Daniel Allen Cox (photo by Dallas Curow)

Daniel is someone whose career I’ve been fortunate enough to follow from its early beginnings: hawking his novella, Tattoo This Madness In, at Montreal’s Expozine; baking me delicious carrot-cake cupcakes (with cream cheese icing!) as a thank-you for reviewing his book in The Link back when I was their Literary Arts editor; shucking his pants at readings for Shuck, etc. He’s also someone whom I’d consider a mentor, as I’ve been quietly observing his success and thinking about how similar we really are.

For instance, we both:

• Posed nude for some skin mags to raise our profiles, though we ultimately aimed at writing careers (hey, it made sense back in the day!)
• Wrote columns for Canadian newspapers (his “Fingerprinted” column can be found in Xtra!; my “V for Vixen” has been put to rest, but is still archived at Hour‘s website)
• Created semi-autobiographical characters to describe our sexy experiences, in novel form

That last one is the reason I mention Daniel, because I’ve fictionalized him in Naked Montreal, and I just wanted to share a few words on the subject.

For the rest? You’ll just have to buy a copy of the book.

And cam whoring is a pretty intriguing subject.

For those not in the know, I’m talking about the gals on the Innernet who chat with horny young losers men for money, and will do pretty much anything in the privacy of a chat room. I was a chat hostess (as they call them in the Want Ads) for about a week before I quit, mostly because the company I worked for was ultra-shady. We had a verbal agreement for $10 an hour plus 10% commission on all my private chats, and after day one, I never saw another dime.

This is my literary revenge. But it’s also a warning to other young ladies who feel like it might be a good way to make a quick buck. For the record? It ain’t. But that’s just one woman’s opinion. Mostly, I’ve found that people have to try things for themselves and make their own mistakes, before your advice becomes meaningful. It’s just human nature, I suppose. The skepticism, the doubt, the feeling that you must be the exception to every rule.

It makes me laugh, looking back. It’s probably best that I was scammed, cus it kept me off a path that might well have led to ruin. Or maybe I’d be the next Dita Von Teese by now. Who knows?

Regardless, if you want to know more about my days as a cam girl, you’ll have to buy a copy of my book.

If I'd kept up the cam work, could I have been the next Dita? You decide.

(For those who don’t do graphical interfaces, he tweeted “You need self-confidence and determination: feeling depressed and losing hope will never really help to correct any situation.”)

This guy is like a Tibetan fortune cookie, slapping me upside the head. I don’t regularly see his tweets in my Twitter stream, perhaps due to time zone differences, but this one was a perfect shakabuku. Lately, I’ve been swamped with “real” work (i.e. the stuff that pays my bills), which has been causing Naked Montreal to fall by the wayside. It’s been getting me down, and I started to feel depressed about it, like I would never get around to finishing this book. But it’s true: feeling depressed and losing hope don’t help. You’ve just got to get up early in the morning, give your cat some quick snuggles, and then get to work.

So here I am, working on my novel. And you know what? 5 AM never felt so good.

I can make a million for you overnight.

That’s a line from the Beatles’ excellent song, Paperback Writer, but it got me thinking when a friend posted it as her Facebook status the other day. The concept of the song is that an aspiring writer has sent a letter to a publisher, along with his manuscript, and is promising that it will be their next Big Thing, therefore they should buy it and make him a real, live Paperback Writer.

This encapsulates the ultimate writer’s dilemma: if you’re writing a kick-ass book that could make a million for someone overnight, shouldn’t that someone be YOU?

Yeah, that’s kinda what I thought, too. Which is why I decided to self-publish my book, Naked Montreal, and do all the promotion myself (BTW, you can buy a copy of this excellent book in advance right here!), despite the fact that traditional publishing definitely has its assets (i.e. you get to concentrate on writing, rather than marketing and selling the book). I’ve self-published stuff before (see: Black Heart Magazine), and it’s not as hard as traditional publishers would like to have you believe. In fact, it’s even easier now that you can do print-on-demand (though I’m still torn on whether or not I dig that particular approach).

Previously, I had spoken to a traditional publisher in Montreal about working together on my book. I was told that if I found a “partner” to help pony up half the cash required to print the project, we could move forward. To me, that was a total non-starter. I mean, if I had this mystery backer to begin with, why would I need this publishing house? My partner and I could go it alone, me doing the writing and my partner handling the financial end of things, and promote it together. We’d both make more money this way, and this publisher wouldn’t be profiting off my work for no reason.

Ultimately, I guess it all comes down to this: I’m not at all against traditional publishing, so long as it actually helps the writer promote his or her work and get it out to the right audience. But if traditional publishing is like the proposal I received from the publisher mentioned above, then why bother? A small press isn’t going to have the money to send you on much of a book tour (if any), and a big press is just going to go through the motions because you’re not their bestselling author. With either approach, I’m not sure where the benefit is to the author, except in not having to logistically plan out your own readings, getting your books into stores, and the other assorted crap work associated with getting your book out of your basement and into the hands of your public—things that suck to do, but which the writer of the book is probably best qualified to do anyway.

I think, really, it’s all about the way writers view the concept of selling. They tend to view it as shilling, as shady, as some pushy salesperson in a bad tie sweating to close the deal. And it doesn’t have to be. It’s not simple, but it’s not really rocket science either, is it?

In the end, if I make a million bucks overnight, that would be awesome. Then I shall retire to the country and work on my next opus, thereby making myself a multi-millionaire. Realistically, that’s not going to happen. So while I’m not quite as naïvely hopeful as the dude in Paperback Writer, I do think that if properly done, I could make a couple thousand on my book, and maybe even “overnight.” Self-publishing writers do this on a more regular basis than the media want us to believe. Just ask Bobbie Christensen, who makes a living writing and selling her own books, and giving guest lectures on the subjects of her books—including how to write, publish and sell your own books.

“I can make a thousand for you overnight” just doesn’t have quite the same ring as McCartney’s line, though, so I’m sticking to this mantra for now. Thanks, Paul.

Unfortunately for the broke-asses of the world, bibliotherapy—like most legitimate forms of therapy—doesn’t come cheap. For a remote session, it’s £40 (about $62 US), and you get 40 minutes to talk life, the universe and everything via phone or Skype with your bookish shrink. I’m intrigued by the concept, but sort of irritated by the price. After all, you can get book recommendations from everyone and their dog for free, including some quality recs from the bookish types at both the library and your local bookstore, for the mere price of a conversation.

So while I commend The School of Life for doing this kind of work (and particularly for their ingenius way of parting the rich from their riches), I figured I could offer a one-off service similar to theirs for absolutely free. Thus I present to you the

Laura Roberts Rx Reading List, the Cure For What Ails Ya

(Provided that “what ails ya” is mostly existential angst and not anything requiring professional medical help, of course.)

1. Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen: Duh, you knew this one was going to top the list. While it likely won’t cure you (and has even been known to increase one’s dissatisfaction with the state of the world), it’ll certainly shake you loose of the average everyday existence you’ve been digging through. That ain’t ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars, my friend. It’s pain, and it’s time to face it. Try religion, try sex, try the therapeutic (or insane) musings of your best friend, try living in a treehouse in the dead of a Montreal winter. Try fireworks. Try painting a model with nail polish. Try everything. Try nothing. Try this.
2. 101 Things To Do Before You Die by Richard Horne: Okay, so you’re more of a To-Do List type? But you’re also a bit lazy and want someone to make a Bucket List for you? Solution: buy this book. It’s got a page for each item you must complete before your death, a handy checklist in the back, and even a pocket list to keep yourself up to date at all times. Seems to me they must have an iPhone app for this by now, but the only one I found was both unaffiliated with this book and poorly rated, so let’s just leave it alone and give you the website for recent updates.
3. The Playwright’s Guidebook by Stuart Spencer: This is for all your writers out there. Yes, I know, it’s about playwriting specifically. But don’t scratch it off your list if you write short stories or even poems. It’s essential reading for all writers looking to build dramatic stories, because it discusses Aristotle’s Poetics in a modern way. (If you don’t know wtf the Poetics are, and you’ve been through any type of creative courses in your life, then god help you, cus your teachers have all had their heads up their asses.) Plus, Spencer is incredibly well-read and peppers his pointers with references to well-known works you should have already read, thereby suggesting in a very subtle way that if you haven’t, you should, forthwith. Seriously, dudes, it’s a creative writing degree in a book, probably the only practical book I’ve saved from my own days as a university writing student, which I reference whenever I find myself in a jam, and it’s totally worth the $16 to get a copy. (Actually, there’s one for only $8.49 at Amazon if you hurry.) All the rest are, as they say in Philosophy circles, mere footnotes to Plato (who was Aristotle’s teacher).
4. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse: I’m not one to quote the Bible, and while I’ve done my time studying its ins and outs like a good little Catholic girl, the whole concept of a Judeo-Christian god who’s both parent and punisher of so-called moral wrongs has never done much for me. Buddhism, on the other hand, with its acceptance of duality, the concepts of good and evil as two sides of the same coin, of circles of repeated patterns, and a complex understanding of the ebb and flow of the world we know and experience, well, that’s another kettle of fish. Personally, I think Western ways of thinking are deeply flawed, particularly when it comes to the belief that all forward motion necessarily equals progress. Nuh-uh, man. It’s a ladder; you go up, you go down, you rest on a rung, you throw the ladder away completely… you pick it back up again. Anyway, if you want a brief intro to the ideas and life of the Buddha, read a Westerner’s take on it in Siddhartha.
5. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain: Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, travel, food. Anyone who doesn’t see that this is pretty much the ideal life has clearly lost the plot, is off the rails, is in need of this book—and possibly a slap upside the head. Tony has recently penned a sequel, called Medium Raw, which I haven’t yet read, but like all sequels… how good could it be? (Okay, knowing Tony, it probably kicks ass. But still: you’ve gotta read the original first.) Anyone who is currently writing about food and cooking owes Bourdain a debt of gratitude for busting down the doors to the CIA (that’s the Culinary Institute of America, not the Central Intelligence Agency) and shining a flashlight on their methods and practices. He’s shown us what it really looks like in the kitchens of high and low restaurants throughout the U.S. and around the world, and he’s given us the straight dope on why you should never order fish on Monday, much less hit up a bargain sushi place. Read this book and you’ll find out how to cook and eat like a pro, what to avoid in restaurants and how to cook it at home. You’ll also get a shit ton of insane stories about the lives of pro chefs from all over the place, and you’ll probably want to join up. There are worse things in life than owning your own flexible boning knife.
6. Naked Montreal by Laura Roberts: C’mon, this was a gimmie, people! Once again, you should pre-order your copy of my book (personally inscribed by the author, with or without smeary lipstick kiss as you prefer!), because: a) it will make you appear sexy to your friends and lovers, b) it will make you appear jaded and hipsterly on public transport, c) it will cause your co-workers to re-evaluate their previous impressions of you and put you into the hot, steamy and potentially-dateworthy category. SHAZAM! Here’s the link to press to buy (the Paypal button is a bit of a scroll down, but it’s there, I swear).

Now get out there and start reading your way to a better life!

Oh, and if you do happen to have the scratch for a full-on bibliotherapy session of your own, you can set up an appointment by emailing bibliotherapy@theschooloflife.com. Do tell what you’ve learned, if you’re the oversharing type; I’d love to hear the juicy details!

This time around, I gave myself plenty of time to brainstorm, as well as churn out several rejected drafts before hitting upon the one I thought was the best. The clunkers got rejected, refined, recycled and ultimately I produced a manuscript I titled “Murder in the Key of E.” I sent it in around 9 am and hit the gym. When I returned from my workout, there was a confirmation email saying my story had been received, and that winners would be notified in 6 weeks.

So for now, I’m kicking back and relaxing a bit before moving on to some more work on the novel. If I hear back about my story, I’ll let you know. And I figure if all else fails, I’ve got a new story I can submit to some of the neo-noir sites around the ‘net.

Curious about my entry? Let me just sum it up like this:

A broken typewriter key + Ernest Hemingway + Anna and Vronksy = neo-noir frame-up in Hawaii

Can you dig it?

While the WritersWeekly 24-Hour Writing Contest taking place on July 24 does have some fabulous cash prizes (including $300 for first place), it also offers some non-monetary benefits worth looking into, such as a free subscription to The Write Markets Report, a free e-book of your choice, and even a “Freelance Income Kit” to help you get started with your writing career.

Spots are still open (as of 10:33 pm on July 10) for entry into the contest, and the entry fee is a paltry five bucks. I’ve decided to enter, because I could use a whack at my rusty ol’ powers of imagination, and the entry fee is just right. Even if I don’t win, I’ve got a chance at a grab bag prize (kind of like a virtual door prize, but with e-books), and that’s right up my alley.

So, who’s with me?

And now I am! You can follow me at GoodReads under the obvious name, lauraroberts, and write reviews of all my books.

Okay, so there is technically only the one (Naked Montreal) for now, and that’s still forthcoming, but you can write a preview if you’re feeling really excited about it. In the meantime, I’m also uploading info about all of Black Heart’s back issues, and if you’re interested in reading any of them, we’ve currently got a $2 Summer Sale on in the Black Heart store. Get ‘em all from #1 to 7 for only $14!

And now, I guess I should get back to writing the novel so it’s actually done on time for those of you who have generously pre-ordered copies.

XO,
Laura

Here’s what we’ve got so far:

Cover #1

Cover #2

Cover #3

Cover #4

Cover #5

Which do you like best? Click here to vote!

Writing a guidebook is fucking boring.

Why? Because reading a guidebook, cover-to-cover anyway, is a terrible idea!

Now, even though my guidebook would be nothing like a mainstream, run-of-the-mill guidebook like something produced by those Frommer’s, or even those Lonely Planet dudes, I still don’t want to have to recommend places that the “average” tourist would enjoy. I mean, who the heck is an “average” person, anyway? Wait, don’t answer that; I don’t care. I would rather only know above-average people, generally speaking, and you’re mighty above-average if you’re reading this, non? (Correct answer: OUI, BIEN SUR!) So the idea of a guidebook, however cheeky, has been distressing me, even as I pen hilarious stories about my nights in this or that favorite haunt.

PHOTO: I mean, hello, would a normal guidebook even mention this awesome
streetside artwork? I think not, and that is why guidebooks are boring!
(“jazz graffiti” photographed by Laura Roberts, original artwork by omen514)

The stories, however, are hilarious no matter where they took place. So I’m changing directions and creating a loosely autobiographical novel, with real Montreal places as the backdrop. Heck, I will even include some of my write-ups and reviews to show you where “in real life” this shit all went down, so you can play virtual tourist if you’re ever in town. It’ll be good for a larf, especially if any of those places are still in business when you go; Montreal is a fickle mistress, always changing her mind and her storefronts.

So, I hope this doesn’t disappoint you, the fact that I am now writing a novel instead of a touristy-oriented guidebook. It’s better this way, I promise. I am at my best when poking fun at something I truly love. After all, isn’t that how comedians show they care?

Je t’aime, Montreal. Don’t go changin’. Well, you could lose that tired old anglo/franco feud thing, but that’s another story for another day.

As always, you can pre-order the book—now in novel format!—using the link below.

XO,
Laura