A lot of ground is covered, including the philosophy behind Brain Candy, LLC’s projects, my thoughts on bridging creatives and audiences, and how publishers can benefit from embracing a transmedia approach to content and intellectual property rights.

http://publishingperspectives.com/2011/01/rethinking-rights-in-a-transmedia-world/

The panel was moderated by Emily Williams and also featured Richard Curtis of E-Reads and David Marlett of enkHouse.

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2010/life-at-the-bleeding-edge-of-collaboration/

This part focuses on Brain Candy, LLC‘s first collaborative commercial entertainment property, Runes of Gallidon. Thanks to Emily and the DBW team for highlighting new models of entertainment creation!

You can read part one of the interview here.

It didn’t help that I started last week with a long-overdue trip back to east to visit family I haven’t seen in seven years. And it definitely didn’t help that I changed my novel the morning of day one (I was sketching out a rough plot and creating characters well into the afternoon).

Initially, my plan was to write a sequel to last year’s NaNo novel (a story set in Runes of Gallidon). But, last year’s novel is still very much in rough shape, and I didn’t want to hem myself in by committing to too much in the sequel. I was also itching to write about completely different characters and a different region in Gallidon.

I’m hopeful that I can dig myself out of this massive hole and successfully complete the novel by November 30th, but given my upcoming commitments, the only way I can see that happening is by trading my addiction to the Interwebz for shovels. A lot of shovels.

UPDATE: On November 11th, I was hit by a car while crossing the street. Amazingly, I suffered no serious injuries, though I was sufficiently bruised, battered, and banged up to be fairly unproductive during the month of November (reading and working on the computer quickly caused headaches). With that unexpected turn of events, my hopes for avoiding a sophomore slump at NaNo this year were tossed out the window.

Happily, I got far enough into the novel to get a feel for the characters and the story possibilities. And after recently stumbling on The Virgin’s Promise (a female response to the typically male-oriented Hero’s Journey), it radically altered my thoughts about what kind of story the female protagonist should have. Less action, more introspection.

Hoping to revisit it in 2011 and see where the story takes me…

There are plenty of posts out there about how to make sure you ‘win’ and get yourself across the 50,000 word finish line by November 30th. There aren’t many that tackle the question of whether you should even attempt NaNo in the first place, or, if you do, what you should do afterwards.

So, at the risk of alienating fellow NaNo writers, I’m going to suggest that you genuinely consider what you’re proposing to do. Does NaNo fit nicely with your plans and goals as a writer? Will that very rough first draft put you closer to your goal? Is this the best way for you to write effectively and efficiently?

In other words, is NaNo right for you?

Here are three posts to consider before you attempt NaNo (one of them is by a non-published author, so take his ramblings with a grain of salt…and a shot of tequila):

• Chuck Wendig: NaNoWriMo: The Debbil’s Adbocate (the good, the bad, and what the #$^% where you thinking?)
• Mur Lafferty: NaNoWriMo Reality Check (why you aren’t finished when you finish)
• My own thoughts after my first NaNoWriMo

And, yes, I’m planning on a sophomore swing at NaNo this year. And, yes, the first draft will be utter garbage.

And, yes, I’m totally fine with that.

Very grateful to Martin for giving me the opportunity to discuss Brain Candy, LLC on his show.

The day I saw “10191987″ spelled out in my bowl of Cheerios, however, was the day I knew I was different.

Okay, to be accurate, October 19, 1987 was the day I knew I was different. I saw “10191987″ about a week or so before Black Monday, but it wasn’t until the crash that I realized what it meant.

Other numbers followed. Could be dates, could be just numbers. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Always important. Never actionable.

11091989
5335
08021990
12251990
07252000
2

I’ve seen these numbers in rain drops on windows, in fields, in Christmas tree lights.

Once I figured out what I was seeing, I spent a lot of years trying to predict the importance of the numbers. I built spreadsheets and maps, read about numerology and cryptography, scoured every news source I could find. I never did come close to predicting anything.

After a while, I gave up. Too many possibilities, too many moving pieces.

And there’s the problem: I know ahead of time some key piece to a world-changing event, but I never know what the event will be. I can’t help avoid catastrophes; I can only verify my prediction after the fact. Hardly something to write home about.

I started ignoring the numbers. I avoided news in any format I could. No TV, no web, no print. I was happier living in ignorance and denial. Things got better for a while.

So, why I am writing about all of this now? Because recently I started seeing the same number, over and over: 10102010.

This is the first number that keeps repeating itself. I believe it’s important, perhaps the most important number I’ve ever seen. And I have no idea what’s going to happen on that date.

But maybe you do…

I just cleaned out my RSS reader, twitter, and Friendfeed updates, and I was struck – once again – at the number of examples of how analog product is shifting towards a status of antiques. I define an analog offering as a physical object containing digitized or digitizable content (a book, a CD, a DVD, etc.).

Notably, Mike Masnick at techdirt.com posted about applying his recent experiement in applying his “CwF + RtB = $$$” formula to a series of offerings from Techdirt.

I seriously considered dropping $150 for the Techdirt Book Club just to get a signed copy of James Boyle’s The Public Domain.

Here’s the madness about that statement: I ALREADY OWN A COPY! It’s unsigned, but aside from the signature, it’s an exact copy of what I already have.

I’m a firm believer that as digital content shifts to a role of pure advertising for analog offerings, the appeal of analog offerings will look more like that of an antique collector’s assessment of their treasure trove. Sure, there are lots of things that work better (though one might bicker about the definition of “better”) than an 1940′s telephone, but there’s a uniqueness of the antique phone that can’t be replicated. An authenticity, if you will.And some people value owning a 1940′s telephone, even if it’s not functional.

I could read lots of content for free online, but I honestly don’t see ereaders as representing the death knell for paper books. The sale of paper books will likely decline over time, but they’re not going away permanently (personally, I suspect a new form/view of packaging the content of traditional books will evolve along the lines that consumers can print up their own books/magazines/anthologies using lots of digital content from various sources in the ultimate mass customization offering – some of this technology is already emerging, actually).

Heck, given the Kindle’s limitations (most recently a predilection to behave like a petulant adolescent who’s regretted a toy trade and decided to invoke a unilateral “do-over”), the only thing that’s clear at the moment is that ereaders are not growing as fast as anyone hoped/predicted/feared.

But let’s say ereaders are all the rage. Would I ask Cory Doctorow to sign my Kindle? Okay, bad example, but would I value a signed copy of one of his books more than a signed copy of the Kindle? Absolutely. And how many author’s signatures could I collect on my Kindle before it becomes unusable in its original form, thus becoming (gasp!) an antique itself.

When the content in an analog offering can be consumed digitally through another medium, channel, or experience, what’s left is the physical, analog properties of the analog offering that can’t be digitized.

LP’s are still selling, plenty of authors are selling paper books even when they offer their books online for free, heck, Cheap Trick just announced they’re releasing a new album on the 8-Track platform. Wonder how that pitch went…

“Hey guys, I know we’re old as dirt as far as the music industry is concerned, but let’s release a new album on a technology decades old that almost no one even has anymore and charge 50% more than a typical CD and make it a bundled set of content that gives the purchaser no choice in deciding what songs they want and which ones they don’t want. Who’s in?” [note: they're also releasing it traditionally as a CD]

It’s too early to tell how much this might make them as far as revenue is concerned, but it’s certainly hitting all the marks of Masnick’s formula.

When content becomes free advertising, analog products look more like antique offerings. And that’s not bad, it’s just different.

It’s a fantasy novel featuring Kenji, a young man recently cast out of a monastic school and finding his way in a world recently turned upside. It was going to be set in a semi-historical Japan shortly after the Onin War, but I ended up placing it in Runes of Gallidon, a user-generated collaborative online fantasy world I co-founded/created last year.

Months after starting the novel, I am still struggling with some fundamentals about how, exactly, to tell this story.

One of my early struggles was point of view. I initially settled on a close third person, single POV, and I wrote a few chapters in this format, focusing on the protagonist, Kenji.

Soon, however, I realized the limitations of this approach. Information shared with the reader must be limited to what the protagonist knows or experiences. Fine for certain types of works and stories but not a style that worked well for me as the story developed and deepened.

New characters sprang up, and I found myself wanting to write from their POV. Coming at a topic from multiple POV’s was very appealing, not least because it allowed characters to comment (perhaps silently) on each other.

Eventually, I switched from a single POV to a multiple POV. Suddenly, I went from trying to figure out what happened next to trying to figure out how to scope back the story so it could be told in under 100,000 words.

It’s amazing how much more easily the plotlines and other characters developed simply by changing the POV. It’s a bit more work, but the work is easier. And easier, in this case, means more fun.

From the little bit of information available on the site; it appears that the licensing provides joint rights to Johnson and the artists if the art is posted on the site, but if Johnson wants to use the material anywhere else, he has to obtain permission from the artist. I presume the artist can use their art however they want, but that may not be true.

This is a similar approach, though on a smaller and more limited scale, to what we’re doing at Runes of Gallidon. Our licensing terms are different, and we have a multimedia approach (fiction, art, RPG modules, digital games, etc.). But the idea of collaborating together to build out a world is the same.

Nice to find another example of quality collaborative world-building. Best of luck to Johnson and the artists involved!