Ballista
Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Welcome to June! June 1st marks the anniversary of the 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, ranked first on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the Greatest Albums of All Time. Considered by many to be the first “concept” album, SPLHCB inspired Bob Dylan to say to Paul McCartney “Oh I get it, you don’t want to be cute anymore.” Paul felt that they were done being boys, entertainers to tens of thousands of screaming (mostly female) fans. In the Barry Miles book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul is quoted as saying “we’d now got turned on to pot and thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers.”
I am intrigued by this idea of personal evolution, and of discovering the work that one is meant to do. This past weekend I touched on such topics in a couple talks presented at the University of the Pacific Writers Conference in Stockton. Organized by popular UOP professor and Davis resident Scott Evans, the conference gave participants an opportunity to discuss craft, writing genres (e.g., paranormal werewolf-centric romance novels), and the business of writing and publishing. One theme of the conference, and of perhaps of every writers conference in 2015, is that much of the money to be made by midlist authors will be made in what is now called independent publishing, thus necessitating the term “indie author.”
Joanna Penn’s definition could be helpful here: “At its most basic, indie means there is no separate publisher involved. Many indies may have setup their own micro-press, so their books still have a publisher name that is not the author’s name but the publisher is not one of the author services companies. The indie author most likely owns their own ISBNs. The indie pays the bills and is paid by the distributors e.g. Amazon/Smashwords directly. The only middleman is the distributor.”
(Did you know that Smashwords has an office right here in Davis? You could hit its roof with a ballista bolt shot from the roof of de Vere’s Irish Pub.)
So obviously it’s a lot of work to do, this becoming a publisher and publicist, as well as an author. We all have to decide how we are going to grow.
How does all this connect to The Beatles? Well, McCartney’s comment about members of the band seeing themselves as artists, and as men rather than boys, reminded me of a comment made this morning by a prominent local journalist who had attended my session titled “Productivity Lessons from High-Performing Authors and Thought Leaders.” The local author said this:
“If there was ONE thing from the creative writing conference workshop I attended over the weekend that is THE gem, THE game-changing thing I MUST do… it’s take responsibility for how I spend my time. (Thank you, Andy Jones!) So… I did that this morning. Got up at 5 a.m., paid attention to what I’m doing and for how long, and limiting my Facebook time. So: if you really need to reach me, please email/PM/call. I am trying (at the age of 55) to be an adult now.
Sayonara for now, and let’s start a new trend: Mindful Monday… how will YOU spend this 24 hours of your life?”
“Taking responsibility for how [she] spend[s her] time,” my friend the journalist has opted to become an adult at 55. Paul McCartney gave it a go at 24 and a half, while I myself am still struggling. But I agree with my friend that each of us should “pa[y] attention to what [we are] doing,” and resolve to spend our time in the ways that best help us reach our artistic, spiritual, and professional goals. What’s on your agenda?
Our Pub Quiz this evening won’t necessarily cover anything raised above. If I had weaved in talk of Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, and a bunch of other notable American women, then that would have been relevant. Expect also questions about odd foods, Academy Awards, culminating contests, characters from Star Wars, best-selling authors, people seemingly named after birds, weak and unopinionated interlocutors, Canada, Ireland, film sequels, Presidents of the United States, static children, ladies born in faraway countries, the liberation that comes with defenestration, three-war veterans, famous Nobel Prize-winners, whether or not Sepp Blatter should go away, missile words, Scottish people, normal functions, “sports,” top sellers, Edith Piaf, the Kennedys, and Shakespeare.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz, filled with strong women, will be dedicated to Lisbeth Petty, one of my favorite players on one of my favorite teams, The Mavens. I have been sending the previous night’s Pub Quizzes to Lisbeth most weeks since learning of her cancer diagnosis, and was saddened to read of her passing last month. On behalf of all Lisbeth’s appreciative competitors, I send words of appreciation and condolence to the Petty family during this difficult time.
Lisbeth (also known as Lisa) was the Shakespeare expert on her team, so I shall conclude this week’s newsletter with some words from Shakespeare’s Sonnet #60:
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
I hope you can join us for the Pub Quiz this evening.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- London Architecture. When its refurbishment is complete, an large private home in London, named Witanhurst, will have about ninety thousand square feet of interior space, making it the second-largest mansion in the city. What is the name of the largest mansion in the city?
- Pop Culture – Music. What Billy Corgan band features a cultivar of the squash plant in its title?
- Great Americans. What general had command of all Union armies in 1864?
- Pop Culture – Television. Produced by Hanks and Spielberg, what American war drama miniseries won the 2001 Emmy and Golden Globe awards for best miniseries?
- A Music Question About Dudes Named Josh. Who charted in 2007 as the number-one best selling artist in the United States, with over 22.3 million records in the nation?
P.S. The great Davis poet Francisco X. Alarcon will be reading at the John Natsoulas Gallery this coming Thursday evening at 7. There will be music, as well. You should join us.