couldn’t help but seeing things through the prism of his times and environment. He was more a sheep than he would ever be willing to admit. Things that moved society moved him as well. Ego, petty concerns, insecurities. He was a character in a play written by someone else.

“Something’s coming, Mindy” said Dave, with an ominous air.

“Where? I don’t see anything. Are you trying to scare me?”

“No, I mean something’s coming to shake us all up. We’re all edgy. We’re scared. We sense something, like animals sense an earthquake. We’re all living in an artificial environment, and something outside the little fishbowl we’re living in is about to knock over the table it’s sitting on.”