Tag Archives: grey magic

Three Questions I Wish People Would Ask Me About My Book

  By girlnone | 12 October, 2012 - 5:10 pm |
3 Comments

One of the best and worst things about self-publishing is that you know exactly how many books you’ve sold at any given moment. One of my vendors even emails every time a purchase is made. I check my Amazon KDP dashboard at least three times a day, because I’m addicted to the rush of seeing those numbers increase. I’ve been really fortunate this month, and I suspect that a big reason my sales have increased is because the local book club meetup group, A Novel Bunch, is reading Grey Magic as its October selection. It’s flattering and exciting, but also a little scary. They’re going to be talking about my book. Discussing it, even.

A lot of mainstream literary fiction comes packaged with a readers’ guide nowadays. There may be a brief interview with the author, historical or explanatory notes on the text, and a list of questions to facilitate book club discussions. Since I don’t have a publisher to put it together for me, I guess I’ll have to do my own. Here are 3 questions (and their answers!) that I wish people would ask me about my book.

1. Why did you choose to self-publish Grey Magic? Would you recommend indie publishing to other aspiring writers?

There’s a great quote from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own: “Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for.” The closer I got to finishing my first book, the more I wanted validation that I was a real writer, not just an amateur hobbyist. Self-publishing offers instant gratification–you can write, upload, and sell your work without waiting for an agent or a contract (or the typical 18 months it takes to a book to arrive on the shelf). I wanted to prove to myself and others that I could, in fact, finish the damn thing and put it out there fore others to read. Self-publishing was the most expedient way to do that.

The other reason that I chose self-publishing is that traditional publishers don’t give writers a particularly good deal. Advances are shrinking, the burden of publicity falls increasingly on the author’s shoulders, and the percentages are dreadful. Only surefire hits from established sellers are likely to get a big marketing push; midlist writers receive little PR support and in the unlikely event they make back their advance, they may get less than 10% of the selling price for their books. (Here are two pages that give a realistic breakdown of the numbers for traditional publishing.) A self-published author, on the other hand, receives no advance but 75-80% of the selling price. And considering that most traditionally published writers have to do their own PR anyway, I decided to put the book out there myself.

However, after publishing, I ran into two major problems. First, it has been very difficult to get the book reviewed because of the prejudice against self-publishing. Many book review bloggers–who are, I mention only in passing, amateurs themselves–have a strict no-indie policy. It’s very difficult to get noticed in a huge pool of self-published books, especially when you can’t get reviews. The other issue was a feeling of dissatisfaction. Even though I feel that my book is just as good as anything on the shelf at Barnes and Noble, I still really want to see it in a bookstore. For my next book, The Ghosts of Evergreen, I’m going to try the traditional route. In the meantime, I’ll continue to self-publish the next two books in the Isenland Trilogy.

2. Wizards? Really?

Totally. Fantasy is my way of holding up a funhouse mirror to the world. It lets us understand things about ourselves in a safe way. There’s a lot of darkness and wonder in the world, and, for me, the best way to illuminate it is through metaphor. Also, fantasy books tend to be cracking good adventures. To quote Neil Gaiman pretending to quote G.K. Chesterton: “Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” (Epigraph to Coraline, 2004)

Even though Grimoire lives in a world of magic, the issues that she faces are really quite ordinary. She has an overprotective guardian whom she both loves and resents. Grimoire and her best friend, Lark, both like the same boy. She’s not sure who she is or how she fits into the world, and Grey Magic is, ultimately, a story about finding your identity. Also, there is a magic ninja sword fight and a talking cat. How many realist coming-of-age novels can claim that?

Fantasy stories have always resonated with me more than any other genre. A quick scan of the shelf over my desk shows Gaiman, Philip Pullman, J.K. Rowling, Garth Nix, Jonathan Stroud, Tanith Lee, and Tamora Pierce–a list that will be unsurprising to anyone who’s read Grey Magic.

3. Is Isenland based on a real place?

I’m so glad you asked me this! Isenland is an alternate history England. I started with a single idea–that the druids had had real magic–and ran from there. The Romans weren’t able to get a toehold in England during the Bronze Age, so instead of Roman conquest, the rebellion of Boudica, the warrior queen of the Iceni people, was successful. Boudica was a real person; there’s a statue of her near the Thames. In our history, she was beaten, but in my history, her tribe flourished. The word “England” is derived from “land of the Angles,” after one of the Germanic tribes who settled there. (The other, of course, being the Saxons; hence “anglo-saxon.”) Isenland is “Land of the Iceni.” Likewise, the name of the capitol city, Bodwick, is “Boudica’s Wick” or “Boudica’s Town.” I…really enjoy etymology.

The other thought that arose naturally is that instead of England being the small yet mighty island hub of a global empire, they would turn inwards while Japan (or Nippon) would expand outwards. The Nipponese invaded and absorbed Isenland as part of their commonwealth, and although they mostly let the country govern itself, the influence of their culture, fashion, and philosophy can be seen all over. I’m especially intrigued by the idea of venerable old Westminster Abbey being rebuilt as a pagoda-style temple on the Thames.

One of the running jokes (or, depending on your sense of humor, “jokes”) is that there is no Shakespeare in Isenland. There’s long been historical debate about whether Shakespeare really wrote all those plays. Some of the names bandied about for the “real” Shakespeare are Kit Marlowe (who, in Isenland, did not die in a bar fight and went on to fame and fortune) and Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford. I had fun tweaking the titles of the plays–Much Ado About Nothing became A Little Nonsense–and rewriting some of his most famous lines to suit my purposes.

Grey Magic takes place in what I imagine our modern-day world would look like if we’d never had the industrial revolution. Things are changing in Isenland, however. The merchant class is beginning to overtake the aristocracy in terms of money and power, and while the lords and ladies continue to be patrons of the magical arts, merchants are more interested in inventions that will save them money on labor and transport of goods. I don’t want to give too much away, but the next book, called Lark Song, explores the tension between magic and technology.

The Isenlandish people, of course, continue to drink large quantities of tea. Because while you can take the British out of Britain, you can’t take away their tea.

 

Adverbs: Eldritch Horror or Actually Okay?

  By girlnone | 26 July, 2012 - 8:08 pm | ,
20 Comments

Since my first post on grammar & creative writing was so popular, I thought I’d do a follow-up series. It’s important for creative writers to know the rules of the language–even if it’s just so we can break them later. 

Adverbs

Cthulhu hates adverbs

At some point in most writers’ lives, we’re told to avoid adverbs like the plague. (We’re also told to avoid cliches, but I’ll save that for another post.) We develop a Pavlovian response to adverbs, mercilessly cutting them from our pages. But is it always necessary? And, in our quest to eradicate -ly words, are we missing the most pernicious adverbs of them all?

First, a refresher: The Chicago Manual of Style defines an adverb as “a word that qualifies, limits, describes, or modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.” (16th ed., 5.153) When I taught Fundamentals of English, I would tell my students that adverbs answer the questions How?, When?,Where?, and How Much?

Ryan Gosling strode across the street.

Adverb Type #1: “How” adverbs, also called adverbs of manner, are the ones that most often have the suffix -ly. How did he walk across the room? Slowly, quickly, loudly, etc. I’m sure you can see the problem–why write “He walked across the room quickly” when you can use a stronger verb instead? At this point, I’d ask my students to brainstorm different verbs.

Example: He dashed/ran/sprinted/skipped across the room.

To drive the point home, I’d act out the verbs, since nothing reinforces learning like seeing your teacher making a fool of herself by hopping across the front of the classroom. Every one of those verbs is more descriptive than”walked quickly” because they convey different shades of meaning. Skipped connotes cheerfulness, while sprinted gives a sense of urgency.

I’m a believer in cutting the chaff from your writing. George Orwell’s rules for writing include “Never use a long word where a short one will do,” and “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” If you’ve never read Orwell’s “Politics and The English Language,” I encourage you to do so. Orwell understood better than almost any other writer the way that language can be used to both conceal and reveal meaning.

“How” adverbs prop up listless verbs. Cut them out and use a stronger verb instead.

Adverb Type #2: “When” adverbs describe the time in which an action takes place. Usually, sometimes, never, frequently, tomorrow, yesterday, before, weekly: These are all adverbs.

Example: “Buddy went to Momma’s house yesterday.”

The adverb “yesterday” tells us when he went. Without it, we’re missing part of the puzzle. We’d know that he visited Momma, but we wouldn’t know when. If it’s important for the reader to know when an action happened, then it’s necessary to use an adverb.

The “Back” in “Baby Got Back” is a noun. Incidentally, I also used Sir Mix-A-Lot to illustrate the proper use of coordinating conjunctions.

Adverb Type #3: “Where” adverbs are weird. Some of them are perfectly fine: here, there, inside, outside, somewhere, anywhere. Others have a tendency to clutter the page like cigarette butts. “Back,” “up,” and “along” can all be used as several different parts of speech, but when they are used as adverbs, they should almost always be cut.

Example: ”She ran along beside me.”

How does the word “along” add anything to the reader’s understanding of the sentence? It doesn’t; cut it.

“Back” is the worst offender in my writing. When I was working on an early draft of Grey Magic, I ran it through Wordle, which creates artistic word clouds from text files. The size of the word is directly related to its frequency, so I wasn’t surprised to see “Grimoire” as the largest word. She’s the main character, after all. What did surprise me was the size of the word “back.” How the hell had I used it so many times?

I did a CTRL-F search of my Word document, and sure enough, I’d used it something like 900 times in a 50,000 word document. Almost all of them were chaff. Most instances happened in sentences like “She walked back to the room,” or “He went back to the tower.” “Returned” is a much simpler–and better–choice.

Brobdingnagian Rabbit

Adverb Type #4: Adverbs of extent, or “how much” adverbs, are the nasty ones. They prop up weak adjectives in much the same way that adverbs of manner prop up weak verbs. They include really, very, rather, quite, somewhat, extremely.

Example: “It was very big.”

There are dozens of adjectives that you could use instead of “big” to describe the size of something. Gargantuan, huge, enormous, elephantine. If you’re feeling fancy, maybe Brobdingnagian. And, you know, sometimes its okay for things to just be big. Like the lowly “said,” simple words are often the best choice, even if they don’t show off your mighty vocabulary to the ladies.

Unless they’re used to as a deliberate stylistic choice or to improve the cadence of your writing, adverbs of extent have no place outside of dialogue. A stereotypical stuffy British character might say “quite” and “rather” (just before his monocle popped off into his teacup, no doubt), while the title of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close uses adverbs to create a certain rhythm. These are okay. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they can be cut with impunity.

Free Stuff

  By girlnone | 25 July, 2012 - 10:38 pm | ,
2 Comments

Welcome all newcomers! I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of comments and new followers today. Getting Freshly Pressed was amazing!

I just published a companion short story to my full-length novel, Grey Magic. For everyone else, it costs $.99, but for y’all, it’s free. Click on the picture or go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/208463 and enter the coupon code at the bottom of this post. Thanks again for visiting. I’m so happy you’re here.

 

Summary: Actors can’t always choose their roles. When a wealthy biscuit baron hires Locke & Oracle’s troupe of traveling players (and occasional pickpockets) to perform a bawdy musical about pirates, the show must go on–even if drunk wizards, bossy housemaids, and a rouge cannon get in their way. Grimoire Tobin, the heroine of Grey Magic, returns for a theatrical interlude in “The Command Performance.”

To get this story for free, please enter the coupon code: AZ26F

The code is good through October 1st, 2012.

To Curse or Not to Curse?

  By girlnone | 16 July, 2012 - 2:56 am | ,
2 Comments

This is a tricky problem for anyone who writes for teens. On the one hand, we strive for authenticity, and since many teenagers cuss like sailors with Tourette’s Syndrome, realistic teen characters should too. On the other hand, there are a lot of hand-wringing parents, librarians, booksellers, educators, etc, who argue that books with profanity (and sex and violence) encourage bad behavior in young readers.

A recent article from The Guardian by YA writer James Dawson talks about the main problem with profanity–ultimately, the gatekeepers of libraries and bookstores are the ones who decide whether a book ends up on the shelf, and they tend to skew towards uncontroversial choices. He writes that “In a choice between swearing and being stocked, I opted for the safer choice….” Despite this, he also says that having any kind of ratings system on books, a la movie ratings, would be a bad idea.

I agree; it’s a terrible idea. I’m a strong proponent of doing away with the MPAA, who are basically a shadowy cabal of people that determines what we’re allowed to watch, since moves with an R-rating or NC-17 rating won’t make the same box office returns as a PG-13 film. Under pressure from the studios, directors cut language and scenes with sexual content–although rarely scenes of gratuitous violence. If the same system was used for books, I can imagine that publishers would place even more pressure on writers to clean up their books in an effort get a “better,” more marketable rating. A series like Lili St. Crow’s Strange Angels, where every other word is an f-bomb, would end up being about fifteen pages long, and it would lose the voice of Dru, the foul-mouthed heroine. She would never say “fiddlesticks,” or “fudge,” when she meant “fuck.”

I remember being a kid and using the most preposterously byzantine cuss words with my friends. (For reference, check out this clip from the film Paul, where Kristen Wiig’s character is learning to swear.) We were trying to figure out what it meant to be grown-up, and swearing was an act of rebellion. I also played World of Warcraft for a while, and believe me, you’ve never truly been cussed out until you’ve been cussed out by a homophobic 13-year-old on the internet. Good times.

We aren’t protecting our children from jack shit when we try to sanitize movies or books for their sake. By censoring language, drug use, sex, and violence, I think we end up creating a disconnect between the world teens are allowed to see on the screen or page and the world they actually live in. I’m not advocating for Caligula: The High School years (dibs on that idea, by the way), but I think it’s okay for characters to drop f-bombs if that’s the kind of person they are.

In Grey Magic, I cheated on this issue by having the characters use made-up profanity, kind of like the Chinese pidgin cursing on Firefly.  ”Swive” is the equivalent of “fuck” (it’s a Middle English word found in Chaucer), and Lark, who is a bit more coarse than the Grimoire, uses it all the time. Grimoire, on the other hand, says “Kai sha et,” which is the equivalent of “God damn it,” but some of Lark’s language does start to rub off on her by the end of the book.

I could get away with made-up words in a fantasy setting, but my next book, The Ghosts of Evergreen, is set in contemporary America. The main character, Kat, doesn’t curse, but her roommate and some of her classmates do. With gusto. I made the decision to go for authenticity rather than safety, even if it means that some people will be offended.

Process Makes Perfect

  By girlnone | 13 July, 2012 - 2:07 pm |
2 Comments

Quick, somebody get the tennis racket!

Oddly enough, magical faeries did not descend upon me the moment I published my first book to anoint me with glory. Probably for the best, actually, as faerie glory is really hard to wash out of your hair.

Although I’m very proud of myself for finishing and publishing Grey Magic (not to mention extremely grateful to my amazing friends and family for buying copies; you guys are the absolute best), it’s time to roll up my sleeves and write another book.

I’m taking a break from Isenland for a little while to work on something a bit different. A few of you may remember a serialized ghost story I was tinkering with last year called The Ghosts of Evergreen. I’ll be finishing that, as well as the sequel, The City of Nevermore, just in time for Halloween.

The Ghosts of Evergreen is about a young woman named Kat who can see ghosts. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, she’s sent to Evergreen Academy, a boarding school for troubled teens, where she meets Joan, a girl who died in 1944. Their unlikely friendship is put to the test when they both fall for Nate, a young man who is obsessed with the poetry of John Keats. He reminds Joan of her fiancee, Robert, who was lost in WWII. What lengths will she go to for a second chance at love?

In order to hit my deadline, I need produce about 1650 words a day. I can generally manage 300 words an hour, if I’m being disciplined  (read: snapping myself with a rubber band every time I’m tempted to either futz with the previous chapter or check Facebook). What does a typical day in the life of an indie writer look like, you ask?

10:00 am–Wake up, eat breakfast while reading webcomics. (If you haven’t read Gunnerkrigg Court, Girl Genius, Questionable Content, or Bad Machinery, what are you still doing here! I’ll wait until you get back.)

11:00ish–Write a new post or visit other blogs to leave comments.

12:00 pm–Nap

His name is Franklin.

1:30 pm–Realize that I haven’t actually written anything yet. Crank up my owl-shaped kitchen timer and write in 30-minute intervals, pausing for five-minute breaks.

3:30 pm–Lunch!

4:00 pm–Video games or a movie, maybe?

6:00 pm–Read a book. Right now, I’m reading the first book in the Sirantha Jax series, which reminds me a lot of Firefly. It’s research, I swear.

9:00 pm–Remember to eat dinner.

10:00 pm–Write until I fall asleep, usually around 2 o’clock in the morning.

I wish I was kidding with the schedule, but this is pretty much what my days look like. All that will change soon, because I have to go get a “real” job again. My unemployment fell through (blargh), so I at least need part-time work to keep a roof over my head, etc.

Music for today’s post: Journey, “Wheel in the Sky”

The Universe Is Full of Intentions

  By girlnone | 15 June, 2012 - 10:19 pm |
2 Comments

Today, I was fired from a job that I hated. This is not the worst thing that has ever happened to me. In fact, I think it may turn out to be a blessing. I don’t believe in fate, per se, but I do believe that sometimes the events of your life nudge you in a new direction…and sometimes they kick your ass out the door.

When I graduated from college, I found that I had no marketable skills. I could tell you about the history of early 20th century sideshows or recite Old English poetry from memory, but I couldn’t get a decent job. I bounced around from one mediocre gig to the next. I was laid off, lived on unemployment for almost a year, and got fired for the first time. I wrote a little, but I mostly wallowed in my own misery and ate a lot of cake.

Howdy, neighbor!

One day, when I was living in the middle of nowhere with a mule as my closest neighbor, I decided to go back to school to get my graduate degree in something sensible and reliable, like library science. After all, I could keep writing in my spare time. The field didn’t really interest me, but I’d worked in libraries before and assumed that any job involving books couldn’t be that bad. By the time I graduated in early 2008, the economy had tanked and the entry-level opportunities that had been there when I started school had all but disappeared.

I ended up working in a series of schools that were basically diploma mills. I hated it every single day. My coworkers constantly commiserated over how much we hated our jobs, and how much we wished that we could get out. I dreamed of quitting to focus on writing full time. (I even did it once, but I squandered the opportunity.) I forgot that there are two ways to leave your job.

After I was fired this afternoon, a series of emotions swept over me. I was pissed off, scared, sick, and embarrassed. I was also giddy. I’ll never have to go back to that awful place. (To be fair, security won’t let me on campus.) Holly Lisle, whose website is a treasure trove of writing advice, told aspiring writers never to do for money what they would not do for love. I made the mistake of trying to have a career to help me “get by” until my real passion finally started paying the bills, and in doing so I did both my library work and my writing a disservice. I recently promised my friends and family that I would publish my book, Grey Magic, on July 1st. The universe has just provided me with the time and motivation to meet that deadline. Maybe everything happens for a reason, or maybe it only looks that way in hindsight. In either case, I get the hint, guys. I’m going to go work on my book now.

Music for this post: Cee-Lo, “Fuck You”

Here Comes Success

  By girlnone | 11 June, 2012 - 2:44 am |
6 Comments

I have wanted to be a writer since high school. More recently, I added the caveat that I want to be a successful writer. The definition of those words has shifted over time, however, and my dream looks very different today than it did ten years ago.

This is what a writer looks like, isn’t it?

What does it mean to be a writer or to be a success? At the most fundamental level, to be a writer, all one must do is write. To be a successful writer, one must also publish. In the traditional publishing model, the sheer number of gatekeepers standing between a writer and a reader–agents, slush pile interns, editors, marketers, bookstore buyers, etc–is staggering.

A writer who makes it through the gauntlet of traditional publishing (or “legacy publishing,” to borrow a phrase from Joe Konrath) will lose pieces of creative control and profit to each of these gatekeepers. This is bullshit. The mechanism is broken; it requires too many hands and relies too much on chance. A successful writer is not necessarily one who receives a three-book deal from a major publisher. A successful writer is one who gets books in the hands of readers. 

As little as five years ago, self-publishing was the refuge of hacks and crackpots who couldn’t get a book published any other way. There’s a reason it was called “vanity publishing.” With the rise of the eReader, digital self-publishing has become a way to bypass the baroque machinery of the legacy publishing house. Self-published writers earn significantly higher percentages of royalties, retain complete creative control over their work, and gain the advantage of infinite shelf-space and unlimited time to cultivate their readership.

Strongly Recommended Reading

I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which redefines the concept of success. There is no such thing as a self-made man, argues Gladwell; every successful person became so through a combination of hard work, perseverance, and luck. Being in the right place at the right time, even being born at the right time, has more to do with success than talent. He traces the careers of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who both had extraordinary advantages as well as passion and ability. Throughout their biographies, a series of fortunate events unfolds like a shining path, leading them to greatness.

At first, I found Outliers to be depressingly fatalistic. What use is there in trying, I wondered, if my chances are already predestined by my circumstances? Then I started thinking about the extraordinarily lucky events that started me on my path to be a writer. When my family moved to South Carolina, I attended the last half of sixth grade at Northwood, a dreadful middle school where I was bullied by classmates and bored by my classes. The following year, the county established magnet schools, and I was accepted to League Academy, the arts-focused middle school. At League, I made some like-minded friends and became involved in drama, where I met Miss Melanie Gordon. After two years of floundering at Wade Hampton High School, which was essentially a redux of Northwood, Miss Gordon called to tell me that was recruiting for the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, a residential high school for juniors and seniors that was opening the following year. Had a been a year older, I would have missed it.

The magical tree in the park just below campus

Because of the amazing education I received at SCGSAH, I won several writing awards and was accepted to Sarah Lawrence College, the top undergrad creative writing program in the country. I had the opportunity to study with some amazing teachers, including George Singleton and Melvin Bukeit, and I met dozens of inspiring, creative people. I spent my senior year abroad, mostly getting drunk with British teenagers, but when I came home, everything went to shit. I bounced around from one lousy job to the next. I went to grad school for library science, a field which continues to hold almost no intellectual interest for me, and then found myself locked into the for-profit education industry, which I find morally bankrupt. I continue to tinker on my book in fits and starts, but finishing it seems both tantalizingly close and terribly far away.

What happened? Fear of failure (and, ironically, fear of success) has left me paralyzed with only a few chapters left write. I waste my energy on meaningless work and fleeting distractions, and then I feel guilty because if I really wanted it, if I really was a writer to the core of my soul, nothing would stop me, right? I would want to work from the minute I woke up in the morning until I finally dragged myself, exhausted, to bed, where I would dream of imagined worlds all night. I lack the willpower to succeed. I don’t have what it takes. I can still see my goal, a distant silhouette on the horizon, but I wandered off the shining path of destiny and became lost in the forest of doubts and fears.

Unfortunately, the shining path is only visible in hindsight. Back in the early 1970s, teenage Steve Jobs and Bill Gates couldn’t have known that they were on their way to becoming obscenely wealthy visionaries who would shape the face of technology. They just really liked computers. The great misconception about success is that it is a destination. In fact, it is a journey of 10,000 steps. In Outliers, Gladwell found one common factor between all the success stories he cataloged, from Mozart to hockey players to the Beatles to the giants of Silicon Valley. No matter how talented  they were, no matter how many advantages and opportunities they were given, they all had to put in 10,000 hours of sweat equity. They did not wait passively for the world to gift them with success; they went out into the world and found it for themselves.

Rather than wasting even more energy on a catalog of my failures or a litany of the ways in which the world has failed me, I am making a conscious decision to look at things in a new way. If I had finished Grey Magic even a year earlier, I would have tried to go through the legacy publishing system. Maybe I would have made it past all of the gatekeepers, but the odds were not in my favor. Instead, I will finish my book this month and publish it myself on July 1st, at the perfect time to take advantage of the cresting wave of digital publication.  The new publishing paradigm means that I won’t ever see my book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, but that’s okay. To be a successful writer is, ultimately, to be able to put my work into the hands of my readers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a printed book or an electronic file. All that matters is that I write stories that people like to read, and I know I can do that. All I have to do is write one word at a time.

The Golden Path

A year from now, I’ll be able to look back and see that the stumbling blocks I struggled with were just stepping stones along the path. The time I spent thrashing about in the wilderness was not wasted; it merely made me wait until the circumstances were right. The rest is up to me now, so if you need me, I’ll be working on my book.

Music for this post: The Chemical Brothers Feat. The Flaming Lips, “The Golden Path”