Avengers Sneakers for Megan

Anyone who knows me knows about my weird hobby of painting shoes. I’ve been doing it since high school. The idea is just so obvious:

  • Some artists paint on canvas.
  • Some shoes are made of canvas.
  • Why not paint on shoes?

After I recently painted a new pair of Converse All-Stars for myself, I told my kids it was time for them to have their own painted shoes. Since she was having a birthday, Megan got dibs. She’s turned into a major Marvel fan lately (the movies and TV shows—not the comic books) and has been looking forward to the movie Captain America: Civil War. Because of this, she wanted me to do dueling Captain America/Iron Man shoes. We’re pretty happy with the results:

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With slip-on sneakers, the largest area of canvas on the shoe is the toe. Since Civil War is all about the conflict between two of the most important Avengers, it made sense to give them the primo spots. Captain America went on the right, and Iron Man went on the left.

Here are some close-ups on the main character designs: Click the images to view close-ups.

Captain America close-up

Close-up of Captain America. His costume has changed so many times, it was just a matter of picking one. Faces are hard.

Iron Man close-up

Just like Cap’s suit, Iron Man’s armor changes from movie to movie. I’m not sure which version this is, but I really like the pose.

Please read absolutely nothing into the choices for right and left. It was purely coincidental, though completely appropriate. In the movie, Steve Rodgers (Captain America) resists pressure to give up his personal liberty to the United Nations, while Tony Stark (Iron Man) advocates for greater government control.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

—Benjamin Franklin

A few more images from Megan’s Avengers Shoes:

Avengers shoes, side detail

Avengers and Marvel logos

Avengers shoes, side detail

Proto-Iron Man and the Stark Industries logo, vs. a retro Cap design with WWII-era flag and marching GIs.

Avenger shoes side detail

More side detail.

Avenger shoes side detail

More side detail.

Avenger shoes back detail

Shield logo and stylized Captain America character.

The movie is all kinds of awesome. Go see it!

Brave, Stupid Roxy

 

Roxy-Trail

We have the bravest and stupidest dog on the planet.

Roxy likes to run. She especially likes to run out on the hiking/off-roading trails north of our house. She likes it when I let her off the leash and she can run this way and that, sniffing anything she likes, peeing on anything she thinks needs peeing on, chasing rabbits and squirrels and even deer.

Last night we took one of our favorite routes. It loops up through a new subdivision, then down across the creek. From there it winds up and around through the hills, providing a challenging seven-mile run and giving Roxy lots of things to sniff and pee on and chase.

She did just great—disappearing for a few minutes at a time and then showing up next to me again, trotting along and wagging her tail. We began the long two-mile descent that takes us past some cow paddocks (Roxy loves barking at cows), over a hill and through a gate and then across a flat section that takes us back home.

We passed the cow corral, but the cows were gone. As we made our way across the hill toward the gate, we started seeing cows up on the hill. Roxy gave them the eye, but for some reason didn’t run off barking.

Then we crested the hill and down below, between us and the (suddenly padlocked) gate, were two huge black bulls. Note that we hadn’t gone through any gates to get to this point. We just ran along the trails.

I gave the bulls a wide berth, heading straight for the gate. Roxy refused to listen when I called whistled for her again and again. Stupidly, and characteristically, she ran at the bulls and started circling around and around them, barking her stupid little head off.

I jumped the gate and began calling her. I screamed myself hoarse, actually, and whistled again and again. She usually responds when I do this. Last night … yeah, no.

Around and around the bulls. Yap yap yap yap. The monstrous animals began getting agitated, butting each other in the head and pawing at the ground. As they churned up the dust, I got seriously worried about the little mutt. She danced all around and between them, yapping the whole time. I was standing on the other side of the gate, screaming at her. The group of deer watching from the hills to the east may have heard a few bad words. Sorry, deer.

Somehow—and I still can’t believe this happened—Roxy managed to separate the bulls. She chased one of them down the hill toward me, and “herded” the other bull up and over the hill. Just like that, the bull trotted off with Roxy behind her. Couldn’t really blame him, with Roxy on his heels. The other bull stayed put, just on the other side of the gate, ready to stomp me if I ventured behind the fence.

There may have been a few more bad words as I waited for her to reappear. I can neither confirm nor deny. Only the deer know, and they’re not telling.

I kept calling and whistling. The one bull kept looking at me with its evil eyes.

After ten or twelve minutes, here comes Roxy, tearing down the hill. She raced past the prairie dog burrows and past the still-grunting bull, ducked under the fence and fell in beside me. We ran the final two miles home. I let her know—in pretty certain terms—that she was not a good dog.

She did not get a treat last night. Not from me.

Stupid dog.

Dave_Dog

The Postmaster – Not My Biggest Fan

I’ve been sending out queries for my young adult novel, Spelunkers. I’m taking it slow, submitting a couple of queries a week. A few weeks ago I did something really extreme. I sent out some letters … via the United States Postal Service.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with query letters, they’re an art for in themselves. You have about a page to hook your reader (in this case, a literary agent), summarize your story, and give a little information about who you are and why you wrote the book. With email queries, the agent you’re querying simply responds in kind. With queries sent through the mail, it’s necessary to include a self-addressed, stamped envelope so the agent can send your response.

Today I got one of my old-school responses. It came in what was left of my SASE, sealed inside a plastic bag:

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The mailman killed my query. Here’s what was left of the rejection letter from the agent:

20160425_171334_Ed

At least I’m guessing, from what was left of the response, that it was a rejection letter. I’m used to that, after several weeks of queries. What I’m not used to is the postal people voicing their own opinion of the quality of my query. The letter from the agent is obviously a form letter. Coincidentally, I also got a form letter from the post office:

20160425_185816

When you’re querying, it seems that everyone—the Postal Service included—is a critic.

Poor Man’s Copyright – My Copyright Box

There’s this box sitting in my basement. I’ve been carrying it around for 22 years.

copyright-box-1

It’s a white media box, sealed with paper tape which some helpful post office worker stamped like crazy with his date seal. I was living with my aunt and uncle when I originally sent it, and both the TO and FROM addresses point to the same address in Tempe, Arizona. The meter is postmarked April 20, 1994—just when Ace of Base’s “The Sign” was getting a lot of initial airplay and The Hudsucker Proxy was still in theaters:

copyright-box-2

Every once in a while, I look at the box and think, “Why haven’t I opened this thing after all these years?”

Good question.

Poor Man’s Copyright

Someone told me once, a long time ago, that the best way to protect creative materials is to seal them up and send them to yourself, then keep them unopened.

The idea, I guess, is that if Sneaky McStealer happened to find one of my masterpieces, ripped them off and turned them into a major motion picture blockbuster or a New York Times bestseller, I could take McStealer to court for infringement of intellectual property.

How It’s Supposed to Work

I can just see it now. My lawyer gets McStealer on the stand and asks him where he came up with the idea for “his” movie. He lies through is teeth and says it was his original idea. Then plaintiff’s attorney brings in this battered box and sets it on the railing in front of the defendant. I can see it now…

Attorney: Mr. McStealer, what is the postmark on the box in front of you?

McStealer: Looks like April 20, 1994. It was a Wednesday, I recall…

Attorney: Please, just answer the questions, sir. And does this box show any evidence of having been opened?

McStealer: (glaring suspiciously across the courtroom) Uh, no, I guess it doesn’t.

Attorney: (producing an X-acto knife.) Would you please open that box, Mr. McStealer?

Sneaky McStealer slits open the paper tape and opens the box. With his back to the defendent, plaintiff’s counsel asks the next question.

Attorney: And can you tell the court, Mr. McStealer, what’s inside that box?

McStealer: It’s a copy of that screenplay I st— I mean, I wrote.

Attorney: Can you please tell us, sir, how it is that the screenplay you supposedly wrote in 2016 happens to be inside a box sent to David S. Baker in 1994?

Music hit: Dum dum DUUUUMMMM!

The slimy rip-off artist opens the box and—voila!—sitting inside is the novel that made him millions. Sneaky swallows. He looks at the judge. He looks at me, then slowly raises his hands.

McStealer: Okay, okay! I admit it! I snuck into his house and stole that old novel and claimed the story as my own. I’m sorry, Mr. Baker, I really am. I’ll dedicate my life to making sure you get the credit for your brilliance!

It Doesn’t Really Work

I guess that’s what I was thinking, anyway. The problem is, it doesn’t really work. According to copyright.gov:

I’ve heard about a “poor man’s copyright.” What is it?

The practice of sending a copy of your own work to yourself is sometimes called a “poor man’s copyright.” There is no provision in the copyright law regarding any such type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration.

Of course, that’s from the government. What the heck do they know? But even Snopes.com, Internet debunkers extraordinaire, have weighed in on the topic:

Mailing one’s works to oneself and keeping the unopened, postmarked envelope as proof of right of ownership to them (a practice known as the “poor man’s copyright”) has no substantive legal effect in the U.S. We’ve yet to locate a case of its use where an author’s copyright was established and successfully defended in a court of law by this method. At best, such mailings might serve to establish how long the author has been asserting ownership of the work, but since the postmarked-and-sealed envelope “proof” could be so easily circumvented, it is doubtful courts of law would regard such evidence as reliable.

Oh.

Rats.

Copyright Basics

The thing is, anything you or I write today is automatically copyright. It might not be registered, but it’s automatically protected from the moment of its creation until 70 years after you or I die.

We don’t even have to write “Copyright 2016” and try to remember the weird Windows Alt-code for the copyright symbol (or the HTML character entity, if we’re working on the web). But for the record, in Windows you hold down the Alt key and type “0169.” If you have a Mac, it’s Alt-G. In HTML, it’s “©” or “©.”

What’s in the Box?

Here’s the funny part. I have no idea what’s actually in that box. I honestly can’t remember. I have to guess it contains the screenplay I wrote that year (the one that’s already been made into a movie). My one-act play Inside Al might be in there even though it’s already registered with the copyright office, plus several other plays I wrote as a high schooler and colleger. The two novels I wrote in my teens, one of which won an honorable mention for the Avon Flare Young Novelist contest, may be in the box as well.

What else? Essays from my early years? Poetry, heaven forbid? What else is in that darned box?

Still Unopened

I don’t have any idea … and I won’t likely know for a long time, because I can’t bring myself to open it. Don’t ask me why.

So here’s my commitment. I’ll open the box on the day I get my first novel published—the day I go into a bookstore and find a book I’ve written sitting on the shelf. When that finally happens (and I think I’m getting closer) I’ll get a camera rolling and do an “open box video” of my little time capsule of sad literary output.

Stay tuned…

Genre Angst — Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

I’ve begun the process of querying a young adult novel I’ve been working on. While writing and rewriting and re-rewriting my query letter, I discovered something entirely unexpected. I might have a different genre of novel on my hands than I originally thought.

sugar-cubeSo, a quick spoiler alert. The idea for my book, Spelunkers, came to me after reading the much-cited fact that the the entire human race could fit into a space the size of a sugar cube if you could remove all the empty space in between our atoms. That’s because matter is almost entirely empty space. I imagined the possibilities if a person had the ability to ignore the nuclear forces that hold particles together in order to mesh their own matter with other matter. Thus: a Spelunker is a person who can walk through stone.

Since the idea of Spelunking is based on scientific fact, I have always assumed that Spelunkers (the book) was science fiction. But is it?

According to “Sci-Fi & Fantasy Expert” Mark Wilson at About.com, “Humanity can look forward to the kinds of achievements postulated in science fiction, while with another part of our brain we can dream of the impossibilities conjured by fantasy. Science fiction expands our world; fantasy transcends it.” This sounds to me like we’re talking about possibilities vs. impossibilities. If I’m reading this correctly, he’s saying that science fiction is about things that are possible (or plausible), given our understanding of the laws of the universe. In contrast, fantasy is about things that impossible (or implausible).

If we take this perspective, we find that lots of stories we always assumed to be science fiction (like Star Wars and Dune) are actually fantasy. I think we have to assume and accept that the categories have a lot of overlap. Many authors blur the lines. Orson Scott Card famously said in an interview, “… Look, fantasy has trees, and science fiction has rivets. That’s it, that’s all the difference there is, the difference of feel, perception.” Ender’s Game (and all of its tag-along books) clearly fits the definition of science fiction. But some of Card’s other books, like his Alvin Maker and Pathfinder series, are definitely fantasy. Similarly, Robert A. Heinlein is known as a sci-fi writer. He wrote Starship Troopers as well as probably the best sci-fi book of all time, Stranger in a Strange Land. But his books Glory Road, Magic, Inc., and Job are clearly fantasy.

Another way people tend to define the genres is based on magic vs. technology. This is problematic, though. Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote the science-fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, stated that “magic’s just science that we don’t understand yet.” Clarke explored the idea of possible versus impossible and came up with three laws:

Clarke’s first law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Clarke’s second law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Clarke’s third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

So when Albus Dumbledore casts a spell in a Harry Potter novel, do we just assume he’s using some kind of advanced technology? Probably not. When the spaceships in Star Trek break every rule of science and travel faster than light are they using magic? Who knows?

The problem with genres is that they are malleable. They’re blurry. They have only two real uses:

  1. To tell librarians and bookstore employees where to shelve the books.
  2. To help people who enjoy certain books find other books they’ll like.

The former mostly applies only to bricks-and-mortar stores and libraries. In a virtual library or bookstore (like Amazon.com), a book can be “shelved” under several different categories. The latter is problematic, because it doesn’t account for other factors. For example, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books (fantasy) are more like Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker books (sci-fi) than they are like anything written by either of the “R.R.” authors (Tolkien or Martin).

And sci-fi and fantasy aren’t the only options. There’s “paranormal,” which Wikipedia describes as a subgenre of romance that mixes in “elements beyond the range of scientific explanation.” Luckily, I’m not writing romance, so that’s not an option. Another classification is “speculative fiction,” which includes fantasy and science-fiction and horror and some other stuff. (Annie Neugebauer explains more here.)

The upshot is that I wrote a book that blends elements of both science fiction and fantasy in a book for young adults. How to actually say that in a query is the problematic part.

It only goes to show that just as soon as you think you have something figured out, you realize you don’t.