Fellow sentient beings, it’s been an exciting week.

There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get started.

Nerdtacular

I was in Salt Lake City, Utah over the weekend for the Frogpants Podcast Network’s Nerdtacular event. While I won’t bother you with what I do during my vacation time, I think there are a couple of details that might be of interest to you. The best part was meeting the handful of fans (feels weird writing this) that dropped by. I wish I had more time to chat with each of them and I hope I didn’t come off as too standoffish. If I did, I apologize. I’m of a shy nature.

Koalemos, the model

I was finally able to showcase and award the first copy of the Koalemos model I created. This is the first of eight of these models and while it didn’t come out perfectly and was an absolute disaster to transport, I think the end result was worth the effort. I look forward to building the second model and raffling it off to the people who pre-ordered The Life Engineered.

The first model, which is numbered ‘8’ for reasons all my own, was given to Hammond Chamberlain, host of the Beyond the Playlist podcast. Hammond is one of the 13 people who dropped by my table and I entered is name in a drawing for the model. Mr. Chamberlain is local to Salt Lake and I won’t pretend that I’m not relieved Koalemos wouldn’t need to be shipped. I’m honoured that Hammond set up the model in his home with other prized possessions.

The Sword & Laser podcast

Before Nerdtacular, the good people at Inkshares put me in contact with the inimitable Tom Merritt who invited me to sit for a brief moment on the Sword & Laser panel at Nerdtacular. I wish I could say that the brief interview was the highlight of the panel, and make no mistake, it was a lot of fun and I had an awesome time (Tom and Veronica are absolute pros) but the segment that followed was an absolute blast. I knew the hosts of Sword & Laser were good hosts and interviewers but I had not realized they could be such hilarious improvisational actors. The whole panel is amazing and you can watch the raw footage here.

Editing

This morning I sent out my edited manuscript. Only five days late! There are still eight days before the final draft needs to be sent to the copy edit department and with Nerdtacular behind me I’m confident we can hand this off on time. There were a lot of little changes and a few larger ones but all in all, no cataclysmic reworking of the story and narrative. I’m very impressed by how well my editor ‘got it’ and the quality of the work he handed me. It’s humbling when another human being can look at your writing and understand a character so much as to notice when you fail to stay true to it. The changes are subtle, but this is a much better book now. I don’t know how much more editing remains, but I’m confident we’ll have a very decent product for release day.

I’m also eagerly waiting to get the new cover for The Life Engineered and can’t wait to show it off. Judging from the feedback we gave the illustrator (Eric Belisle) and the sketches we’ve seen so far, it’s going to be amazing.

Thanks again for your support.

JF 

It has been a while since my last update. Here's the reason why. The following is a fantastic variation on an exam question found in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest

(Raw link to the article: https://medium.com/just-words/the-eye-of-sauron-d454ed83377a

Since I returned from the Slim and The Beast  book tour six months ago, I've felt stuck in this type of double-bind. On the one hand, as an author I want the recognition. I want to sell books. I know in order to do this I must Tweet; I must Facebook; I must Instagram and hand out business cards. In short, I must commodify myself--it isn't just the novel I'm peddling, but capital Me, The Author.

On the other hand, I hate this. It is everything I despise. The paradox of writing, of spending so many hours in my imagination, is that what I'm truly doing is escaping myself,  escaping the very notion of being heard by others. For a few hours each day (if I'm lucky), I can forget about Me, The Author. I can forget about the rat race; book sales; online reviews; career goals.  I can lose myself in a world that doesn't care about Samuel, The Author ... all that matters when I'm writing is the world I hope to discover.

This obsession with being seen and being followed and being liked in the digital world seems to be in direct opposition to what it truly means to be a good person, not to mention a good writer. The loudest people on Twitter always have the most followers. The more likes you get on Instagram (which requires tapping your thumb twice), the cooler your product. I have a feeling we are addicted to this need for validation, with social media only being the latest, most egregious enabler of narcissism. But the trouble with being someone who dreams of making a living through writing is twofold: 1) In order to write well, to write something authentic and human,  I must forget about my ego and about proving myself to others; BUT 2) In order to be seen (i.e. to be bought), I have to sell myself as Me, The Author, as soon as I've stopped writing. Once the book is "finished," it's no longer about spending time confronting myself, my fears, my problems, but turning that confrontation into a product. Something about this turns my stomach. What's worse, it makes me feel like a farce.

So how do I remain authentic while also trying to attract attention? Is it even possible to remain true to what really matters (a life of deference and humility, not celebrity and pomp) while simultaneously trying to get re-Tweeted and liked and obtain more followers? (The word "followers," by the way, makes me think of some selfie-inspired cult following). I have met quite a few pretentious people recently who care more about being seen than being heard--more about the make-up than the art--but they are also successful and well-off. So what does that mean? Is it possible to market myself as an author, rendering myself as some kind of product, without sacrificing the very essence of what it means to be a writer?

It is a double-bind and it's exhausting, but it does help to talk about it. My fellow Inkshares author, Yann Rousselot, and I have been discussing it quite a lot with my twin brother, Aaron, who has been on a music tour in Paris the past 1.5 months. He is an incredible musician and is also (not coincidentally) the most humble, least pretentious human being I know. So in a world that necessitates being seen and being liked, being followed and being admired, being swiped left or right, how do we "get out there" without hashtagging ourselves into oblivion? What does it mean to be a successful yet genuine artist while maintaining so many social media accounts? While reloading the page in case we have a new follower? How do we talk about ourselves as artists without turning  our very essence into a consumable product? These are questions I've been struggling with, and they're probably worthy of a future novel(s). It's also why I haven't been pushing Slim and The Beast the past few months.

All this to say I've been thinking about (and avoiding) the double-bind as much as possible since March, thoroughly happy to lose the "Me, Author" mentality by escaping into the third novel.  It's also been helpful to re-read David Foster Wallace and his thoughts on this very infectious human desire to be seen and wanted: “Something happens in your late twenties where you realize that how other people regard you does not have enough calories in it, to keep you from blowing your brains out.” It's an extreme statement, but I don't think he's wrong. There aren't any calories in red Facebook flags or Instagram hearts.

So here's to caring less about what others think about me, and more about what's important: the next novel. Note: this is a work in progress and it comes in the middle of the book (divided into three sections). The scene involves a brutal SS officer, which means this section is offensive and is rated R.

http://www.samuelbarrantes.com/excerpt-novel-in-progress/