Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park Talk About Storytelling

NYU teaches a class in storytelling the Tisch School of the Arts. On the first day of class, Professor Liotti invited Trey Parker and Matt Stone to discuss their take on storytelling. In this short video, there are a couple of nuggets of great advice, which helps explain the 20 year success of the animated television series. I found it interesting that they basically said writer's block is not an option. If they can't come up with a show idea, seventy people are idled. This reminded me of William Shakespeare, who had forty people depending on him to come up with a new play that would draw a large enough paying audience to feed themselves and their families. Nothing drives creativity like hunger.

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By the way, kudos to NYU for teaching storytelling. Many universities think creative writing is solely about crafting wonderful sentences. Not true. Storytelling is at the heart of anything still read or viewed that was written over twenty years ago.

Storytelling is the art, good writing is the craft that brings it to life.

In Desperate Need of Ruby Slippers

In a previous post I lamented our poor travel luck of late. The good news is that once we left the USA, all of our travel difficulties disappeared. We flew to Paris without incident, and took taxies, trains, and Metros without mishap. The bad news greeted us on reentry to the USA. The final leg of our flight was cancelled due to weather. Despite claims by Global Warming alarmists, airlines still consider weather an act of God. No free hotel. No paid one either. When weather has a temper tantrum, New York hotels fill up in a New York minute. A long taxi ride into the city found us a place to stay.

Our airline booked us out of LaGuardia the following evening. Since we were anxious to get home, we left for the city four hours ahead of our scheduled departure.  We wanted to miss the work traffic. What we didn’t know was that since our last uneventful trip to LaGuardia, some nincompoop decided to tear up all access roads simultaneously. It took two hours and a wheel barrow of money to get us to the terminal. But we still had a sense of humor. We laughed at our travails as we grabbed a glass of wine at the Delta Sky Club. We were in heaven. A quiet, little sanctuary hidden from the hubbub just outside the sliding glass doors. Then all hell broke loose. Alarms went off, tense announcements ordered us to evacuate immediately, and people rushed everywhere. First responders burst in from outside. Was it the Sky Club or the entire airport? Once we got outside the lounge, we found calm and order. Who had turned the world upside down? Apparently a short in the dishwasher. The culprit had been an electrical fire in the kitchen.

In our haste, we had brought our wine out with us and it was less than an hour before our flight time. C'est la vie. We’d manage. Heck, we’d already endured much worse than being thrown out of an airport lounge.

How naïve. Our early evening flight got delayed until the dead of night.

When I had a horrible game of golf, my eighteenth hole was always spectacular. I think it was someone’s sly way of enticing me back onto the links. In a similar fashion, once we landed in Omaha, everything went perfect. Technically, it was morning. At that hour, taxicabs were rare, but our luggage came out first and we beat the competition to the cab stand. Omaha traffic is light in comparison to big cities and non-existent in the wee hours. We flew home.

Six weeks of travel makes one homesick. Home, sweet home. There’s no place like home.

We think we’ll stay awhile.

A Travel Memoir—Partie Deux

Yesterday my wife and I left Paris for Omaha. That’s not a sentence most people would enjoy writing, but we’ve been gone a month and look forward to our home and dullish routines. Twenty-five years ago I was in Paris nearly every month and my wife often accompanied me. She did the museums, cathedrals and other large buildings. I worked. I enjoyed interacting with the French in a non-tourist setting and kidded my wife that she did dead France while I did live France.

This trip we focused on dead France … and walking. Museums and walking. Cathedrals and walking. Monuments and walking. Walking to find new and interesting places to eat. Sometimes just walking to watch the street life. But if you placed all of our steps end to end, you still wouldn’t reach a Brasserie-free zone. How cool is that!

We noticed a couple of differences from twenty-five years ago. For one thing, tourism isn’t nearly as easy or enjoyable. Terrorists and technologists put a dampener on the fun.

Security is everywhere. And I mean tough, no nonsense soldiers, not our clock-watching TSA gatekeepers. These decked out fully armed men and women strode purposefully in urban warfare formation. They never stopped. They never quit looking around. They never acted friendly.

Every public place included security checkpoints. In most cases, this meant two lines; one to check your bags and another for tickets. Standing line could wear you out before you got the first glance at a historic artifact. Worse, everything was cordoned off. No more grand vistas of the Eiffel Tower. The base is surrounded by barricades and open space under the tower is the province of black and white photographs from the pre-digital age. Notre Dame is still free, but a glacial line to get through security can consume the entire forecourt. If you’re a millennial, you think this is normal. How terribly sad.

Technologist have spoiled the party as well. Everybody born after the breakup of the Beatles has a selfie stick and insists on recording every moment of their lives. It’s as if they can’t enjoy life in the moment. They must see a digital representation to believe it’s real. And they can’t just snap their picture and get on with it. They wield their selfie stick like a baton, twirl it, shove it in other people’s faces, or just endlessly hold up traffic as they preen and mug for the perfect shot to share with the world on Instagram. Everybody is a celebrity in their own mind.

In the olden days, read the distant Twentieth Century, single-purpose cameras took photographs on expensive film that took more coin to develop and print. It also cost far too much to make a copy for everyone on the planet. Tourists stood away from the object of interest, took their picture, and moved on. That meant Kodak Moments seldom disrupted your enjoyment of a world wonder. Not today. People crowd forward so they can shoot backwards while claiming an arc of free space by waving a plastic stick with all of the authority of a scepter. Digital is free, everyone has a device, and spreading copies to people you don’t know is de rigueur. Pity the poor soul who just wants to feast on an exhibit with their eyes and ears.

These inconveniences were restricted to tourist attractions. Our small hotel in a pleasant neighborhood had all the charm of the Paris we knew twenty-five years ago. We were nestled on a quiet side street, with tiny grocery stores, casual cafés, fine dining, with trendy shopping, Metro stations, and bustling Parisians just steps away.

We had a wonderful time. Actually, our first visit was thirty-five years ago. At the time, we had never been anyplace more exotic than Tijuana. On our first night, we walked out of our Left Bank hotel and wandered down the street to a restaurant. We had no idea how to order. We knew no French. The waiters knew no English. We were so naïve, we ordered entrées as our main course. We had accidentally chosen La Coupole, the most famous and historic restaurant on all of the Left Bank. The whole experience was fun as hell, and it had a lot to do with our penchant for travel ever since. We were again in Paris for our fiftieth anniversary, so we decided to celebrate our grand night at La Coupole. It was fun. The food was great. The waiters charming. And best of all, the ghosts of all those famous artists and writers joined us in celebration of our first fifty years together.

Viva la France.

P.S: I write this from New York City, not Omaha. Our flight was cancelled. My last post (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles) bewailed our travel mishaps getting to New York. Evidently our travel hobgoblin has returned.

The Return—Now Available in Audio!

The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale is now available in audio. Jim Tedder has done an exceptional job in narrating this fourth book in the Steve Dancy series.

It's the summer of 1880, and Thomas Edison's incandescent bulb is poised to put the gaslight industry out of business. Knowing a good business opportunity, former New York shopkeeper Steve Dancy sets out to obtain a license for Edison's electric lamp. Edison agrees, under one condition: Dancy and his friends must stop the saboteurs who are disrupting his electrification of Wall Street.

After two years of misadventures out West, the assignment appears to be right up his alley. But new troubles await him in New York City. Dancy has brought a woman with him, and his high-society family disapproves. More worrisome, he has also unknowingly dragged along a feud that began out West. The feud could cost him Edison's backing ... and possibly his life.

In the near future, I will receive some promotional codes for free copies of The Return. If you would like a free audio copy of The Return, send me a note at jimbest@jamesdbest.com.

Audio: A whole new way to enjoy the Steve Dancy Tales

Tell me what you think ...

Some author’s dread poor reviews from readers. I like to hear what readers think and find I learn more from critical reviews. Besides, what some readers find objectionable, other readers enjoy. I never had a better example than today when I received two Amazon reviews that had exactly opposite takes on a major plot element of The Return.

Click to enlarge

Marilyn says, "Not as good the previous books in the series. Get Steve Dancy back to the West where he seems at home."

While another Amazon Customer wrote, "Enjoyed the Western theme, along with the Edison involvement. New York gangs added flavor that made this a great read."

No author can please every reader and it's career suicide to try. Don't ignore poor reviews because they can help you become  a better writer, but keep your focus on the total weight of  all of  your reviews.  Every writer will get a few bad reviews, so take them with a grain of salt. 

Goodreads

Amazon

In Production—Audio Version of The Return

Coming Soon in Audio

Jim Tedder has agreed to narrate The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale and has already completed 6 chapters. This is exciting news because Tedder did a great job on Murder at Thumb Butte. He has a long career in broadcasting and brings a great storytelling voice to the series.

In answer to some queries, I've completed ten chapters of Crossing the Animas, A Steve Dancy Tale. Darn, I sure wish I could write as fast as Jim Tedder can narrate.

Here is the first chapter of The Return.

Happy Birthday Grandpa

My best birthday gift. Click here to see the full video.

Merry Christmas and have a Great 2015

We're off to San Diego to escape winter in Nebraska. If the body is willing, I also hope to get in a little surfing. Actually, we don't have much planned. Just kick back and relax and finish revising Jenny's Revenge. Well, on second thought, we are going to Newport Beach with the families, camping in Death Valley for a week, having lots of company, flying to New York for a visit, and plan at least one ski trip to the Lake Tahoe resorts. Perhaps it won't be as kicked-back as I imagine. Oh well, it'll be fun.

Oh, and one more thing ... remember where to spend those Amazon Gift cards.

Sojourn in New York City

My wife and I just returned home from seeing our son’s family in New York City. He and his wife have three young kids and because they grow so fast we try to visit at least once every three months. This was a great trip. We like Manhattan and we love my son and his family. What could be better than that? Here are some random thoughts on our trip.

• It’s difficult to write in airports, especially LaGuardia. Before retirement, I wrote all the time in airports, but nowadays it seems much more crowded. It’s even difficult to find an unoccupied seat at LaGuardia. Maybe it’s me. I’m getting older and perhaps I’m finding it more difficult to focus. Naw … it’s everybody else’s fault. 

Ellen DeGeneres

• It’s impossible to write on airplanes. I used to whip out my laptop all the time, but now I find it difficult to find room for myself, no less a supposed portable device that must have been designed to watch movies from twelve feet away. When I fly, I read my trusty Kindle. 
• Why do electronic components keep getting tinier and tinier, but electronic devices keep getting bigger and bigger? I took my grandson to the Apple store to shop for his birthday present. This was my first encounter with the big screen iPhones. The big model will hardly fit in a teenage girl’s hip pocket. My new laptop has a 16’ inch screen with Dolby sound and myriad other bells and whistles. I wanted one like my old 14’ model, but my preferred manufacturer no longer made this petite version. I’m a writer. I don’t need all this fancy stuff. Give me light weight, reasonable size, and MS Word. They can even make it black and white and I’ll be happy. I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but I lament the demise of the Motorola Razr. Now that was a mobile phone. It was so light and thin you never knew you carried it until it buzzed with an incoming call. Okay, I am a curmudgeon.

Hurricane Sandy about to get unruly

• Although I had floated around it many times, I had never been to Statue of Liberty Island. We took our granddaughter and her friend. We discovered Disney World lines managed with government efficiency. Next time, if there is one, I’ll pick inclement weather. At least, that’s what I thought until I found this picture of the island with Hurricane Sandy looming on the horizon. Still lots of people. Maybe next time I’ll just float around it again. 
• I was walking the dog with my son when he pointed out a townhouse with narrow, one-car garage. He thought it would be wonderful to have a private garage in the city. I told him I owned three of them in Omaha. He asked if they were in front or behind the chicken coop. 
• All bookstore have small Western sections, but NYC stores have relegated Westerns to a single shelf in the most obscure corner of the stacks. Since New York is my third largest sales region, I think they are missing a bet.

New York Public Library—Struggling to Stay Relevant

Last post I commented on how the New York Public Library has become a gathering place for electronic enthusiasts who never feel a need to bother a librarian. Most of the patrons I observed were focused intently on computerized devices. An indication of the library’s struggle for relevancy can be found on their website. The above the fold promos are for The Beatles and Tax Day, April 15, neither of which is what one would normally associate with arguably the country’s second most important center of literature and research material. (I put the Library of Congress in first place.)

Other front-page teasers include:

“Make ‘Em laugh: Gut busting Picture Books—NYPL's Elizabeth Bird shares some picture books that will have both adults AND kids rolling in the aisles.”

“Game of Thrones is Back! Now Where is it Going?— NYPL's Shawn Donohue ponders how George R.R. Martin's hit book series will manifest on screen this season.”

“Mad Men: The Beginning of the End— NYPL's resident Mad Men blogger Billy Parrott speculates on what's to come in the seventh season of the hit show.”

“Craft Beer—Stevie Feliciano of the Hudson Park Library shares her adventures in beer tasting and home brewing, along with some helpful books for novices.”

The Home page includes a few traditional library themes, but they are overwhelmed by appeals to pop culture. I suppose the idea is to get New Yorkers into the library in the hope they’ll learn something they couldn’t pick up from People magazine.

The most disappointing part of the NYPL webpage was found at the very bottom: “The ABC of It: Why Children's Books Matter.” This is an enlightening exhibit of children’s books that promotes reading, art, and appreciation of literature.  This exhibit is exactly the type of event libraries can use to attract new patrons. It’s colorful, nicely organized, learning centric, and above all, interesting.  “The ABC of It” deserves to remain above the fold for as long as it's open.

New York Public Library—A Museum or a Hive of Erudition

The New York Public Library is one of the world’s great institutions. The Map Room is grand space with an impressive collection. The Reading Room is outsized and majestic. The comprehensive Art & Architecture Collection is housed in yet another gracious room.

I have written previously that libraries may eventually become museums for printed books. “Are books becoming obsolete? Is a library the only place we’ll be able to see these odd antiquities? Will librarians admonish us to “don’t touch,” instead of shushing chatterboxes? Are we entering a binary world where everything is decomposed into a series of ones and zeros and then instantly reassembled on a hand-held device?”

Nothing epitomizes this eventuality more than the New York Public Library. There seem to be miles of marble hallways that can accommodate twelve abreast, super-high ceilings, broad staircases galore, and very few books. The stacks are forbidden to all except the high priesthood and nowhere in sight. In fact, it’s rare to see a printed book even in the Reading Room. Everybody seems engrossed in computer or iPad screens umbilicaled to handy electrical outlets that run down the center of the tables. Only two rows of tables in the far back restrict computers and e-readers. On the day we were there, these were the only available seats in the expansive room.

I don’t lament the rarity of printed books, but I fear we might lose the expertise of librarians. I saw few people get up from their prized seats to make an inquiry to one of the staff. I suspect if they wanted an answer, they Googled it at their table. What a shame. My experience with librarians is that they are not only highly knowledgeable, but eager to share their knowledge. Unique nuggets of information cannot be discovered on Google, but a librarian can point you toward a source that can elicit a eureka moment. Print is a medium and a book can be presented in other formats without losing all of its worth. On the other hand, the demise of librarians would be a tragedy.  

San Diego to New York City

On Friday, my wife and I flew from San Diego to New York City. What a difference. Of course the weather went from balmy to nippy, but that was the least the change. We actually left Pacific Beach for Manhattan. Pacific Beach may be the most laid-back community in laid-back California, and Manhattan the most intense district in the country. Over the weekend we rushed from one venue to another to watch our grandchildren play sports, dance ballet, attend professional sporting events, and shuffle between birthday parties and sleep-overs. Several scheduled activities were cancelled because the nerds at MIT haven’t yet figured out a way to be in two places at once. This was a long way from a long yawn as I checked out the waves trying to decide if I wanted to go surfing now or in an hour when the tide would be better. Perhaps all the clichés about Southern California and New York are true.

Manhattan

Pacific Beach

I did some googling to see what others thought.

The Urban Dictionary defines laid-back as: “Repressive, apathetic, does not care enough, brain dead, has no pulse, unlively, passive or passive aggressive, not caring enough, slow paced, follower mind set, compatable, middle american, lack of passion, lack of drive, bland, boring, white bread american.” (sic)

The Free Dictionary defines laid-back as: “Having a relaxed or casual atmosphere or character; easygoing.”

I’m guessing the first definition was written by a New Yorker on an iPhone while racing on foot to an appointment, while the second was written by a beach bum drinking a Stone IPA at a strand-side bar. 

Whoops, maybe I just reinforced those clichés.