[From the Eye of the Storm] Jon Skovron's Newsletter #03
Hi all! Thanks so much for the positive feedback, both here and elsewhere, regarding the cover, the map, and the newsletter in general. Regretfully, I can’t respond to everything, but I read it all, and it means a great deal to me.
Apparently the images didn’t come through for some of you, so this time I’ll try a different way to host them. Let me know if problems continue.
It’s morning as I write this, and I’ve just sent the boys off to school. I probably won’t post this newsletter until the evening, though, so I have a chance to polish it up a bit before I send it out.
Hope and Red updates
For those of you who couldn’t see the images, or who are newly subscribed (hi!), here’s the links from last week’s newsletter:
Now that the cover is done, galleys for Hope and Red are starting to go out. For those unfamiliar with the process, galleys, or advance review copies (ARCs), are early release copies for reviewers and booksellers. Most of the time, they’re bound, and they usually (though not always) have something pretty close to the final cover design.
The galley for Hope and Red doesn’t include any of the internal artwork, such as the map or chapter intro art. And while the final version will be paperback (no hardback for this book, something I’m very pleased about, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic for another time). My understanding is that the final will be a “premium paperback”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I look forward to finding out.
Of course, when galleys go out, that means reviews will soon follow, which is a bit nerve-wracking. That’s when the book really starts to feel real. When it starts to make an impact. Or not, as the case may be. Let’s hope this one makes a huge impact. After all, according to whoever wrote the back cover copy, it is “Summer 2016’s biggest fantasy adventure!”
Currently Reading
I just finished What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. I first discovered Murakami back in the Summer of 1996 when I was working part time at a coffee shop in Scottsdale, AZ. There was a retired Marine who came in frequently, and we would talk about books and writing. One Sunday afternoon, he came in with a copy of Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and insisted I take it home. That book became one of the pivotal moments in my development as a writer, and I’ll be forever grateful to that man, although I can’t remember his name.
Skip forward about 19 years…I was traveling with my friend Holly through the Pacific Northwest. We were in Portland, and so naturally we stopped at Powell’s bookstore. Holly picked up a copy of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running in part because she was participating in a half marathon while we were in Oregon. She’d been running for a number of years by this point, and I think had already run in several marathons. I wasn’t a runner, but was intrigued by the Marukami book because it seemed to be as much about writing as running, and I’m a sucker for listening to other writers I respect talk about their craft. But I’d purchased a number of books from Powells myself, so I quickly forgot about reading the Marukami book.
About a year after that trip to the Pacific Northwest (which also included a brief return visit to my beloved Seattle), something happened that I never would have expected: I took up running.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, really. I grew up among runners. My grandfather was a runner, and so is my stepfather. I remember being about ten years old, standing on a street corner in Manhattan on a cold, gray November morning, cheering them both on as they ran in the New York Marathon. My grandfather was seventy-two that year. I remember because I held a sign that said:
EYES OF BLUE, WE LOVE YOU! GO, GO POPPY AT 72!
Sadly, the muse gave out before we could compose an equally catchy sign for my stepfather. Instead, we settled for the less catchy, but no less heartfelt:
GO, OHIO’S TOM, GO!
While running and marathons were an ever-present part of my life as a child, it never occurred to me to do it myself. If pressed, I probably would have said I found the notion unappealing. Even as an adult, when Holly started getting serious about running, I was supportive, as a friend should be, but not particularly interested.
At least, not right away. But the more she spoke about it, the more it began to…stick in my head for some reason. Perhaps it was my own increasing boredom with doing cardio at the gym. I don’t go to one of those fancy gyms with televisions. All there is to look at is a cork board with pictures of “nature scenes” that are changed once a year, most likely because they’re cut out of the previous year of someone’s nature calendar. Even with podcasts and music to listen to, cardio was becoming a real chore.
But I couldn’t stop exercising. There are three activities that seem to lend themselves to generating ideas for me:
showers
driving
exercise
Now that I worked from home, I did significantly less driving. Clearly that meant more exercise and more showers. But I needed a way to make cardio less tedious and I began to wonder if having real natural scenery around me might make a difference.
Then, during another dreary workout of looking at a picture of a panda chewing on bamboo while going nowhere on an elliptical machine, I was listening to a podcast from my favorite radio station, KEXP. Every once in a while, DJ John Richards puts together a “Runner’s Mix”, which is comprised of songs he finds conducive to running, and inspiring running quotes. While I can’t remember any of those quotes, they must of been pretty inspiring, because that’s when I decided to try running.
It was not some amazing, transportive experience. In fact, it was very close to self-torture. By the end of my first run (which was only two miles), I thought I might cough out my own lung. But I kept doing it. Why? I have no idea. I have excuses, of course. I can be stubborn when I set my mind to something. So maybe I kept doing it because I was ornery. Also, getting my exercise for the day in so early, while the boys were still asleep, gave me more time to write. But there was some other motivation that kept me going, and continues to keep me going a half year later. It might be one of those reasons that are impossible to put into words. It might be the same reason I write novels. I don’t know.
Here is where I run most mornings:
It looks a lot better than a calendar page of a panda. Especially when you see it in real life and watch it change with the seasons.
Anyway, you may recall that this section was originally about the book I just finished reading, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I picked up a copy last month in a nice little book shop in Ann Arbor, MI called Literati while hanging out with my brother (he is a great brother because he takes me to record shops, book shops, comic shops, and microbreweries). The book, as I suspected, is indeed about running and writing and how the two intersect for the author. I don’t agree with everything he has to say, but it’s definitely made me more serious about running. And writing.
Murakami talks about how long distance running is very similar to writing a novel. I was still somewhat unconvinced of that until this morning.
See, I’d run into a snag while revising Bane and Shadow, the second book in the Empire of Storms trilogy. But then last night as I was brushing my teeth, the solution suddenly occurred to me. It was too late to start working on it then, but this morning it was on my mind as I started my run. In fact, I felt a little impatient to finish my run so I could get to work fixing this problem, and I was tempted to speed up. But I knew if I didn’t pace myself, I’d be dying and possibly injured by the time I finished. Then I wouldn’t be able to run tomorrow.
As I continued to run at my set pace, I consoled myself by thinking through exactly how I would implement this fix in the book. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it wouldn’t be a simple fix. In fact, it would be a giant pain in the ass. Threading tiny little things in here and there over five hundred pages or so. It would be like slowly, painstakingly pushing the drawstring back through a pair of sweatpants. With my brain. It was going to take a long time. I felt frustrated and discouraged. I wanted it fixed now.
But then I realized it was like running. Even though I was tempted to rush, I needed to pace myself. If I did that, it would take a while, sure, but it would eventually be fixed properly, without messing anything else up along the way.
Once I finish this newsletter, I’ll sit down and begin fixing it. And it will probably suck at first. But I’ll be really happy when its finished.
Now Listening
Since this newsletter has apparently become mostly about running, I might as well end it with a noisy, driving, instrumental electronica album I like to listen to while I run called Life by Dan Friel. I'm going to try to embed it below from Bandcamp.com, but if that doesn't work, the link above will get you there also.
<a data-cke-saved-href="http://danfriel.bandcamp.com/album/life" href="http://danfriel.bandcamp.com/album/life">Life by Dan Friel</a>
Until next week (which I promise will not be about running),
_jon