Lucky

Being Seen While Adrift at Sea, Metaphorically Speaking

I went to Panchero’s on Friday night.

I like Panchero’s. They do good work.

However, there is only ONE Panchero’s in the entire Madison area. It’s in Fitchburg, and it’s nowhere near my house. It’s 24 miles from my place, which means at least a 35-minute drive if the Beltline traffic in Madison is good. It could easily take 45 minutes (or more!) if the tailgaters in Madison prevent people from zipper merging off of John Nolan Drive or South Towne Drive, which can quickly back up traffic and send the Friday commuters into a frenzied parking lot.

Because of this, Panchero’s is not someplace I go frequently. I’ve been there maybe twice in the last five years.

It’s worth noting that I did not plan to go to Panchero’s on Friday night.

I went to Mystery to Me to pick up a copy of Henry Wise’s highly acclaimed debut novel, Holy City, that Jayne had ordered in for me, and I was keen to get to reading it as I have just finished reading Rob Hart’s wonderful book, Assassin’s Anonymous.

Panchero’s is only about five or six miles from Mystery to Me (depending on which roads you take), but it is still out of the way from Sun Prairie. Sun Prairie is northeast of Mystery to Me, while Panchero’s is southwest.

However, the 5:00 PM traffic conspired to force me into having to bypass a turn I would normally take while leaving (stupid car decided to stick hard on my left side, so rather than inconvenience those behind me, I chose to elongate my route home—take note Madisonians: you’re not the only people on the damn road…).

So, I ended up deviating from my route through some unfamiliar residential neighborhoods, making a couple of turns, and ended up being spat out on McKee Road. Once I realized I was on McKee, I realized I was near Panchero’s, it was time for supper, and I figured I could manage to house a chicken burrito.

Now, let’s look at the variables in play:

1. I had worked all day. I didn’t HAVE to go to Mystery to Me Friday night. I could have gone Saturday morning. Or Sunday. Or whenever. The book was on hold. I would have gotten it eventually.

2. I chose to make a left onto Monroe Street when leaving. This, in turn, put me on a different route home than I normally would have taken from M2M. (Normally, I would have gone back to Fish Hatchery Road and gotten on the Beltline.)

3. A car blocked the left turn I wanted to take, which forced me to go right, and I chose to make up for that by making a left later and winding through some neighborhoods, which ended up putting me near Panchero’s.

—which again—is nowhere near my house.

Anyhow, it took many dominoes falling in succession to get me into Panchero’s for a burrito.

While I was eating the aforementioned burrito, my ears picked up a funky, repetitive bassline and some very nice vocals playing on the overhead music.

As a music snob, I was attracted to the sound. It was catchy. I’d never heard the song before. I used Google’s song search feature on my phone to listen to the track and learn the name of the song: Dead Still Dance by a jam band with the laborious moniker of Animal Liberation Orchestra (commonly referred to as ALO by fans).

Now, as a big music guy, I listen to A LOT of bands. It’s no secret that I’m a progressive rock guy, so when I say I’m a music snob, take that to heart. I’m very particular about bands. Most of the time, when I talk about music with people, they haven’t heard of any of the odd British prog bands I normally listen to¹. I love Marillion, Rush, Pink Floyd, Devin Townsend, and Type O Negative, but I’m always looking for new groups and trying to expand my knowledge of what’s being played in the world.

ALO was a group I’d never heard of, so I automatically assumed they were new. Must be a debut album, right? First single to get radio play. Good for them.

I looked up ALO…they’ve been playing together and putting out music since 1998.

TWENTY. SEVEN. YEARS.

This band has been working, playing live, putting out records (eleven of them!), and doing what they do for more than a quarter-century. The trio comprising the majority of the band has been playing together since 1989. That’s now 37 years of work.

…and I have now JUST learned about them.

I am a music guy. I read music blogs. I have friends in the industry. I pay attention.

And yet, this band managed to crawl beneath my radar for more than a quarter of a century before a moment of pure random chance at a Panchero’s put them into my consciousness.

There were other people in that Panchero’s. It didn’t look like any of them were moved enough by the song to look up the band.

So, in summation: a whole bunch of variables had to be in play in order for me to hear this one song by this one band, and be moved enough to learn the song name, the band name, and put this band on my radar.

It was all luck.

All of it.

Every single choice I made Friday night put me on a collision course with this song.

It could have easily changed at any point. I could have gone to the Flying Hound or Moo-Yah Burgers for dinner (right next to Panchero’s), or pushed a little further down McKee to Taco Bell or Monkeyshine’s. Hell, I could have chosen to just go home and not eat. Traffic could have been heavier and slowed me down, which meant I would have gotten to Panchero’s after the song had ended. I could have ordered Henry’s book from the bookstore in Waterloo or Watertown and gone west, and not east that night.

Anything could have changed this random crossing of man and music, but it didn’t, and I finally learned about Animal Liberation Orchestra.

Is it any wonder it’s so difficult to sell books?

To sell a single copy of any book, you need the right person to see it at the right time.

When I speak to groups about the publishing industry, I tell them that it’s like being on a football field with three targets moving randomly at speed, and you have to hit all three targets with one arrow.

If they line up properly, if you time it right, if your aim is true, you win.

Otherwise, it’s back to the salt mines.

A group shot of ALO.

Reporting Deep From the Salt Mines

BRING THE HEAT, the fifth book in the Abe & Duff Mystery Series, was released last week to approximately zero fanfare. I wasn’t expecting any, and the universe certainly lived up to my expectations. I only ended up with eight or nine pre-orders of the eBook and five pre-orders of the paperback.

C’est la vie.

It is ridiculously hard to get the word about any creative endeavor out there, and it’s even harder to find your audience, as the 27-year journey to randomly put ALO on my radar will attest.

It’s made even more difficult that indie books aren’t always welcome on bookstore shelves, and when it comes down to it, people are more likely to buy an established author or a book from a major publisher than a no-name joker trying to hack his way out of the depths of the sea of voices.

People will usually save books like mine for Kindle Unlimited, where a $15/month fee will get them unlimited access to all kinds of books and writers. If they don’t like what they’re reading—no harm, no foul. Just move to the next one.

As a largely unknown writer, I’d wager that about 99.9% of my writing income comes from Kindle Unlimited. I’m no fan of the stranglehold that Amazon and Crazy Uncle Jeff have on society, but as a nobody, KU has been a godsend. I’ve managed to cultivate a small, worldwide fanbase made up of scoundrels and wastrels from six of the seven continents (still waiting on you, Antarctica!), and while my writing income is below what a part-time job minimum wage job would give me yearly, at least I’m feeding that creative beast within by churning out the word counts.

As an independent author will tell you, everything we do is a marathon, not a sprint.

And I’ve had some luck on this journey. Having a producer from Barry Josephson Entertainment randomly stumble across The Single Twin shortly after it’s publication was a stroke of crazy lucky. Getting two shopping deals to try to take Abe & Duff to television is 100% because of luck.

Maybe 27 years from now, a random schlub from Panchero’s will walk into a random used bookstore, find a copy of The Single Twin, and be intrigued enough to pay for a used copy, take it home, and become a fan.

Dominoes need to fall in the right order.

All the variables need to line up.

It takes a lot of luck.

So much luck.

Anyone who tells you anything else is trying to sell you something.

The Writer’s Dossier

Please check out my short interview on Jeff Circle’s Writer’s Dossier.

Jeff is a great guy. Met him briefly last year at Bouchercon, and learning about the Dossier was probably the best thing I got from that event. Since last August, I have been listening to Jeff’s podcast (also called The Writer’s Dossier) and reading all the writer, agent, and editor dossiers he publishes on his website. I look forward to the new drops whenever they come out.

Jeff was kind enough to do one for me to help promote Bring the Heat, and you can check it out by clicking the image below.

Then, check out some of Jeff’s other interviews. You can learn a lot about writing and publishing.

1. Bands like Jadis, IQ, Gray Lady Down, and Porcupine Tree continue to escape the ears of most Americans…
Hell, they’re not even all that popular in England.