Authors Electric

Some cities are expensive to start with: New York, San Francisco, L.A...Others have  high-rentness  thrust upon them: in Atlanta, for example, after the 1996 Olympics rents simply went through the roof overnight. I've lived in both classes of city and found myself priced out again and again. And I've moseyed along with my head down.   Now, at a certain age, I  face more wrecking balls that build while they destroy dreams like Shiva. Three years ago, when I moved from Charlotte to Seattle, this was a happening city.. And it still is, in a different way.. With a booming economy driven by Amazon, Microsoft and Google, Seattle has risen to fifth rank in the nation's least affordable cities. An estimated 68 buildings are under construction or waiting to begin in midtown. Seattle has three times as many cranes as New York City, though a mere fraction of its size. And most of these buildings are either for apartments or offices for the Big Three. One bedroom...

In a minute I'll get to the rotten bitch who inspired this true fable. For now, true to form, I'll stand the writin' rules on their little pointed heads and start off with the moral: Familiarity with writers may breed worse than contempt: neglect. This moral evolved from three hard-learned lessons. (And don't fret, the rotten bitch is on her way.) 1) Many readers believe the best writers are dead. 2) Most readers prefer living writers to be remote, unreachable, even a bit otherworldly. The less known about them the better, for a myth is as good as a mile. 3) Some readers who are thinking of planning to write enjoy putting down struggling writers they meet. Every put down adds more fuel to the fire of their conviction that they're better off not trying. All right, all right, already. It's time now for the rotten bitch. Setting: the Amtrak Empire Builder, a round-trip cross country excursion. In the dining car I was seated with an at...

Now, there's no room for potty humor on a dignified site such as this. But the real subject I'm tackling does not stray at all from my headline--or, at least, not far enough for me to have stepped into 'doody'. Life is short, art is long...so here comes some serious shop talk about our common quandary. In any art or line of work, we're all bedeviled daily by the superabundance of signs. Specifically, the signs of money-grubbing bastards selling the same thing that we are. The fact that our product is better--we think--means nothing if nobody sees it. So the first essential step is this: to compel the paying public, by whatever magic, to give our 'stuff' a try. The key word there is: Real Magic. Not a game of smoke and mirrors involving discount prices and/or swaggering titles for bandy-legged work. If the work lacks Real Magic, the best signs will fail; it's only a matter of time. But the best work may sink if betrayed by our signs. Whatev...