Ryan Philbrook's Blog

(Below is an excerpt from my newest work, The Brooding Bard. The most popular places to find it are on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. Happy reading!)

*

“Ever seen the show?”
The man sitting next to me attempted to start a conversation.
The interior of the Troubadour was something to behold. If you were standing in the entrance, the left wall was lined with booths and on your right stretched a counter, a treasure trove of alcoholic beverages tempting you from the other side. Lights hung low from the high ceiling, reflecting off the bottles and the mirror that ran the length of the bar top. The size of the room was increased exponentially, thanks to that mirror.
In between the booths on the left and the bar on the right were the tables. Two-tops and four-tops and more chairs than you could count with a passing glance led all the way to the back wall of the room. From there, you could turn right toward the bathrooms or go straight through a large door, leading down a hallway toward the stage in the back. An auditorium took up the entire other half of the bar, with an exit that dumped you onto the sidewalk.
In its day, the Troubadour had been the place to be. But these were hard times. For everyone.
Muffled beats flooded the room, spilling over from the auditorium. The show was in full swing and there was applause after every song. Not a lot, but it was there. Between the people in the stage area and the smattering of patrons in here, I guessed there were forty souls in the bar altogether. The most active Thursday night I’d seen in a while.
“Ever seen the show?” he asked again.
I turned in my seat and regarded the man in the tweed jacket.
Aside from the tweed, he oozed class. Five o’clock shadow; short, dark brown hair; simple gray T-shirt complementing freshly pressed slacks and shoes so polished I could almost see my reflection. He had a glass with ice in it and some sort of dark liquid, but what kind of drink it was eluded me. He had an air of mystery about him.
“Mystery?” I asked, sniffing.
“Damn good cologne. How’d you know?”
“I’m wearing the same thing,” I replied.
“Well didn’t this just get adorable.”
I laughed.
“Never seen the show,” I remarked. “Though I’ve heard it through the walls on a number of occasions.”
Cameron, the bartender, interrupted our little talk. “Sam!” he called, heading over to our section of the bar top. “Sorry about that, I was a little busy.”
I smiled at the redhead that had been “keeping him busy.”
“I see you’ve met Clay,” he continued, gesturing to the man in the tweed.
“Clayton Jones,” the man said, extending a hand.
“Samuel Karde,” I responded, shaking it.
“Clay’s been a regular nearly as long as you,” Cameron said. “Been here since the glory days.”
“I don’t think I’ve been a regular that long,” I said. “It was a little touch and go there for a while.”
“I remember,” he nodded, grabbing a glass and pouring me a pint. “I remember you didn’t like the noise.”
I shrugged. “I hadn’t decided.”
“I was just asking Sam here if he’d ever seen Jordan’s show,” Clay chimed in.
“Have you?” Cameron asked.
I shook my head. “Naw.”
“See?” Cameron told Clay. “He doesn’t like the noise.”
The pint finished pouring and Cameron handed it over. “Winter Lager, imported from up north,” he said. “Tell me if you can guess from where.”
I took a sip and it was delicious. Just the right amount of hoppy.
“No idea,” I said, taking a solid swig. “You know I’m no good at this game.”
“I’ll come back in a few minutes, see if you’ve changed your mind,” Cameron said. “I’ve got something I need to get back to.” He wiggled his eyebrows and grinned, tromping off back toward the redhead. Obviously eavesdropping, I saw her smile out the corner of my eye and puff out her chest. By the time Cameron was on his way a second later, she’d returned to a facial expression of feigned indifference, focusing on her drink and the frosted windows by the door.
I rolled my eyes and took another swig.
“So!” I said, addressing Clay and getting the conversation back on track. “I take it you like the man’s music.”
“Hell no.”
“No?”
“Man’s a hack,” he said, sipping on his drink. “But people seem to like it.”
“He’s not that bad. Reminds me of a poor man’s Depeche Mode.”
Clay laughed at that and downed the rest of the glass. “You could say that.”
The music stopped in the other room. There was clapping, followed by an announcement I couldn’t make out.
“Intermission,” Clay said. “In case you were wondering.”
I tipped my beer in his direction. “Thanks.”
Clay’s grip on his glass slipped and it fell to the counter, ice spilling across the bar.
“Whoa!” I shouted, jumping backwards off my stool. “You all right there, buddy?”
Clay’s head dipped down before snapping back, as if he were suddenly falling asleep. One of his legs dropped down off the stool and the rest of his body threatened to follow. I set my beer down fast, Winter Lager sloshing up over the edges as I rushed to catch him.
“Cameron!”
Footsteps pounded over behind me as Cameron came around the bar. Clay sucked in a breath and  seemed to snap out of whatever it was.
“Clay!” Cameron said, appearing at my side. “What happened?”
Clay shook his head. “Something...”
“What is it?” I asked. “You all right?”
The floor shook, silencing our questions.
Cameron and I looked around the room in confusion. I noticed the other patrons doing the same.
“Earthquake,” someone mumbled, breaking the spell.
I continued to scan the room.
The windows were frosted over and the band had yet to resume playing. The silence was almost total.
The lights hanging from the ceiling swung softly from side to side, casting odd shadows across the room. For a moment, the only sound was the creaking of the wooden floors.
Clay was staring at the hallway leading to the auditorium. I followed his gaze. If it wasn’t for the quiet, I wouldn’t have heard what he said next.
“Shit.”
The back wall of the room exploded and the bar rocked, sending the people nearest to it flying.
There was a collective scream, drowned out by the sound of bricks and mortar landing heavy on the ground. One of the lights broke free of the ceiling and crashed down onto the tables below. People shouted, running in all directions and bolting for the door.
Another explosion sent flames rocketing out of the hallway coming from the stage. The floor heaved and the wall next to it burst outwards, burning chunks of rock hurling themselves into the crowd and straight toward us.
“Look out!” I cried, shoving both Cameron and Clay to the ground.
A ball of concrete the size of a fist hit me in the face with a cracking sound. The world spun and I pitched to the side, capsizing like a schooner at sea. A bright white flashed in front of my eyes before my head connected with the floor.

Then it was black.
*

Copyright ©2014 Ryan Philbrook

I'm reminded every once in a while that people aren't always as bad as I imagine them to be.

In fact, some are quite decent.

Take for example, yesterday. A co-worker of mine landed a huge sale at my place of employ. Good for her! I was happy for her, and while jealous, was not so much jealous of what she was receiving so much as I was of the particular skill set she possesses that landed her such a deal. And then what did she do?

She turned around and shared her accomplishment with the rest of the employees.

I hope that I can say I would have done the same. I'd like to think that I would! I don't know if I've ever been in that particular situation though, so it's difficult to say.

I deal with hypothetical situations every day. That's what I do. When I really get going, I start stringing a bunch of them together until they form one giant hypothetical, in which hypothetical people make hypothetical choices that hypothetically affect the world and the people around them.

Hypothetically.

I've always wondered if we spend too much time wondering, though. Consideration and taking action need to be present in equal parts. If you ponder too often or think about something too much, you're usually left beating a dead horse and wondering why in the hell the rest of your posse seem to have left you behind. If you act rashly, or with too little forethought however, you're a bull in a China shop, and nobody wants to spend any considerable amount of time with you, because there's just too much chance of them getting sucked into that hurricane themselves.

Connecting with others is important. And being able to look back at your choices yourself and respect them later on is in large part connected to how those others perceive us.

We are not here to please the world, but rather, contribute to it. We can neither simply exist, nor try to take the reigns of the whole thing into our own hands. There is a fragile balance we must maintain, always.

And you can always tell when you fall out of whack.

On an unrelated note, there's also apparently a balance between espousing opinions on one's blog and rambling late at night when you should be going to bed.

Hmm.

-Ryan

My new book has finally been released! And I love it.
The Brooding Bard , having been in the publishing pipeline for almost a year, finally saw the light of day on January 17th. I have a mixture of emotion about this, surprisingly, but it's something that I think comes to everyone once they've decided to turn their passion into their career.
Just because something is good (and I stand behind my product 100%!) doesn't mean that it will sell. And just because something sells doesn't mean that you'll make any money off it. Until you're well known, it's easy to feel like you're squandering your time and your money and your youth promoting your work.
I, at least, refuse to feel this way.
I am determined to see this through. And even if I have to work 40 hours a week every week for the rest of my life at a job that isn't this, I will continue to write.
I'm working on finding better ways to monetize my product (my books) so that I can effectively turn my passion into my day job/night job/every waking moment job, and get paid liveable wages for doing it. I'm trying out advertising on reddit, YouTube, local tv stations, local restaurants and coffee shops, plastering flyers and posters on billboards and telephone poles around the city, and am writing every newspaper with a submission link on their website. Review sites like Goodreads, mags like Publisher's Warehouse and Booklist; none will be safe from the ink in my pen (or word count in my email, as the case may be).
I guess what I want to say is this: Never stop pursuing your goals. There is an audience for everything, you just have to find it. And if you knock on enough doors and talk to enough people, maybe, just maybe....
You'll find them.
-Ryan
Read the first few chapters of The Brooding Bard for free!

Whew! What a busy month. I have no idea how we could already be 21 days into April already.

On to the update!:

-Summer Falls is continuing to sell! Little Clive Press and the Friends of Kelso will be hosting a book fair for authors and artists in Washington state on May 18th. (10am - 4pm) Everyone is encouraged to come as it's, you know, FREE for the public. If you want to hock your wares, you can rent a table! Summer Falls and myself will be in attendance.


-This weekend was spent at a friend's wedding, a fiftieth anniversary, hitting up the cineplex, and designing the cover for my next book. I don't know when it's going to be out, but guys: It's dark, it's tense, and it doesn't let up.


I'm super stoked.

Work on the next project can never cease! There must always be irons in the fire. I can feel the words inside of me, desperate to get out.

But that's it for tonight!

More as it develops.

So last week, I went to the opening of the remade "Evil Dead". It was excellent.

I also finished reading a horror novel I started at the beginning of last month. It was not.

I find myself comparing and contrasting the two, even though they belong to two very different albeit similar mediums. The book started off strong, taking its time building character and the character of the town in which the story took place. There was genuine tension, a sense of mystery, and empathy for the characters who were (so obviously to the reader) about to have their lives turned upside down, or worse. It was a slow-build, but that's fine. I like authors who know how to cultivate a feeling of curiosity, while simultaneously being able to keep me interested in the day-to-day of the characters.

But then it kept going.

And going.

And going.

The slow-build never picked up. There was no feeling of momentum in the story, and what's worse, the characters did absolutely nothing to combat the evil invading their lives.

What they did was talk about it. They talked and talked and talked, and then they talked some more. And that can be fine! But they never ponied up and DID anything about it. I understand that the author was trying to make a point about corporate America and the masses being comparable to sheep, but there's a difference between a character tolerating something a little too long, and being too stupid to stand up for themselves, or to even to try to run away. Again, I get the intent, it just wasn't working for me.

Stupid characters hurt me. They hurt me in the way that someone singing off key hurts someone with perfect pitch. Not saying that I have 'perfect pitch' so to speak, but I felt the analogy effectively communicated the way it feels when I keep telling the same character not to go out there alone. "Don't do it, buddy. You get your ass back in that car and you drive away. Nothing that made that noise could possibly be worth getting out of-- Yep. There he goes."

By comparison, the remake of the Evil Dead started off with a bang.

A fan of the original (and lets face it: The original is terrible. But good terrible.), I went into the remake with some trepidation. Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, and Rob Tapert all endorsed the remake, and since they were the driving forces behind the original, I figured I'd give it a shot.

And holy crap was I glad I did.

Evil Dead was unrelenting. The antithesis of the slow-burn, Evil Dead shows you the villain right away. It tells you exactly what's going to happen, should a certain condition be met. Then it makes meeting that condition almost impossible to avoid. The characters still did stupid things, and some of them were groan-worthy, but for the most part all of them made sense, considering the characters.

Curiosity is one of our strongest attributes, as human beings. It's also one of our greatest weaknesses.

The book I read rewarded my curiosity with something that could have been good, but ended up being mostly filler. As a shorter book, I think it would have been just fine.

The movie rewarded that same curiosity with something visceral, intelligent characters, and legitimate reasons for said characters to stick around a little longer than they should have in a place that they knew they shouldn't have been.

Character fidelity makes or breaks a narrative. A stupid decision is a stupid decision. But if the character has been drawn well enough, it may make total sense for him to make that stupid decision, given who he is.

And that can make all the difference.

So I went and saw The Great and Powerful Oz tonight with my girlfriend.

It was an enjoyable film, and I had a good time. The first two-thirds were excellent, and in my opinion, on a level consistent with the original. The final act, however, was a little too 'Hollywood' for me, becoming less of a character piece and more of an "us against them, battle for the world" scenario. Which is fine I suppose, but it didn't feel in keeping with the rest of the movie. It's that first two-thirds though, that I want to talk about.

From the very first frame of Oz and the very first note played from its score, I felt something that is so often missing from story telling these days.

I felt a sense of wonder.

Watching the character of Oz fumble through his life as a carnival magician, self-aware and very at-peace with who and what he was, I was struck by how perfect it all seemed; not his life, but the way things were being presented. When I was a child, it was much easier for movies or tv shows or books to impress me. Many things had the ability to transport me to another world, showcasing foreign vistas, foreign customs, foreign people. It felt like I was exploring something back then, whenever I would crack open the first pages of a book or pop in that video cassette. Nowadays, it's much harder to capture that feeling. I realize that that's because at this point in my life, I've been exposed to a lot more than I had been back then, and so it's harder for something to make the same impression on me that it would have when I was younger. I was having a conversation just last night in fact, where we were discussing how our culture has become over-saturated with everything.

Do you like romance? Here's more romance than you could ever read, online! Here's more romance than you could ever watch on tv! You like dating? Here's the internet, rife with singles and people who are desperately seeking Susan just a click or a poke or an email away.

There's no adventure anymore, there's no mystery. Every explanation you could ever want is at your fingertips, for every question, an answer, and before you start getting metaphysical on me, yes, I'm generalizing. But that's one of the reasons I find Mystery so engaging.

Not only is Mystery an exploration of things left unexplored, it's also exploring the concept that there IS actually something left out there TO explore. Finding a mystery is almost as exciting as investigating it. The investigation, in turn, is almost as exciting as solving it.

I miss getting grabbed by the collar and dragged into a world by the sheer power of the unknown and the promise of adventure. But I haven't given up. I'm still looking for the next story to get me hooked.

Those moments might be fewer and further between than they were before, but they're still out there. Even rarer, the story that fulfills its promise and is captivating till the end, through the end, and that leaves me wanting more.

I crave those stories.

And I hope that mine offer those moments to at least some of those that read them.

-Ryan  Philbrook

It's February!

One month down, eleven to go.

Summer Falls has just enjoyed it's first newspaper article, in a paper called The Reflector. Read it  here!: The Reflector - Getting to know Ryan Philbrook

I've also just been invited to do a reading of the book at a local writer's group/book bazaar. Having never done readings before, and having two scheduled for this month, I'm excited! More than anything, this means that people are reading the book, and that's an awesome feeling.

This is a short post, I know. I've been burning the candle at both ends lately, and while I welcome the resulting fever dreams and daytime shakes associated with sleep deprivation and overstimulation of my brain noodle, I've got to go put in some more time at the day job.

Happy Friday!

Your books were shipped on the 18th! USPS tells me that you should have them by Wednesday.

There's something I enjoy about getting a box full of books delivered to my door.

The business side of getting a book out there has always been interesting to me. I use 'interesting' in the way you would say that a squirrel dodging traffic is 'interesting'; it's less something that I enjoy, and more something I see as necessary to get to the other side of the street.

The other side of the street, of course, is home to a restaurant called "I Quit My Day Job And Now Write Full Time". It's delicious, and they don't put any prices on the menu.

Anyway, my first-ever book signing was a couple of weeks ago, and while it went quite well, I took all of my profits and reinvested them in more books. I'm doing a giveaway on Goodreads and courting reviewers online. I'm going to be honest, it's way different than selling in person. But also kind of fun!

Maybe I'm a consumer, but I'm the type to stand in a bookstore and buy stuff. "Oh, that looks interesting," I'll think, then proceed to read the first few chapters before adding it to my stack of things to read. Every time I realize (because it continues to surprise me) that something as intangible and abstract and true as a story has to be sold to someone as you would a car, or a cellphone, or tupperware, I cock my head to the side and examine the situation from a step or two back.

I'm not naive, I understand that in order to make a living at something, you've got to pound the pavement and peddle your wares. Hell, that's the reason I throw on a monkeysuit and present myself to bookstores and libraries with a windsor knot and a business card. But there's something simple about the way a friend recommends a tv show or a videogame or a movie to a friend. "Yo dude, Game of Thrones is TIGHT. Throw that shit on and take a look!"

It's natural, it's casual, it's organic.

Writing is a business.

But there's something that gets lost in translation. 'Selling' as opposed to 'Recommending'. And with the advent of online reviews and the impact they have on the public's opinion of products, I find individuals approaching media the same way that businesses do. Less for enjoyment, and more as a job.

Maybe I'm reading into things, but I hope that the magic of narrative and the sense of exploration that comes with a good story hasn't been lost to most people. I don't think it has. But then again, I'm infatuated with the stuff.

There's another world out there.

And I happen to enjoy taking a look.

So today brings with it the new year.

Politics are still frustrating, money is still short, and it seems like everybody and their mother are out to screw you out of a paycheck or healthcare or a sense of self-worth.

On the flipside, I woke up to snow. My book is in stores. My first ever book signing was only a few days ago, and the turnout was amazing. I got to see old friends, current friends, and meet new people. And they like the book! The ones that have gotten back to me do, at least.

I'm not going to turn this into some sappy post about looking forward instead of back, braving the unknown and bettering yourself as a person; instead, I want to say that we're in the Age of Aquarius, my age, and I'm gonna be rocking that damn song by The 5th Dimension all year.

2013 holds the same promise that every new day before has offered:

A new dawn, a fresh start, and the opportunity for change.