Melody Taylor's Blog

I just found out that my next-door neighbor is dying.

She has cancer. It hasn’t responded to any of the chemo or radiation the oncologists have tried. But the last round destroyed her kidneys. They were forced to stop treatment or they would destroy her kidneys entirely. She’s been in and out of the hospital for related problems. It’s boiled down to late stage kidney disease, get dialysis or die, but the cancer isn’t responding to treatment and will eventually kill her, and kidney disease is an easier way to go than cancer. I’m not sure if she will get dialysis for a while or if she will refuse right away. I’m not sure how much time she actually has. I doubt it’s long.

I like her. She and her husband invited me and my husband in for drinks shortly after we first moved in, and we all hit it off right away. They’re my kind of people. When she got sick, she hired me to come over and help her keep house, and we’ve gotten even closer. She’s become a very dear friend. She is smart, she’s hilarious, she’s interesting, and she’s a very good listener. I have spent hours just jabbering away with her.

This is rough. I made my peace with death a long time ago, including the fickle nature with which it hits people. It’s not fair, but it’s part of life, and it’s true. People who don’t deserve to get sick get sick. People who don’t deserve to die young do. It stinks, but railing against it only harms yourself. You do nothing to stop it. And I think perhaps you delay your own ability to grieve and begin to heal.

I don’t have a lot of experience with death. My uncle passed away from cancer when I was in my early thirties. He was a great guy, but we were never terribly close. The cancer gave us a chance to get to know each other a bit before he went. I’m kind of glad, because I don’t know if I would have ever made the effort otherwise, and he was a neat guy. My grandmother’s two closest friends have passed. Her brother, a great-uncle I never knew well but who played Santa Clause for years at our local mall. Several of my pets have passed away, which is always hard, but in a different way. Not less, just different. I haven’t lost many people.

Several things are happening in my head at the moment. One of the big ones is this:

My neighbor is my mother’s age. Not old. By any means. When she was diagnosed with cancer, she went into it with full confidence that she would win. The cancer is not killing her – yet – the chemo is. She did not realize she would have to fight the chemo as well. I think we all expected her to come out of it, but she’s not. Now her only choice in life is how she dies.

People say that death can come at any time, or that life is short and you should make the most of it. There’s a TED talk about the top five regrets of the dying and steps you can take to not have those regrets. Good stuff. True stuff. Some people take it really seriously. But I think until you are looking at end-of-life choices right in front of you, unless you are agreeing to take your neighbor’s pets when she’s gone and knowing that will probably be within a few months, you just don’t know. You don’t see it. How many of us have lost people at too young an age? Not many, any more. In a world of sanitation and healthcare, lots of people only get sick and die when they’re old, and it’s peaceful. We don’t see too many accidents or deaths in childbirth or sudden illnesses that destroy loved ones before our eyes. We’re quite safe, a lot, and I think we bank on that safety. We don’t take risks. We don’t live life to the fullest. We don’t work towards dreams or let the housework go or stop worrying about how fat we are or how silly we look playing as grown adults. We go on, properly, calmly, within the rules, and we don’t realize that we could die quite soon, never having done what we most wanted to do.

I thought I was prepared. If I die tomorrow, would I have regrets? Well, yes. I would regret not quitting my shitty day job and giving my all to my writing and other artistic endeavors. If I did that, and it failed and I had to get another shitty day job, I would have at least tried. If I did it and it succeeded, I would be over the moon. But if I don’t do it, and I’m scared, and I get cancer tomorrow that eventually leaves my kidneys failing and my choices down to how I want to die and where, I will have spent my time here working a job I hated being too scared to do what I wanted. And then my chance and my time will be gone.

Death comes to all of us. Live to 30 or live to 103, you will die. Maybe all you want in life is a good marriage and a nice house and some kids and a job that lets you have those things. Maybe you want to be an artist. Maybe you want to visit all the national parks in the country, or you want to climb a mountain. Maybe you want to own a giant snake.

Whatever is stopping you, please. Let it go.

We are all in free fall. Life has very little to do with many of the choices we make for ourselves. Control is an illusion. We are organic creatures that come to an end, sooner or later. And even if you fail, you can at least look back on your life and say you tried.

My husband is taking our neighbor to a doctor’s appointment today, and he will ask her if there’s anything she’d like to do while she still has the strength. We intend to help her make it happen, whatever it is, even if it’s just a wheelchair ride through a forest.

I hope it’s enough.

Source: Sharing the adventure.

I heard the advice today on the The Self Publishing Podcast from marketing expert Tim Grahl that writing is an adventure, and when you blog, you should share the adventure.

This struck me as being very true. I don’t have a “normal” life, I don’t do “normal” things, and while the act of writing involves me sitting at my desk either in silence or with music playing and perhaps a cat or two bothering me for attention, being a novelist is actually pretty exciting at times.

Take my sword workshops, for example. Or learning to hypnotize my friends. Or reading Tarot cards. Or any of the other things I take an interest in. For me, any time I find something interesting, I pursue it. Whether that means reading a few books, getting volunteers among my friends, or taking advantage of cool stuff my friends do, I go all in.

Let’s start with the sword workshops, shall we?

I don’t do martial arts. I think they’re nifty, and several of my friends practice them, one in particular being Master Sloan, who is not only a black belt in Tai Kwan Do, but also in Gum Do, and he teaches katana workshops. I was working on In the Dark around the same time he was offered the opportunity to teach a katana workshop near my home, and he called me up to see if we could go for coffee beforehand. I said, of course, but I’d like to sit in on your workshop, if that’s not disrespectful? He said, you could do more than sit in, you could do it if you wanted.

When someone asks you if you’d like to learn to properly swing a sword, and one of the characters in the book you’re writing is a sword master, you say “Yes!”

Now, let’s get a few things straight: Sebastian is not a Gum Do or katana master; he is a student of many martial arts and the sword he carries is certainly a Scottish Glave, although my own research indicates that he would just call the sword a “sword.” People who made and used swords didn’t call them by different names back when they were being used. Blacksmiths made the best swords they knew how, and people who used them learned to use them. There were regional differences, but since there was no internet or even newspapers when swords were popular, people weren’t aware of those differences and called what they made and used “swords” pretty universally. What I learned in the 2 workshops Master Sloan taught were basic block and stroke techniques, suited for the total of 6 hours that I had a sword of any sort in my hands. I can’t even tell you what each of the strokes was called, though I do recall that they each had a name, as did the draw-and-strike move as well as the blood-flick move and the sheathing move. (Yes, I learned how to flick blood off my katana. Actually, there were 2 blood-flick moves. Sooooooo cool!)

I had a blast, though, and I learned that every move in sword work is very controlled, that each muscle in your body plays a part in every stroke, and that it would take a lot longer than 6 hours for anyone to learn much of anything in real sword fighting. I learned about channelling power through voicing your stroke. I learned that a blue mat in a gym makes a really satisfying “thwump” when you drop to your knees on it. I learned about being respectful to your sword, to your practice mates, and to your instructor in a dojo. I learned about the difference between showy displays of power and simple displays of craftsmanship. And I learned that Master Sloan frequently brings Star Wars references into his lessons because he is a huge geek and that’s awesome. Each of those things is something I didn’t know before and that I could only have learned first hand. I also know that sword moves will leave your body sore in places you didn’t know you had used the next day.

Did any of that stuff actually get used in the book? Well, no. There was no good way to bring any of it in without essentially holding up a huge neon sign that screamed “the author actually took 2 sword workshops and would like you all to know that and how cool she is!”Did I have an awesome time learning it anyway? Fuck yeah! Do I think that having a rudimentary experience with a sword of a type that Sebastian does not use made me better able to relate to him as a swordsman? Absolutely. Do I think I could have learned any of that from reading a book? One hundred per cent no. Some things you have to read up on, and some things you have to do. Swordsmanship is a very physical knowledge, and it is, in my opinion, one of those things you should do if you possibly can. Plus, it is kick-ass and super fun and empowering.

So what about all the other things I do or am interested in that maybe my characters don’t do or that I’m not presently writing about? I figure it’s all a catalog to draw from at a later time. Maybe I never use it. But the bottom line is, I am a curious person, and if I ever make use of any of the things I’ve studied or experienced, then it was time more than well spent. If not, well, I still had a hell of a good time leaning about whatever it is. And I do think that everything we take in filters down in to the subconscious anyway, and that’s where stories and characters are born, so the more fodder I’ve got stored in that deep region of my brain, the more likely it is to burp up some good stuff from time to time.

In conclusion, I would like to recommend that if anyone you know does something cool and you get a chance to try it out, even if it’s not your cup of tea, give it a whirl. I’ve never used a sword since, except to practice the strokes we learned in the workshops on and off. To remember how much fun it was, to remember how much work it was, and to try to be respectful of the knowledge shared with me the only way I know how.

Cuz last year sucked. So hard.

To start 2015 off, my husband and I were broke. We were making better money than we had in a long time, but because it had been a while since we’d had any money, we were spending it faster than we could bring it in. And not on cool stuff that we’re still glad we bought. On lame stuff that we can’t even remember now.

And then I got the flu. Or a flu-like virus, anyhow. While I was sick, one of our 3 cats started acting funny. Not eating. Not sleeping. Lethargic. He was 21 years old and suffering from kidney disease, so we had to take him to the vet to put him to sleep. While I still had a fever. Crying your eyes out while feverish is not fun. I relapsed from the stress. One week later, on my birthday, while I was still feverish, our other cat started acting funny. She was 19 and suffering kidney disease. You guessed it. I spent my birthday at the vet, crying my eyes out and feverish.

Besides all that my day job had started to become a real grind. I’m in phone sales. Phone sales sucks. Try it sometime. There are some who like it, or at least don’t mind it. I am not one. I’m good at it, but I hate it. Since my husband and I were broke, I was busting my butt going in every day. I’m not a morning person. I’ve never liked working full time and have always been happy with living with less so that I can have more time to do things like go for walks in the woods and sleep in and write books. But when the bill collectors are knocking, they don’t care if you’d rather go for a walk in the woods or sleep in, they want money. So I was hauling my ass up first thing in the morning (ugh) to go to a phone sales job (ugh) for 40 hours a week (ugh ugh ugh). I was miserable, but no one really seemed to want to hear it. My boss even said “you can do anything for 8 hours a day.” By mid-July, I started having panic attacks.

Now, if you know anything about me, you probably know I had an anxiety disorder for the first 20 years of my life. I fought hard and worked on myself relentlessly to get over my anxieties and stop having panic attacks. Suddenly having them again after almost 20 years free and clear made me feel like the last 20 years of my life had been a lie, that I would never be free of them, that my anxiety disorder could never be cured, as I thought it had been, and everything I’d fought for was in vain.

I went to the doctor. I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. I cut my hours back at work much to my husband’s protests and dismay. It didn’t really help. I was still miserable, we were still broke, I still hated my job and my cats were still dead. I started looking for another job. I had several interviews and got no job offers, except for one guy who asked me to apply for the seasonal position his company offered. I didn’t. I’m a grown ass woman with debts. Seasonal does not cut it.

I started attending meditation classes. I’ve mentioned that I’m a practicing witch a few times — I did some spells. A friend and I started meeting for weekly coffee and dance sessions, and one day while out walking in the park with her, I said, I have all these skills and talents. Why can’t I make any damn money? What if I started using everything I know how to do and tried to make a living that way? Any one of them alone might not be enough, but all of them together might. She said, I think you should.

So I started 3 small businesses in addition to my book writing. I talked to my boss at the sales job and became a float — able to pick up more hours if I need them, able to take on less if I need to. I lost my health insurance. I lost my PTO. I didn’t care.

And I still don’t. I’m making less money now and I’m way busier. But it’s working. My husband and I both started being more careful with the money coming in, because it’s not much and it has to go a long way. We’re making less money, but we’re less broke. I go into the sales job a few days a week, generally not for more than 5 hours. I sleep in. I go for walks. My small businesses are still micro, and I am running around for all of them, but they make me happy. I like doing them. And I am earning money.

No more panic attacks. In fact, a few weeks ago, I remembered what it was like to feel happy. Not grateful in a moment, but truly as if things were going well, had been going well, and would continue to go well.

So I finished another book. And then another. Amazing how much you simply cannot write fiction when your heart is a small black lump of misery.

And now it is a new year. I’m starting this one off with 4 small businesses that I enjoy managing, less stress, more books, and hopefully more to come.

Now I just need some more cats.

So this post has only a bit to do with self-publishing novels, and more to do with pricing as an entrepreneur — or, I suppose, that has plenty to do with self-publishing novels, but since I’m running several small businesses now, I have a broader perspective on pricing.

The reason I’m writing this post is because of my other businesses, and the advice I’ve heard and my own gut feeling about how to price what I do.

Several business owners and consultants have advised that people will value something based on how you price it. If it’s more expensive, people assume it’s a worthwhile thing and will pony up the cash happily.

I just can’t buy into this. I’ve heard it before, and it just sits wrong in my gut with everything I know about selling stuff, buying stuff, and how people operate.

At first, I just chalked it up to my own financial situation (not awesome) and that I was displacing my feelings, and that I should take the advice of those older and wiser than me. But then I started running across some research that confirmed my initial hesitation. Allow me to present:

Thing 1 that makes me think that lower prices will attract more business: NPR did a report a number of years ago about the organic and natural industries — and how sales are pretty crap in those areas of retail. I worked in the organic and natural industry for a while, and I can attest to this. It’s a growing corner of the market, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not growing as fast as its conventional counterparts. NPR looked into it and found that while people want and like to see natural and organic products on their stores, what they actually put in their cart and buy is the product that is cheaper. I witnessed this in my own job as a supplement buyer. If I put 3  bottles of calcium on the shelf, 1 natural, 1 organic, and 1 conventional calcium, people coming to the local food co-op would buy the conventional calcium overwhelmingly more often. It was the cheaper of the 3. This was across the board for all the supplements. No one cared about quality or food-based or organic or third party testing, they wanted a bottle of calcium that cost the least. Period.

Thing 2 that makes me think lower prices will attract more business: An excellent article on David Gaughran’s blog spelled it out for me perfectly, what I had been feeling versus what I had been told: “price” and “value” are not the same thing. Price is how much something costs, value is what it’s worth to the person considering purchasing it. If the person considering the purchase values the product more than it costs, they will buy it. If the cost is more than the person values it, they won’t purchase. Pure and simple. There’s a certain amount you can manipulate that and make the object seem more valuable to the person considering it, but for the most part, they’ve already made up their mind about how much they value it, and if the price is above that, sale lost. This plays out in my life. I’m pretty broke, so I value food and bills above a lot of other stuff. I would love to get a Tarot reading on a regular basis, but most of the readers I would like to see cost about $50 or more. That’s a lot of groceries to sacrifice to be told about a future I’ll get to see if I just wait. I don’t value the reading that much. So I pass.

Thing 3 that makes me think lower prices will attract more business: Funnels and freebies at Amazon. In order to price a self-published book for free, you have to enroll that book in KDP Select, a program that requires the book be exclusive to Amazon. That’s the trade. Amazon wants no one else to have your book, and you get to set the price to free for so many days. Why is that awesome? Well, when you do set the book to free, if you do some advertising, a ton of people will pick that book up, read it, and if they like it, go on to buy all of the books by that author. This is a well-documented phenomenon. Most readers discover their favorite author through the library, or a friend who lends them the first book or gifts it to them, or on a discount rack. Neil Gaiman set “American Gods” for free download on his website and discovered that his sales boosted when he did it. For someone who’s never tried your product before, getting a cheap or free taste is the way to lure them back.  A lot of businesses offer “free” stuff that turns about to be worthless and annoying, and when I’ve run across that tactic, I get angry and I don’t go back to that business. Many people I’ve spoken to say the same. If you offer a deal or a freebie, it should be the same quality product you would sell. Why do you think grocery stores hand out samples? Removing any barrier to trying something is the best way to encourage people to try it. This is sometimes referred to as a “funnel.”

My own experience with this is panning out. I haven’t yet managed to do very well with my books, but I’m doing okay for a noob. But today I read Tarot cards at a psychic fair, and I offered 2 options: a short reading for $10, or a longer one for $30. All of the people who came through were new to me. Many of them chose the $10 reading, but a few were so pleased that they sent friends and family in to me throughout the day. The $10 reading was a quickie for me, but I still read each card to its fullest, made sure the clients didn’t have questions by the end, and I didn’t do any stupid “oh, if you want to know the rest you’ll have to pay me the other $20 to find out!” The short reading took less time, so I wound up charging $1 a minute for my time for either reading, which I think is quite fair. I was very pleased with my turnout for the day and will do this again with no qualms whatsoever. Everyone who came to see me took my business card and promised to tell their friends. (And I saw some of those friends later!)

So, price high because people will value it, or price moderately because people will actually be willing to pay for it? I’ve heard the advice, and I think I’ll stick with my gut.

Sorry about that. I’ve been rather busy.

I’ve decided that while writing is still my main passion in life, being self-employed is a big deal. So I started a small business. 4, in fact, if you include indie publishing. I takes a lot out of a person to run a couple of small businesses and also try to maintain a few hours a week at a day job to make sure bills get paid while small businesses incubate.

It’s all going all right, but it does mean that some things have been pushed by the wayside — I haven’t ridden my horse in far too long, and while I am still writing, it’s at a slower pace. I’m often running my ass off all over the place taking care of various errands, and when I do get a minute, I’m either all over the internet trying to accomplish some stuff there or I’m just vegging out because my brain is fried.

I just got over another slump of defeatist depression as well — apparently, this is reeeeeeaaaally normal for entrepreneurs of all stripes. When sales go okay, it’s exciting and you feel like what you’re doing is really working, and when sales are bad, you wind up feeling like you’re a total failure and need to give up at once. This is almost certainly what defeats a lot of people from being successful. I’m trying not to give in to those defeated feelings, but it’s hard. Especially since I ran my first paid ad with “A Dark and Twisting Road,” and I sold 2 books. 2. $20 spent, $4 earned back. That hurt. That hurt a lot. I’ve done some digging into it and I think I know what went wrong, but it doesn’t stop it from hurting.

It doesn’t help that I head out to local craft fairs to peddle my books, and people want to know if they can just go to the library and read my book for free, or they say “I’ll look for it” and walk off. Um, it’s right here. I’m right here. Even when I say, “well, I’m an independent, so you won’t find it elsewhere,” they look confused and leave empty-handed anyway. I don’t know if people know how that hurts. I’m not offended if folks say the genre’s not their thing, or they just don’t read, that’s fine, I get it, my book isn’t for everyone, it never could be. It just hurts when someone says, “Oh, this looks like just my kind of book!” and then they walk off. Really? It takes a lot to keep going sometimes. I won’t give up, but this kind of thing makes it hard to keep trying real hard.

At any rate, this is just a note to check in, say hey, let folks know I’m still here, still shaking, still writing, haven’t forgotten my blog or my 3 fans. I love you 3, by the way.

As a writer, I get handed a lot of books by random people. Some of the books are by authors these people admire, some of them are self-written works, some of them are books by friends. I usually appreciate the thought, and generally give the work at least a skim, if not a full read.

In one case, however, the book in question was a self-published work by a friend of the person who gave it to me, and not a very good one at that. The entire thing was heavy-handed social commentary, meant to be funny but also meant to be in-your-face opinionated. Certain details were obviously thrown in to deliberately confuse or mislead the reader, and I could practically hear the author chuckling at me during certain points. When the person who lent it to me asked what I thought, I said, “it was well-written.” He said, “no, seriously, what did you honestly think?”

So I let him have it.

At the end of my explanation of why I really didn’t like it, I said, “It just really seemed like mental masturbation.”

To which my friend replied, “Isn’t all writing basically a form of mental masturbation?”

I could tell he just thought my opinion on the book was funny, and that I was offended for all the reasons the author had intended a reader to be offended, and that I was maybe an intellectual light-weight for not getting the joke. I just let the matter drop.

But here’s my thought on that: No, writing is not mental masturbation.

Certain kinds of writing certainly are meant to be: journaling; that novel someone wrote and never, ever showed to anyone; angsty teenage poetry; or even just poetry that you write for yourself because you like doing it and don’t plan on showing anyone. Let me state clearly here: There is nothing wrong with this kind of writing. If you do this and you like it, by all means, keep it up. Making yourself happy is a positive activity.

Any kind of writing that is meant to be shared is more like making love. If the author is the only one getting off, then they are a selfish douche and will have a hard time finding a partner willing to go through a repeat performance.

Writing anything that is meant to be shared should be a pleasure to both parties. If it’s not to someone’s taste, then fine, whatever, not everyone likes toys during sex. But the author needs to set out to have a good time and help the reader do the same. Or if they want to prove a point, they need to seduce the reader to their way of thinking, not beat them over the head with long words and unbelievable characters. That’s true of writing meant to make a person cry or meant to take them on a daring adventure or writing meant to sweep them off their feet. You have to make it clear from the get-go what it is you’re both getting into so people who may not enjoy this kind of thing can avoid it, and then you have to deliver the goods to the people who signed on. You can maybe dabble a little bit in something that’s on the edge of what you promised, but you have to keep it within everyone’s comfort zone so no one gets freaked out, and you have to make sure you bring it back so no one feels lied to or cheated.

Writing a novel and then putting it out into the world is making a very intimate promise to the people who might read it. You are asking to be allowed to put ideas into their minds. When a person picks up a book and starts reading, they’re giving you permission to get inside their head. An author needs to be respectful of that.

The author has to have fun, too. Who likes being the one who puts all the work into a relationship and gets nothing back? I’m certainly not saying an author has to make it all fun for the reader and get no joy from their own writing. I’m just saying it’s a give and take, a team effort. The author controls what goes into their work, but the reader controls whether it goes into their mind.

So no, not all writing is a form of mental masturbation. The very best writing is the kind where we both get our rocks off.

I met with my small business consultant today, and she and I discussed that illusive and bizarre creature, my brand. She suggested I come up with a handful of key words that describe aspects of me that I want to emphasize or get across in everything I put out into the world — not things that I’m not, not things I would have to pretend to be, but things about me I think will help sell my work and get people interested in me.

So I jotted down some words.

Bottom line? I’m a dark and creepy clown.

I’m not sure if that’s great niche branding or just fucking strange.

That’s me, though. Once I thought about it, that’s me. I don’t do death jokes and I don’t think horror is funny, that’s not it at all, but I’m listening to a radio show about suicide and how every single survivor who’s jumped from the San Francisco Bridge knew it was a mistake the moment they realized it was too late, and I’m thinking, “Hm. Interesting.” I mean, I know that has all kinds of implications for people who are suicidal, and I know that show probably made some people cry, but I just found it interesting. Fascinating to know the minds of other people.

And then I do my monkey dance and stagger around like I’m a lot more drunk than I really am.

Those are two of the things I find the most relevant and the most worthwhile in life: the serious shit, the dark shit, the death and dying shit; but also not taking anything too seriously, because really, the world is going to be evaporated by the sun one day, and who will care what you did last week when that happens? Might as well have a laugh and enjoy it.

I was pondering my bizarrely polar interests when I suddenly thought, “Hey, Shakespeare wrote two things: comedies and tragedies. I’m not in bad company here.”

And then I instantly felt the shame of hubris. I hope I’m a good writer, and I only plan to work on my skills and get better, but Shakespeare I most certainly am not and do not aspire to be. (Or not to be.)

Still, I am not in bad company at all here. Although Will tended to relegate both story types to their own fenced-in yards and I like to let them play together, I think I fail to see any real problem. I like dark stories, and I like funny things. If we can ponder the deep and morose trials of all of humanity, then let us do so, and with all gravity. But if we can watch an episode of Mr. Bean afterward, even better yet.

And the major comments I’ve gotten back on my vampire story so far? “I had nightmares.” “It was scary, but not too scary, you know?” “That one part made me cry.” “I could hear your sense of humor through the whole story.” “Ian is funny!” “I loved how it made me laugh really hard on one page, then made me really sad on the next.”

Dark and creepy clown.

I can live with that.

I write urban fantasy, which means I write stories that generally take place in real cities that actually exist somewhere. I suppose I could make one up every now and then, but I’m still only on book 2 and haven’t gotten that far. Plus it’s easier to just grab the name of a town that already exists and check out their board of tourism sites and go from there.

One thing I do not do and will never do is read a street map.

I’ve read authors who have done this, and I do not know what in the world the point of all that is. I most certainly do not care that the main character exited their hotel, turned left onto Maple St. South, walked three blocks and turned right onto Mangrove Rd. and went four more blocks to their favorite coffeehouse, passing Missy’s Petting Zoo and Sideview Park on the way. Not one bit.

Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork  on Discworld has its districts and its streets, certainly, like the Shades and Sweetheart Lane and the Mended Drum not far from Unseen University, but the names of these places are dropped in passing, or used to help develop a character, as when we learn that Sam Vimes, Commander of the Watch, can tell what street he’s on by the way the cobblestones feel under his boots. That’s a dedicated watchman. We do not know every left and right turn every character makes, and in fact, Mr. Pratchett boasted more than once that he made notes so as not to mess readers up, but he had no maps.

Likewise no maps in Newford, Charles de Lint’s fictional town somewhere in the Midwest — we’re never even sure if it’s in Canada or the U.S. There’s the Tombs, the crumbling part of town where squatters and druggies and the mentally ill kicked out of the Zeb hang out, there’s the Kickaha reservation to the north of town, and the Rusty Lion, everyone’s favorite hipster pub. Again, no maps. Characters walk out the door and go where they need to go, by bus, by cab, by foot or by magic. Aside from giving us a vague idea sort of where these places are, Mr. de Lint doesn’t dwell on maps or travel.

I do not believe that travel moves the story forward. I do not believe that maps contribute to a reader’s experience of place. I believe very strongly in the places in fiction being characters in and of themselves, and that a well-developed setting does add to a reader’s experience of the story, but that means engaging senses and letting the reader know how the park smells, what the sounds are, who’s there at what time of the day doing what, the personality of the park. Not the name of the park and how it got it and that it’s located on Fifth Street between the Harrolson Building and a Starbucks. The reader is not going to the park, they do not need directions. The character is going to the park, and the reader cares why and what will happen there. Not if it even actually exists. The characters don’t actually exist, and the readers cares about them. That’s good enough.

I wrote “In the Dark” and set it in Seattle because the famous rain seemed to lend a proper moodiness to the story I wanted to tell. I looked up some pictures and some events in Seattle and called it good. I actually visited Seattle after the book was almost finished and was pleasantly surprised to find I’d gotten the personality of the town pretty correct. I had to clean up a few mistakes, like the fact that even though it rains, it doesn’t thunder much, the fact that locals call the Pike and Pine area clubs and hangouts the “Pike-Pine Corridor” (Or so I was told by a native; he may have been messing with me, I put it in anyway.), and that the people in Seattle are even friendlier and chattier than I had thought. Otherwise, I did a pretty solid job.

And the only street names I dropped at all were Pike and Pine, because hey, it’s Seattle.

To me, there are just details the reader doesn’t care about or need to know — what brand of shoes the character favors, what kinds of houseplants they do or don’t have, and what street they walk down to get to the big showdown with the bad guy.

I had a job interview a while ago for office assistant at a chiropractor’s office. I gushed during the interview about how much I enjoyed helping people, how my previous jobs had involved helping others and how my current job didn’t include that aspect and how much it meant to me to be part of that again. I thought the interview was going along well until one of the doctors said, “You seem very enthusiastic about helping others. What are your ultimate plans?”

Instant deflate.

“I want to be a novelist.”

Oh, how does that help anyone? What good is being a novelist to anyone? I have never felt so ashamed about my passion before, and I instantly felt that I had betrayed myself by feeling that way. I know I didn’t do well the rest of the interview — I felt myself shrink down into a ball of misery as I tried to articulate why writing fiction is helpful.

I didn’t get the job.

But I have thought long and hard about my passion for writing fiction and my passion for helping others and how those two things intersect. If anyone asked me today how I plan to help people, I could proudly answer that I intend to help by writing fiction.

When I was a kid, I was bullied, ignored, that most catastrophic of combinations, a smart girl, and both bookish and athletic. My mom raised us on county assistance, so we were poor, but we came from a middle-class background, which made us smarter and cleaner than the other kids I knew on assistance. (Sorry, truth; in my neighborhood anyway — the smart kids were all from middle-class families, the poor kids were dirty and stupid. Except for me and my sisters.) I was desperate for friends, but didn’t like just about any of the kids I went to school with, which made me needy and lonely and clingy but also sort of snobby. Not a good combination.

Books were my refuge. Books taught me that the world was bigger than my neighborhood, that there were bigger things out there, that I had a chance to find those things, that there were people out there like me, that there were places for me. I can’t even begin to tell you how much that helped me. I know now (having since grown up and met others like myself) that this isn’t uncommon among book-lovers.

Also, there is some pretty amazing research out there now that talks about two things:

One, how the invention of the novel created an ability in people to empathize with each other, to get inside someone else’s head and see how they view the world. There is a distinct correlation between the invention of the novel and the increase in literacy and the decrease in torture, murder, rape, criminalization of petty crimes and harsh penalties instituted by governments (like castration, mutilation, being burned alive, or hung, which was a long, slow death by asphixiation, not a quick drop-n-snap like it’s depicted in the movies. If a hanging victim died too quickly, the crowd of onlookers considered themselves cheated.).

Two, reading novels makes people more empathetic, increases their vocabulary and their ability to comprehend complex ideas, and increases overall cognition.

Reading non-fiction doesn’t do either of those things, either in present-day minds nor in historical minds. The invention of the printing press and the increase of literacy doesn’t cause a blip on the charts of violence in society. When fiction novels start being written is when we start to see a steep decrease in sanctioned cruelty.

I don’t think I have ever been more proud of my calling. Not only can a novelist increase a modern-day person’s well-being, historically, we have increased the well-being of everyone in society. If you go to jail, they won’t torture you for a confession to your crime, modern police brutality aside. And if they do, they’ll get in trouble. Thank a novelist. Look up Medieval torture devices — I dare you. You are not in danger of being subjected to one of those devices for the crimes of blasphemy, wearing the wrong sort of fabric on Sunday, saying unpleasant things about the king, or just being a war captive from the losing side of a battle. Thank a novelist. Read a good book lately? You are measurably smarter than you were before you read it. Thank a novelist.

My ultimate goal is to help people. I’m a novelist.