Missouri or Bust, A Literary Pilgrimage
The open road to Kansas City and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference beckons.
I’ve been neglectful with these missives, dear reader. It’s been a classically cold and wet January, but in the way I love. The dive bars keep their Christmas lights burning to the blues-Noir-meets-Bladerunner vibes one feels when walking through the Seattle rain to a round of Negronis with an old friend. I’m not just being a ham, I recently had such an evening.
I think this season is why Cascadia is over represented in great American literature. Ken Kesey. Barry Lopez. Frank Herbert. Ursula Le Guin. Chuck Palahniuk. Tom Robbins. There are more, but this class of mind bending Pacific Northwest authors no doubt benefited from the great advantage of our region’s brand of winter. The dark is deep but the land stays green. Air is chill but richens the coffee and beer. Frivolous calendar filling and daily dallying melts away. You sit with yourself, a terrifying prospect for some.
The mind, if in a vulnerable state, verges toward misery or even insanity. But if one is in a strong mental and spiritual position, the appreciation of life deepens. The brain’s reflective capacities alight. For a writer, the Cascadian winter is when the magic happens. Books are written. I’ve been a magazine article writing machine the last few weeks. More on those as they come out.
I scribbled this in my journal after a beer in one of my favorite haunts: “I’m not sure how to describe it, but I’m really enjoying being alive. It’s a little manic, but true stuff. I have a feeling I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing and I’m exactly where I should be. This sensation is one people kill for, one without price tag. One that a tragic number of souls never feel. Yet here I am, inexplicably, in paradise.”
I just have to put this down somewhere—this year is going to be a major one for me. There are plenty of big time irons in the fire, developments and potential accomplishments that have been years in the works. A slew of magazine articles, some in new publications, penned by me are forthcoming. Book manuscripts are in play. Physical adventures too, one that may humble even my R2AK and Norwegian reality TV show experiences.
Like I said, I’m compelled to share these thoughts even if my rolls of the dice turn out snake eyes. Stay on this ride with me!
AWP Conference, Missouri or Bust
I’ll be embarking on a road trip this week to Kansas City for the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference. The event, which is arguably the largest literary industry conference of its kind, was previously in Seattle. As I wrote last year, I rallied a table for MilSpeak Books, the publisher of my book Salmon in the Seine: Alaskan Memories of Life, Death, & Everything In-Between, with fellow local MilSpeak author and Washingtonian Lauren Kay Johnson. An AWP newbie, I was mostly concerned with keeping a decent table display manned, selling a few dozen books, and soaking up the vibe.
This year MilSpeak is much more engaged with new titles and about a dozen fellow authors/MilSpeaker orbit folks attending. In fact, we’re all renting a small mansion in Kansas City. The atmosphere may be a bit college dorm meets Algonquin Round Table? Fingers crossed. The next Norris Note will land as the conference begins next week. If you’re at the conference, visit the MilSpeak table, #T1623.
And yes you read that right, I’m doing this as a road trip. I’ve loaded a great many boxes of MilSpeak books and table display thingies and am driving there. The plan is to check out Yellowstone for a few days on the way out, then Omaha where my oldest friend lives. We met in second grade and I did a rave with him about two years ago. Let’s just say I was tripping on friendship.
I’ve never been to Yellowstone, Omaha, nor Kansas City. There’s a strange dynamic as an American where you hold roots in regions of the country but rarely have reason or opprotunity to see the whole damn thing. I was once on a Mongolian train to China where a German guy was describing to me what West Virginia is like based on his visit. I've sat on this idea for years, but perhaps we need an AmeriCorps/Peace Corps style, 1-2-year program that sends young Americans through all 50 states doing helpful deeds? Such people may help bind this place like sutures. Just a thought.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to all this. The aforementioned Cascadian winter has served the writer and cozy hobbit side of me well the last month or two. But I’m a bit cooped up, and the images of frosted bison breath and a Welcome to Omaha sign excite me in a way that makes no logical sense but is undeniably true.
Norris Reads: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
I’ve been on a bit of a fantasy kick lately. When exploring the contemporary fantasy literary landscape, it rapidly becomes clear that Brandon Sanderson is a top dog. I consumed some of his work during my early teenage years inhaling the epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time that now has show. While the series is Robert Jordon’s, Sanderson made a name for himself writing the last three books of the series with Jordon’s notes/guidance. Sanderson has since launched his own giant fantasy series’s, notably The Stormlight Archive of which The Way of Kings is the first of ten books.
Off the page, Sanderson is inspiring to new, early career authors like myself. He is one of the few working authors one can point to who has really thrived in the “digital age”, which includes constructing his own publishing, merchandising, and media infrastructure in Dragonsteel Books. I’ve only dabbled, but I think he does social media the right way. His videos come off as authentic and informative, and he regularly appears on small or mid-sized content creator’s shows to talk inside baseball. He is a champion of physical media, isn’t afraid to offer his critiques of the publishing industry, and is prolific as hell. In my opinion, and probably his, he serves as a role model for how it’s done as an author in 2020s America.
But enough about the man, this isn’t a hagiography! What of The Way of Kings? I’m about a quarter way into the 1,001-page epic and it’s hit me that I haven’t immersed myself in real deal epic fantasy in quite a while. These suckers are like driving a giant cargo ship, the engines take a while to bring all the raw goods aboard up to full cruising speed in open waters. This isn’t a bad thing, but you really do need to give these kinds of stories a good 100 or 200 pages to shake out properly.
The Way of Kings was published in 2010 and it’s interesting to see how the writing of today is far less patient. There’s so much pressure from publishing industry types to keep it tight. If there’s not blood or orgasms in the first 10 pages, the presumed goldfish-caliber attention span of the reader will cause them to throw the book in the trash. But enter Sanderson, patiently and sometimes verbosely laying the world building and character groundwork for a final battle across the space-time continuum. It’s a luxurious read, harkening to the pre-Hemingway days when a primary purpose of a book was to eat up the hours.
The Way of Kings world is also refreshingly unique. Characters are just as likely to be riding giant crustaceans as horses. Mysterious, regular storms of unfathomable power rip across the landscape, dictating the locations of cities and behavior of armies. The world is saturated with different “spren”, basically immaterial sprites that are associated with rage, rot, wind, glory, and all manner of natural processes and emotions who appear like clouds of flies. It’s cool! It’s intriguing! Sometimes more cerebral writers and readers dismiss the power of cool/intriguing, but they shouldn’t.
Bottom line, I’m enjoying myself and understand the Sanderson phenom—even if this tome takes me a while to digest.
Consider buying my book, Salmon in the Seine: Alaskan Memories of Life, Death, & Everything In-Between! Available where books are sold, including Amazon, Powell’s City of Books, and Third Place Books.
I absolutely love this. When I drove out to Minnesota for grad school, I spent a couple days at Yellowstone with all of my worldly possessions -- lamp, computer, a tiny desk chair which I still have -- in my car. I may have looked insane, but Yellowstone is gorgeous. I thought I would get eaten by a bear, but I didn't. I hope you don't either. See you soon!