I won a dodgeball game once.

kevinthestrangelogo4My friend Bradley Sands has a new book out about Dodgeball, called Dodgeball High (available on Amazon here). You should buy it because he’s a great writer and his books are hilarious.

Little known fact: I won a Dodgeball game in junior high once. I was a complete loser in school. I was one of the dorks who got picked on in class and generally looked at as nothing. So, if I wasn’t the last kid picked on the team, I was damn close. Maybe there was a fatter, less athletic kid nobody liked in class, but flip a coin and I could have easily been dead last choice. Likewise, nobody gave a shit to try to knock me out of the game.

The competitive jocks were out for each other, and the other talentless losers always made the mistake of girly tossing their ball directly at the jocks’ chests, letting the jocks catch their ball, which was a way to eliminate players, for you sad folks who’ve never played Dodgeball. So I used a different tactic. Being generally ignored, it was easy for me to creep around and nail guys in the leg while they were paying attention to someone else. The tricky part was getting a ball back. That’s how I usually lost games. I’d get a couple of dudes eliminated, and then not have a ball to attack or defend with, and I wasn’t athletic, so actually dodging or catching balls never really worked for me.

This time, though? Oh boy, was I on fire. When I’d knock someone out of the game by sniping their legs, I’d hit them just right and my ball would roll back across the center line right back to me. I didn’t knock out very many players because I always wanted to have my ball to deflect the Jocks’ fastballs that I could never catch. And indeed, once the players were eliminated down to less than 10, and our coach allowed us to start crossing the center line to a line deeper into the other team’s territory, I needed those deflector balls cause the jocks finally realized the little fat kid was somehow a threat.

It wasn’t uncommon for our gym class to play Dodgeball two or three times a week in the winter when we couldn’t go outside, so we got a lot of games in, back in Junior High. I’d made it to this point a few times in the past, using the same strategy, but even with a deflector ball, some jock would inevitably throw a fast ball hard enough to blast my ball out of my hand, eliminating me. But this match? It was the perfect storm. We were only one line away from an open court, and only 4 or 5 players remained. I had my ball and two or three others at my feet to defend with when the remaining jocks turned on each other and knocked out all the players except one!

The coach called open court and it’s just me and a wrestler kid who used to be my friend when we were kids. But, like all the jocks, once we got older, he didn’t want anything to do with a comic book nerdy. So we’re surrounded by balls and I’m standing there, letting him circle me while his friends all shout rude shit at me and make fun of him for being in a match against a loser like me, when I notice something critical. I’m walking around with my ball clutched in two hands waiting to deflect, while he’s bouncing his ball like a basketball. In true jock fashion, he’s not the least bit concerned about my attack, expecting me to just crumble at his aggressive posture.

I realize right then, that I can use my lameness to my advantage. He doesn’t expect me to strike. So I wait, and I time him as he slowly dribbles his dodgeball, grinning at me while his friends call me a loser and a fag. That’s when I pull a jock move. While his ball is mid-bounce. I fake like I’m going to throw, causing him to spazz and grab at his ball, giving me plenty of time to step into a nice hard overhand throw and spike him right in the shoulder, eliminating him, and winning my first and only sports game in my entire life.

So yeah, Dodgeball is cool, and you should buy Dodgeball High from Bradley Sands and Eraserhead Press.

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How NOT to be a douchebag writer

kevinthestrangelogo4Being an author is a lot more than sitting down at a computer to write books. Transitioning from film making to writing fiction was an eye opener for me, to say the least. After 7 years in the game writing and directing scripts, I was not prepared for just how dynamic and difficult it would be to enter into the fiction world as a brand new author. I had, after all, paid my dues, gained my fans, and rested firmly on my laurels.

Well, after 4 solid years writing fiction, (bringing me up to 11 years writing full time, for those counting at home) I  think I can speak with a bit of clarity about the subject of not being a douchebag. Like, it’s really important to not be a douchebag if you want your peers to take you seriously, help promote you to their friends and fans, and generally accept you into their fold as a member of whatever genre or multiple genres you write in (whether you admit to writing in those genres or not.)

Playing that social game, I think more than anything, is what makes or breaks an author. Being the most badass rebel imaginable will not make you a successful author. Alienating your peers because you’re too scared to admit you write in the same genre as them for fear of being seen as a poser, will not make you a successful author. This job requires social skills like tact, patience, humbleness, graciousness, altruism, and diplomacy. It’s taken me many years, some of which I was, wall to wall, a complete douchebag, to figure out a few things about not being a douchebag. Here are some things that will make you look like a complete douchebag to your peers, things we all learn the hard way not to do:

1. Shoving your opinion down people’s throats. 

You’re a writer. It’s an amazing gift. Use it. Do not attack others publicly for not sharing the same beliefs, or the same level of activism as you concerning those beliefs. As a writer, it’s your job to use subtly, metaphor, and allegory to get your message across. Brash demands to follow your beliefs or fuck off and die won’t win you any fans and will show your colleagues both a lack of maturity and a lack of writing skill. Use your words, not your mouth. That’s why the gods invented pens, douchebag.

2. Acting like a wizened old veteran after a year or two as a published author.

You wrote something, and it got published! Great! If it wasn’t the ten commandments, then you still don’t know shit about what it means to be a successful author and you need to close your mouth and open your ears. Some authors find success quickly, for others it takes many years. Both types of authors will spend their entire careers defining exactly what that success means to them. Many authors burn out after a couple of books and a couple of years, no matter how much success they find. Writing is nose to grindstone, pen to paper, homework every night and it doesn’t stop until you die. This life ain’t for most.

Opening your own small press doesn’t make you a veteran. It doesn’t mean you know shit about writing and publishing. It means you have a pulse. At one point or another, all of us open a publishing house, figure out how much thankless work it is, and get the fuck out of it as fast as we can. That’s natural. What isn’t natural is selling a couple of hundred copies of a book and then acting like some guru because a half a dozen of your friends ask you to publish their book for them. That’s silly. It takes years and years to truly figure out what connects a book to a fan, or what your fan base really wants from you, and what you can realistically provide your fan base while maintaining your integrity and your sanity. Too many douchebags get a couple of friends together and act like they know everything about publishing. Learn everything about spell check before you pretend to know it all, douchebag.

3. Spamming groups of authors with your shitty self published books.

If people like your book, they’ll tell their friends about it. There are many ways to get your books into the hands of fans. Annoying the fuck out of them with spammy crap all across Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter is not one of those ways. Try trading books with an author you really like. Then try to do that again a few dozen more times until other authors are reading your books and telling their friends, “Dude, you have GOT to read this book!” This takes time. A lot of it. It takes years for people to warm up to a new author. They know your new book is out. We ALL know your new book is out. Telling us about your book 3 times a day every day has never made us want to read it more. It makes us think you’re a douchebag, because that’s what you are.

Douchebags come in all shapes and sizes. And at one time or another, like it or not, we’re ALL guilty of being that douchebag author. The good thing is, most authors get through their douchebag phase pretty quickly, and transition into productive citizens of the writing game, or quit along the way, if their douche-factor is too high. Almost every author I’ve ever interacted with has treated me with respect, warmth, and open arms. We are, after all, all in this together. Let’s try our hardest not to be douchebags.

And finally, if you think this rant is about you, you’re probably a douchebag. 🙂