Hooker and Brown

The day of reckoning is upon me. The day of truth.

Today the award winners for the 2009 Banff Mountain Book Festival will be announced. I am beside my self with a mix of emotions. Anticipation, curiosity, hope, dread. I tok two wrong turns on the way to the daycare this morning.

Waiting. I hope to know by noon. Three long hours. Can’t seem to focus and keep clicking the damn inbox every five minutes. I’m going to leave the computer now, go work out and then go for a short skate-ski then work offline. Do something. Try and write.

Oh, Jury, don’t keep me hanging. I know how cruel you can be!

That’s my sales ranking in Amazon. Is that good? No where to go but up, I hope. Hilarious.

Of course, Dan Brown would have to be number #1. Just ’cause I beat him last month on the Canmore Bestseller List, he has to show me up.

Just found out that Hooker & Brown is an official finalist in the 2009 Banff Mountain Book Festival, up for the Literary Award (very stiff competition) and the Rocky Mountain Award. Again, it looks as though I am the only novelist to make the final cut.

This has been the dream to think about, so many times, while refocusing my efforts on writing this book over the years… what if? What if I could write something well enough to be recognized by the prestigious Banff Mountain Book Festival. Now a finalist, and the wait starts for the next week or so.

A part of me is so excited, but another part is dying from the tension and anticipation and curiosity. That part of me wants to know for hope of an award. The first part doesn’t, for fear of none.

Sounds like a line from Chaos Theory, but no, it’s me.

So the feedback is starting to come in more steadily, and it is positive, and some strangers have even said they loved it. Strange how a stranger’s opinion can be so powerful. Yet a friend wrote to say “nice work, man” and the curious thing was I felt so released, and then disappointed.

I realize that my expectations, though I claimed not to have any, have secretly, behind my back, reached for the sky, like a bank teller in a gangster movie. So I get some nice, moderate, feedback, and you know? It made me realize how much I have been hoping to hear about this huge impact that the book has made, but then I feel relived and brought back, gently, down to Earth, and feel - yeah, it’s good, that’s right, no need to go overboard. Good to be deflated a bit before the festivals so I don’t feel crushed with too-high hopes.

But then the mood keeps swinging, and soon I am feeling a bit disappointed. Like I failed. I think about the book: the scenes, the dialog, and suddenly I am grossly critical. Why did I spend so much of my life crafting this little thing, eh? Far more has been spend on far less, sure. I initially wrote because it felt meaningful, it gave me direction and meaning, I did it without expectation. But my foundations of expectation grew, and were flimsy, and so collapse. What is the worth and meaning of this? If it doesn’t rock the world, is it worthwhile? Is anything?

That’s an existential black-hole, man. Don’t go down there.

I was not looking for permanence. Only this: inspiration. Even momentarily. Perhaps that is the only way inspiration can be seen. I set out to write the book I wanted to read. I did.

I need to go and read it. Especially that part near the end where the Lion suggests “the things that have the least reorganizing, have the most meaning.”

A word of warning to emerging writers, hopeful of publishing: be wary of what you put out there, into the world, for surely it is a reflection of you, your shadow…you can’t escape it, and it will always be attached to you, and the post-partum can be so emotional that you will ride it like a roller-coaster.

Watching the very public dog-fight between the authors of Freakanomics (new book: SuperFreakanomics) and some blogging economists like Paul Krugman (rebuttal) over the claims of the former on Global Warming (or cooling, in this case) and the claims of fraud by the latter, makes me relax a bit over my own fears of criticism.

Here I am putting out a book on historical personas and mountaineering and fearing the worst when it comes to other interpretations or claims by the mountain community that I don’t know anything (i.e. Who Am I? I am not a big name who has put up big routes and new lines and been lionized for them…but my ethics are different - OK - [more on this hot topic in a later post]). But I feel like I did write within what I know - I did climb or attempt all the climbs in the book, and there is nothing described that is all that extreme, and I took painstaking years of research to make sure I respected the historical figures…AND… I have heard from my own heroes, the likes of Pat Morrow and Chic Scott, who have said they liked it a lot. But still I have worried about putting a piece like this out there…

Then I see this dust-up on the web; how the successful authors of Freakanomics have claimed (perhaps I am misleading here as I have not read the book, nor do I have the expertise to refute anything they say) that Global Warming is overblown, and they have that in a published book, so they can’t take it back even if they have had second thoughts (dammit, that’s what editors are for!). And they are getting hammered by other influential economists saying that their reasoning amounts to junk science and sensationalism! OMG! (As the the somewhat underage blog-o-sphere says.)

What does one do? If you can’t retract without destroying your book or your reputation, do you dig in your heels and maintain your position no matter what? Or do you relent? Or do you do as they are and try and manage the message. Either way - good publicity, but what a headache!

This is just another indication that launching and promoting the book (any book) is just as hard as writing it (and that is plenty hard). I wish these guys luck, and thank my own blessings that I am not facing that.

Thank god I write Fiction - it’s all a lie anyways.

Deny everything, laugh at the rest!

I can see now why so many authors just get up and read (and some are very good at that - as if the act of reading is a theatrical art form in and of itself).

I presented at the Festival of Eagles yesterday in Canmore, in the very nice theatre of the High School (we never had a theatre like that in my day!), and it was way better than my Book Launch - the gitters that is.
I rehearsed and timed the delivery, practiced looking up while reading, and all was set. Slept great the night before. But the hour and a half waiting before I went on was so hard. Thanks to Greg the light and sound manager, and Sondy the organizer, for letting me get comfortable before hand.

Than the lights came down and the spots came up and I couldn’t see anything but my notes and the laptop. And with the first words it was all okay. Whereas an hour before the stage nerves were so bad that I felt I was stoned (well I was back in a high school, which was pretty much the last time for that weird feeling), now I had the strange sensation of watching myself read and talk. (Maybe some would call that more stoned!)

It all went well, and several folks approached me afterwards to thank me and tell me it was really revealing and inspirational. Cool. I signed books for an hour and then was so hungry and tired I went home and never did get back. Slept for hours. Didn’t count on how much energy the presentation took to get built and then to deliver. Now the readings I will do at the Banff and Kendel Mountain festivals seem easy, and I like the idea of panels because they are spontaneous and so require no prep!