Review: THE BLOGGER ABIDES by Chris Higgins

I came across The Blogger Abides entirely by chance on Twitter when Ransom Riggs tweeted about it (apparently he and Chris Higgins are friends, and Riggs wrote the intro to the book). I wasn't planning to review The Blogger Abides here, but after reading it, I realized it's a book a lot of my fellow bloggers and writers will want to read. And definitely should.

Chris Higgins is a freelance writer for Mental Floss as well as some other publications (Wired was mentioned frequently). You've probably read his posts or at least seen them posted on Twitter. In The Blogger Abides, he shares what he knows about freelance blogging: getting jobs, keeping track of payments and taxes, drinking hours, horrible grammar mistakes, dealing with editors, comments, and publicists; how to say no, trading up, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Basically, there's a shit ton of information here, and whether you're paid to blog or not, if you write you'll probably find at least some of it useful.

There was a lot I found really enlightening about The Blogger Abides, for one how a professional approaches blog posts, and writing in general. We're all familiar with posts that mine nostalgia or highlight "This day in history" topics, but I never would have come across one of them and labeled it as such before reading this book. Basically Higgins uses the same strategies most bloggers do as a far as finding topics and writing out posts, but at an increased volume and more professional level, which was something I found really interesting. After starting The Blogger Abides, I decided to challenge myself to write one post every day for the rest of the year just to see if I can meet that expectation of producing content constantly. So far it's been really fun!

Another thing that was really eye-opening for me was the concept of trading up: using blog posts as a springboard for magazine articles, books, and movie deals. Prior to reading The Blogger Abides, I knew that this happened occasionally (The Bloggess, anyone? Fed Up with Lunch?), but I only had a vague idea how. Now I'm thinking, "Hm, which of these blog posts can I turn into a book?" (Answer: probably none.)

Higgins does a great job of giving the reader a better idea of what the life of a professional freelancer entails. I can see someone thinking about going into freelancing and then deciding, after reading The Blogger Abides, that it's not for them. Not that Higgins is discouraging, but he does make it clear it's not easy (but then, is anything worth doing easy?--I felt like the woman in the Dewar's commercial for an instant, there). Do you want to have to keep track of your own taxes, your own retirement, "live small"--i.e., don't spend money on anything, because you won't have it--or worry about contracts and whether or not you get paid? If not, then you should probably just stick to writing for yourself.

As far as specific sections of The Blogger Abides are concerned, the chapter on how to get a job is probably the least helpful, since the answer is you basically have to know people. Fair enough. The chapter called "Business, Blah Blah Blah," about taxes and contracts and retirement savings and all that good stuff, was the most difficult to get through--not because it was confusing or tedious; Higgins actually breaks it down with admirable clarity and brevity--but because that's really not something I want to think about until I absolutely have to. And the part at the end about grammar was hilarious. I literally laughed until I cried over "Hard Road to Hoe." Too funny.

I've honestly only scratched the surface of the material found in The Blogger Abides. There is A LOT (plagiarism, linking, HTML, how to pitch to magazines, research--I want to write Higgins a thank-you note just for saying Wikipedia is NOT a valid source), and it's all really useful and relevant if you're interested in freelancing or just looking to improve your blog. I'm glad I took a chance on this and foresee referencing The Blogger Abides for a long time to come.

All Hallow's Read and Survey Results

I'm well-known for being a Halloween Scrooge, but this year Amy from My Friend Amy and Ana from Things Mean A Lot were inspired by Neil Gaiman's All Hallow's Read (giving someone a scary book on Halloween) to do a "spooky" book swap, and I was all in!



My "secret Satan" (har har) was Amy! Yay! She sent me The Ghost Writer by John Harwood (and another secret something that I haven't gotten yet, unfortunately), which looks really good. I can't wait to dig into it. Thank you, Amy! And thanks to Amy and Ana for hosting this great book swap.

As for NaNoWriMo, you might recall that on Sunday I asked you all to vote on what story you wanted me to write this month (see the post here). The survey is now closed and the winner is... SLEEPLESS IN PARIS! Thank you to everyone who voted and I hope the story lives up to your expectations. If you voted for one of the other stories, don't worry--I will get to them after NaNo. But for now I have about 8 hours to refresh my memory on 1920s Paris, so I'd best get started.

Enjoy Halloween!

Review: TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT by Lawrence Block

I wasn't going to review this book, even though I thought it was excellent. Why? It's definitely a classic and it's something I think every writer should read, but I'm not sure if non-writers would have any interest in it. Probably not. But then Telling Lies for Fun and Profit is so entertaining it might capture the interest of those who aren't its intended audience.

Lawrence Block published his first novel at the age of nineteen (a lesbian erotica, in case you were wondering) and has written about a bazillion novels and short stories since then, so the guy's walked some literary miles. Telling Lies for Fun and Profit is a collection of essays he wrote for Writer's Digest about the craft of writing, and they range from the philosophically abstract (like Sunday writers, see here) to the technical and specific (such as using pronouns, see here). Even though certain aspects of the book are dated (it was first published in 1981), there is a lot of food for thought in this book for writers to chew on.

Block himself says he sometimes contradicts himself (he does), and there are things I find hard to believe or just didn't agree with (no rewriting Block, really?), but agreeing or disagreeing isn't really the point of the book. Nor does Telling Lies for Fun and Profit aspire to teach anyone HOW to write a novel, though Block does offer his own ideas about that. Instead, as Sue Grafton puts it in the introduction, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit is a comfort read for writers--just like any of his fictional characters, Block makes his own experiences relatable and universal. A lot of books about writing only address the difficulties, with the end result of making aspiring writers eager to get a job in a retail or accounting. Block doesn't ignore the difficulties at all, but he does make them seem completely normal and, thus, surmountable.

Block's writing style is also really entertaining and fun to read. I LOL'd several times, and even when I wasn't, I was very engaged. Not to say this is an easy read--it took me about a month to work my way through Telling Lies because some of the essays are really challenging and take some time. But when I was reading I was completely entertained, not something that can often be said for non-fiction. There were also times when I felt like Block was being a bit patronizing toward women, but I'm going to write that off as more of a generational thing than misogyny on his part.

Anyway, I'm really happy I bought Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. It gave me a lot to think about, and was very inspiring. I can see myself rereading this over and over and taking different things away from it each time. I would recommend this book to anyone who considers themselves a writer.

Some passages I particularly liked:

...when I want to write and can’t write I find myself possessed of murderous rage.

I don’t finish half the books I start nowadays, and a good many get hurled across the room after a couple of chapters.

Akin to the nonsense about formula, these same non-writers assume that the development of a series character is a major step toward success, financial security, and a final solution to the heartbreak of psoriasis. “Once you’ve got a character,” they say, “all you have to do is write about him for the rest of your life.” Terrific. Once you’ve got a pair of running shoes, all you have to do is leg it from Hopkinton to Boston. Once you’ve learned the Australian crawl, all you have to do is swim the Channel. Once you’ve hit puberty—oh, never mind.

And his name is Dan Brown:

The unspoken premise in “I wish I had your self-discipline” is that anyone with my self-discipline could do what I do, that a persistent chimpanzee could match me book for book if he could just sit still long enough and work the space bar with his non-opposable thumb. [Did Lawrence Block invent the infinite monkey theorem?]

On pseudonyms:

I had a letter just the other day from a woman intent upon keeping her true identity a secret not only from her readers but from her prospective publisher as well, and wanting to know how she could do all this without getting into a tangle with the tax authorities. I assume she has her reasons.

On acting professionally:

I’m not sure there’s any good sense in imposing questions of ethics upon a profession which has muddled along for centuries without any.

On titles:

Years ago, when I spent a year reading slush at a literary agency, it sometimes seemed to me as though a full forty percent of the stories I read were entitled “As the Twig Is Bent.” Another thirty-five percent were called “So Grows the Tree.”

Is Twins a good title? Or The Thorn Birds? Or The Shining? How about Coma, perhaps the first novel ever named for what it induces?

On feedback and reviews:

If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. If you don’t want the peaches, leave off shaking the tree. And if you can’t bear disapproval, keep the stuff in a locked drawer.

TSS: Sunday Writers

A somewhat blog-centric Sunday Salon post this week: I'm currently reading Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Laurence Block (excellent book, by the way), and in it he ponders why there are no "Sunday writers"--people who, as Block defines it, write regularly and develop their skills only for the love of doing something fun and creative, never expecting to be published or paid. Block does add one caveat to this: poets can't have any expectations of being published; and even if they do, they won't make money at it, so they're the exception. "When all poets are essentially amateurs, one's not ashamed to be less than professional," he says.

Naturally, when I read Block's definition of Sunday writers my mind immediately went to blogging, something that didn't exist when Block wrote Telling Lies (which I think was in the early '80s--he references typewriters a lot). Most bloggers don't get paid; and if they do, it's not very much. Instead, we write regularly because we like writing! Or at least I do. All the things Block cites as impediments to the existence of Sunday writers--wanting to share your work with others, the prohibitive cost of self-publishing and the stigma attached to doing so--have essentially been removed thanks to the internet. Now anyone can publish nearly anything, for free, and share it with the world.



But are we really "Sunday writers"? As in, do we consider ourselves as writers, and if we do, is our ultimate goal still to get published? I think a lot of people, even those who regularly write for a living, don't consider blogging as "writing" (Jessica from Read React Review wrote an excellent post discussing this a few months ago). I do consider blogging as writing; in fact, one of the reasons I started the blog was so I could have a writing outlet after a finished school. However, I also want to be published, and have been. So perhaps Block is right and there really are no Sunday writers, despite the fact that the impediments he mentioned don't really exist anymore.



Do you think there are "Sunday writers"?

TSS: Story vs Writing

Good very early morning, Sunday Saloners. This last week I've read several books that have really great stories, but there are things about the writing style that just didn't work. Maybe it was more like ALL of the writing style didn't work. And it makes me wonder, are these two things--story and writing--mutually exclusive? Have I ever read a novel that tells a story in a completely gripping way AND has a fabulous writing style? Or am I just a sucker for bad books?

Hmm, I don't know. Maybe Harry Potter? I think writing style is one of those things that I tend to take for granted. When it's good, I accept it as part of the book and pay attention to other things. Whereas if it's bad, it's like a sore tooth: I can't ignore it. That's why I don't generally discuss writing style on this here blog.

Honestly, I'll take a good story over "good writing"--whatever that means--any day, but the two should work in tandem, no? If a writer tells a story in a way that keeps me reading and reading and reading, isn't that part of being a good writer?


Would you rather have a good story or good writing? And have you ever read a book with a great writing and a great story?

Love Is a Leap

Does anyone besides me remember The Butcher's Wife (the trailer is too cute!)? It's a romantic comedy from the '90s starring Demi Moore and Jeff Daniels. Demi plays a clairvoyant named Marina who travels to New York City with her new husband, a butcher. Her husband is freaked about Marina's ability to see into the future, so he sends her to a psychiatrist played by Jeff Daniels. It has so many elements that I love in a story: charm, humor, a sense of community, destiny, clairvoyance, self-discovery, and love of course. It's what so many romcoms strive to achieve but never do.

There are tons of great lines in this film, but the one that's stuck in my head the most is "Love is a leap that won't be denied." TOTALLY CHEESY, I know, but it must have permanently affected my prepubescent brain, because I completely buy into that concept. Not necessarily in real life--the jury's still out on that one--but narratively? Heck yeah.



Think about it: how much does denial really build romantic tension in stories? Personally, I hate that trope, especially when the characters deny their attraction for no good reason. Then eventually all obstacles are removed and they still STILL deny it (I'm looking at you, Castle and Bones), because the writers are under the mistaken belief that if their characters don't get together, then all romantic tension will be lost.

The thing is, people in general want to do things to ensure their own happiness. And typically being in a loving relationship does equate to happiness on some level. Ipso facto, one expects characters to take the chance on love at some point no matter the obstacles, external or internal, put in their path. There comes a point where the dithering grows tiresome and they have to either leap or find new fuel for the fire, and if that point passes with no action on the characters' part, the "romantic tension" becomes bullshit no one can buy into anymore.

I think that's one of the things I like most about The Butcher's Wife--the characters leap. Sometimes in the wrong direction, but they take chances because they think it will make them happy. Occasionally I worry that we've become a society so afraid of taking chances, we're even too afraid to write about what might happen when you do.


What words of wisdom have you taken away from romantic comedies?

Mystery vs Suspense in THE MADNESS OF LORD IAN MACKENZIE by Jennifer Ashley

One of the linchpins of a good story, I think, is the element of mystery, which obviously isn't the same as suspense. Mystery is more cerebral while suspense is more visceral. I think that's one of the reasons why suspense works so well in movies. You eat pictures with your eyes but you eat words with your brain, especially when those words are on paper.

In Little Women (the movie with Winona Ryder), Jo says something that has stuck in my head for years: books aren't about what you know, they're about what you don't know. You have to want to know about the characters or what's going to happen to keep reading. Unlike in movies, where information is limited to what's before your eyes, in books your mind has to be engaged. You have to wonder about something. That's why mysteries took off with the rise of the novel.

Unfortunately--I think probably because of the dominance of TV and movies in our lives now--this art of capturing one's interest and stringing it along with questions is really pretty rare in fiction these days. Most of the books I read seem to follow Hitchcock's edict that it's better to have an audience know about a bomb under a table for fifteen minutes than surprise them with an exploding bomb for five seconds. Of course, Hitchcock was making suspense movies, not writing books.

That's why it was nice to read The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, because the author, Jennifer Ashley, does a great job of telling this story by building up the reader's questions about the Mackenzie brothers and then surprising us with turns in the story. "What is up with these Mackenzies, why are they all crazy?" you wonder soon after the story starts. Along with, "Why does Detective Fellows have it out for Ian?" The characters don't act like tropes, but like actual characters with motivation, and I loved how unconventional Ian and Beth were. Beth is a window who, through a series of unlikely events, has risen out of an East End London workhouse to become an elegant heiress. Ian, the younger brother of the Duke of whatever, probably has Ausberger's or a mild form of autism, and was institutionalized as a young boy. But he's not the only odd person in his family--all of his brothers are crazy and obsessive, and as the story unfolds we begin to understand why.

I really loved this book and can't believe I waited this long to pick it up! Even the murder mystery in the novel was very well-done and had me engaged and guessing until the end. The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie restored my belief that great story-telling is still to be had in historical romances.

Epistolary Appeal

Image by kevinzim

I've been writing letters lately to one of my long-time friends who recently got married.  I used to write letters a lot, but ever since the invention of e-mail, FaceBook, twitter, and the other things on the intrawebz... not so much.  However, my friend just happened to send me a letter at a moment when I felt like writing, and so we've been corresponding by snail mail for about a month.

Aside from making me feel delightfully anachronistic (next I'm going to get a rotary telephone and plug it into the wall), there's something different about writing out a letter than an e-mail or other forms of electronic communication.  With twitter, you only have 140 characters to make your point, so usually tweets are about actions: "Ate a sandwich," "Reading The Odyssey--does it rhyme?" and other such fascinating tidbits.  Even e-mails tend to be short and straight to the point--you find out what the person wants to know, and you tell them.  The end.  Long, rambly e-mails typically annoy people.

While writing a letter, however, there seems to be more room for self-reflection, perhaps because it takes more time to write it out long-hand; or maybe because you've slotted time to just sit down and write, whereas things like e-mail and twitter are usually slotted in between actual "work" (which could be anything from Farmville to accounting) you're doing on the computer.  Also, even though letters have an audience, since you don't receive their reply for a long while it's kind of like talking to yourself.  Because of that, it seems like letters reveal more of the inner workings of the writer's mind than most other types of writing.  And rambly letters are the best kind of letters to get!

I read a quote recently--I can't remember where, I think it was on You've Gotta Read This--that the difference between movies and books is that books use the inner workings of the mind (and words, obviously) to create images, while movies use images to imply the inner workings of the characters' minds.  And while I'm not a big fan of epistolary novels (mainly because I'm worried there will be a lack of narrative), I think that's a big part of their appeal--letters are all about the inner workings of the writers' mind, and trying to convey that single view to another person.  In fact, letters may be writing in its purest form in that respect.

If you've read epistolary novels, what do you think their appeal is? Why would someone want to read someone else's letters?

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Inner Story

From WCFQ:

If you were to write a book someday, what would it be about?
slavoki

Back in the day, I picked up The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron at the library.  Very interesting book, although looking back on it I'm not sure if it helped my creativity any.  Anyway, one of the things in that book that really stuck in my mind (or maybe it was the sequel, Vein of Gold, I can't remember which) was that Cameron had an exercise where you listed your favorite movies.  Then, in the back of the book, there was an index of movies with their dominant themes.  According to Cameron, people are attracted to movies that have themes they tend to think about a lot (DUH); so if you're a writer, you should write about the themes that you find in your favorite films.

So, what is my favorite movie, and what should I write about according to this woman?


Thunderheart

Thunderheart with Val Kilmer is my absolute favorite movie.  It's about a FBI agent who goes to South Dakota to investigate a murder on a reservation.  Coincidentally, the agent is half-Indian (and I'm going to assume he's Oglala Sioux, as well, although I don't think the movie ever says so explicity.  But it might and I just forgot); and despite the fact that the tribe on the reservation is initially wary of the by-the-book "Indian from Washington", he's swiftly accepted due to the influence of an old man who seems to be a sort of shaman for the tribe. 

What I love about this movie is that it makes you (or me, at least) believe that magic actually exists.  I also love the landscape in the movie and the idea that Kilmer's character crosses into another world when he enters the reservation.  Futhermore, I love that almost no one in the movie is what they appear to be--Kilmer looks like your average suit when the movie starts out, but by the end he's done a complete one-eighty and accepted his Sioux heritage.  Many other characters undergo a metamorphosis during the course of the movie, too, as does the landscape.


When I initially read this question--If you wrote a book, what would it be about?--my first instinct was to respond with magic, love, and how people are never what they appear to be at first glance.  Shocking how closely that matches up to Thunderheart's plotline!  The movie doesn't have a love story--not even as a subplot--but there is a theme of loving the land and one's heritage that runs through the film, so I suppose that counts.

What would you write about if you wrote a novel today?  Does it match up with your favorite movie?

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Reviewer Responsibility?

In the blogs o books lately, there has been a lot of talk about reviewers' responsibilities--to their readers, the author, the publisher, and themselves. It all started (at least as far as I was aware) when KatieBabs published this post about an online reviewer who can no longer get free books from the publisher because they don't like the tone of her reviews. Here's the excerpt of the e-mail republished on Katie's site, which was sent to the reviewer (one Emmy) via the review site she writes for (separate from her livejournal account):

As I mentioned to you sometime ago, a number of authors have written me requesting that I do not send you their books to review since they didn't appreciate your style of reviewing. Recently the publishers have gotten in on the action and several of them have written within the past couple of weeks requesting that I give their books to other reviewers. Basically what they have said is that they will not give their books to a reviewer who trashes them. Their main objection is the tone of your reviews and I'm paraphrasing here - your reviews come across as extremely snarky, not just in the reviews themselves but in the comments following the reviews .... they don't have any issue with reviewers posting negative reviews of their books but they feel that your reviews are unprofessional. The bottom line is they are not prepared to offer their books to a reviewer who calls stories she doesn't like "craptastic" "suckage" and makes reference to gouging her eyes out, is disrespectful and cruel, especially following up on reviews she has posted of stories she doesn't like. Some of us have problems writing reviews on books that we don't like for whatever reason. As you know, I hate writing negative reviews but I do them more frequently now and I always have to find the right words to use and try to be helpful. So we have a problem with few options. Since I'm rapidly running out of books for you to review I could do what I did originally when you agreed to post your reviews here - I could cherry pick your reviews from your Live Journal and suggest the ones to be posted here. Obviously I can't select those from some publishers, which makes it difficult. Honestly, I'm at a loss here. I like you on a personal level, I enjoy our discussions, I think you're funny and we have fun together and I don't want this to affect our relationship. I don't know if you have any other suggestions of how we can work around this.You'll probably be angry when you receive this email but I have no option since basically I have been given ultimatums by several publishers who supply the books to be reviewed.

Wow. That'll knock a girl down a peg. So basically--or at least as Katiebabs argued--Emmy is being blackmailed into changing the tone of her reviews or she will no longer receive books from the publisher.

Then Bbexlibris posted an entry asking what makes a good review. Although this doesn't seemingly have anything to do with Emmy's problem, it actually does--the publishers are refusing to lend her books because they don't think she writes valuable reviews. They want her reviews to be "helpful," or something. But should reviews, of books or movies or anything, really be helpful? Should they be entertaining? Most reviewers (re: yes, I mean myself) don't get free books to review from publishers. But if you do get copy from publishers or authors, do you enter into some sort of unspoken contract with them not to be as harsh?

There have been more posts discussing this topic, my personal favorite being the one on RomanceNovelTV--basically the equivalent of STFU. "Criticism is not a one-way street," Marisa (the author) says, so don't dish out what you can't take.

I think this is a great point, and why doing reviews on the internets is different from doing them for, say, the New York Review. Also perhaps why it's better. In ye olde timey days, you got reviews from newspapers or magazines, and some were more prestigious than others. Did those reviewers interact with publishers and writers? They probably did, to a certain extent, but they couldn't get too buddy-buddy with them due to journalistic integrity and all that; and the reviewers definitely didn't interact with the masses of readers that authors and book sellers were hoping to sell books to. Basically, for the Waldo Lydeckers of the world (he was a critic, wasn't he?), criticism was a one-way street.

With the interwebs, you've got a completely different situation. Writers, reviewers, readers, publishers, and editors are all on Twitter or on blogs, talking to one another, reading reviews, commenting on websites, and basically communicating to an extent they never have before. If you write a review, be it harsh or favorable, chances are not only higher the author and editor will read it, but respond to it.

Does this improve reviews? Do you think reviewers are selling out if they pull punches just because they know the author of the book might read their review of it? Is it even a reviewer's job to be "helpful" to a writer in improving his or her books?

Personally, there are only two kinds of reviews that I really love: ones that lead me to great books, and ones that add to my understanding of books that I've read. Neither instance requires wit or a snarky attitude, or being helpful to the author for that matter. Someone who writes a review that is meant to show off their own cleverness and intelligence more than discuss the book being reviewed (something that happens in academia all the time, just fyi), tends to scream to me "Frustrated Novelist." Then again, one does want one's reviews to be interesting so that people will read them....

It's an interesting conundrum. I'm not going to promise my reviews will never be snarky, but I do have to admit that every time just before I hit the submit button, I ask myself, "What if the author reads this?" It's not so much pulling my punches as watching out for my karma--what goes around comes around.

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Proof That I Do Write Creatively... Or At Least I Try

A few nights ago, I was really bored, so I decided I would go through some of my older posts and start retroactively tagging all of them. The bad news is, I got tired of doing that after about 10 posts (out of five-ish years of blogging). The good news, I found this little gem, which was supposed to be a first chapter to a book whose purpose, plot, and premise I do not recall at all. This is as far as got with it. However, I thought the excerpt was cute. It's about a messy, anti-social vampire named Steve and his annoying friend who is trying to get him to date. Voila:

Chapter One

The sun was just setting when Steve woke up to the refrain of Bach’s 5th Symphony, playing shrilly and slightly off-tune from his phone.

“Yessssssssssss?” he growled into the receiver, keeping his face half-buried in his pillow. There was a short silence until the phone rang again, this time right into his ear, and he realized he had forgotten to push the “talk” button.

This time he lifted he head off the pillow and snapped, “Yes, what do you want?”

“A little grumpy, are we?” a familiar voice teased on the other end—Tom, Steve’s terminally cheerful friend.

Knowing he wasn’t likely to get out of this conversation without Tom stating his peace, and then some, Steve sat up in his bed and placed a hand on top of his aching head. It had been a tough weekend. “Why are you calling me so early?” he demanded, his voice still rough from sleep. He could see the golden reflection of the sunset on the wall as the sun sank behind the tall skyscrapers covering the city.

“You hadn’t left your apartment for the last decade until two nights ago, and I know it didn’t go well, so I decided you needed some cheering up in the form of… women!”

It took Steve several moments to process this information. When it finally dawned on him what Tom was saying, he pushed aside the covers and got out of bed. Knowing Tom, he was probably standing outside his door at this moment.

“First of all,” Steve ground out, reaching for a pair of boxers, “it has not been a decade since I left my apartment; and secondly, I don’t need cheering up. Even if I did, I don’t need you to procure female companionship for me.”

“I beg to disagree, friend,” Tom returned, sounding like he should be in either a laundry commercial or The Music Man.

“I’m disconnecting my phone. You will now only be able to contact me via e-mail.” Having pulled on a pair of black jeans—the closest thing to him on the floor, and somewhat clean—Steve walked out of his bedroom, through his living room and to his front door. He glanced through the peephole, and sure enough, there was Tom, grinning at him while holding his cell phone to his ear.

Without a word, Steven hung up and pulled open the door. “There had better not be a stripper behind you.”

“Would I be so crass?” Tom shut his phone and stepped past Steve, into his apartment. He gave his friend’s living room a long, despairing glance and said, “So I see you’ve been cleaning the place.”

The room was not only cluttered, but filthy. Bookcases crowded for space on every available wall, stuffed with books layers-deep. In front of the bookshelves, cardboard boxes were stacked waist-high, and in front of the boxes, on the floor, the end tables, the coffee table, the top of the television—basically any flat surface—were piles of books, puzzle boxes, stacks of clothes, swords and other assorted weaponry, hats, papers, and CD and DVD cases. Where there wasn’t a pile of something, the surface was covered with a layer of dust, a tissue, or a liquor bottle. The black leather couch was the only clear space in the room.

Steve shut the door and turned back to face the room. He swept his hands forward, palms out, and a wind blew through the apartment, pushing the dust, tissues, and the smaller bottles to the back of the room. “Happy now?”

“You don’t have to clean up on my account,” Tom replied. “Now, about this woman thing… I have an idea.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Online dating!”

Tom looked at him as if he had just announced he’d invented electricity. Steven rolled his eyes and walked to the kitchen.

“Aren’t you even interested?” Tom asked, following him and sounding not in the least defeated.

“I can’t say I am.” Steve reached into his refrigerator and pulled out a beer bottle, passing it to Tom.

“But you love computers, and you hate leaving your house. It’s perfect.” Tom pulled the plastic wrap off the top of the bottle and paused to take a long drink while Steve took out his own bottle.

“What’s the point?”

Tom put his bottle down on the kitchen counter with a thunk. “You’re depressed. I understand that. But you need to get out more, see new things, feast on some pretty pieces of flesh.”

Steve thought about this as he took a drink. “Have you done this?” he asked, looking at Tom cautiously.

“Of course! I just had a date last Friday with this amazingly delicious woman named Karen. A lot of them won’t put out on the first date, but of course my natural charm overcomes their objections.” Tom grinned and picked up his bottle again. “It’s so easy. You just put up a picture of yourself and a profile on the web, and women flock, my friend.”

“I’m sure,” Steve muttered. Tom was given toward over exaggeration.

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