The 666ties, Part Two

Flip to the B-side.

Robert N. Lee
Robert N. Lee and monkeyface muse.

Our Girl Reporter, chin-deep in her egg cream, watching her suspects victims interview subjects. The longer she stays, the more fascinating they become.

Robert N. Lee and Julia Rose Sevin, accused of doing a Very Hip Thing. Our Girl Reporter is entranced, or maybe that’s actually Kool-Aid and not an egg cream at all…

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The 666ties has some amazing playlists, but what are you listening to that isn’t tied to the work?

There’s a new Jackson and His Computer Band record, I found out recently. I’m kind of buried right now and mostly only listening to music related to the stories, to be honest, and not paying attention to a lot else. Julia always throws new stuff I haven’t heard at me, though.

JRS: “Jackson and His Computer Band”: You’re welcome!

RNL: Was that you? Of course it was. I suck.

JRS: That’s what makes this a great partnership; we really are on the same wavelength about how much Robert sucks. I listened to Tame Impala a lot while editing and copywriting 666ties. If you think the editor’s music selections don’t matter as much, you’re right. (I guess it kept me from inserting a bunch of hashtag-based humor though.)

RNL: Oh, come on — we agreed the stories would be SEOed up the butt. You’re just still mad because I changed all the verbs on the last story to “twerk” and all the adjectives to “whitepeopleproblems” at the last minute. Wait’ll you see the next story, it’s all about Xbox One launch issues and the Obamacare web site now.

JRS: #prefiguring #foreshadowing #sorrynotsorry

RNL: And now I’m going to go listen to this…Tame Impala? You speak of?

JRS: They’re like a cross between the Beatles and the Beatles and me killing myself. You’ll love them!

Apparently it wasn’t enough that the stories be awesome; let’s talk some about the art—how did you decide on a design? Was there a specific influence here?

No, there’s not a lot of planning to the covers beyond the incorporation of the constant footer element. And what planning is done tends to get thrown out. Of the ones done so far, “Live Lady” and “Finest Kind” look exactly how I imagined them, pretty much. The rest all developed as I worked on them — “She’s Not There” was going to have a ton of illustration on the cover, and it ended up being the simplest one, so far. With no illustration at all.

There are scattered influences that show in the covers. The “Califormication” cover refers pretty overtly to the old Scholastic Book Services magazine Dynamite! “Untitled Bruce Lee/Phil Dick Project”‘s cover may remind of certain eighties novels for…reasons. “She’s Not There” riffs on rainbow-geometric design of the period and the cover of Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex. (Which is a seventies thing, but…I’m mashing stuff up, here.) I haven’t patterned the illustration after anybody, though, that’s…all mine, for better or worse.

Julia Rose Sevin
Julia Rose Sevin

How did the editing process work? Did the work evolve at all in the editing stages? Yes, what I really want to do is expose the heart of the conflict that drives all amazing work: how many knife-fights there were over comma placement, em dashes, and ellipses?

We haven’t had any fights at all. For the most part, I follow every suggestion and correction Julia makes and occasionally I say “No, I like it better the way I had it,” but that’s almost never. I do embarrassing stuff in first drafts like eight characters talking in the same paragraph and using the same novel word three times in three pages, I abuse punctuation, etc. Julia’s a lot more experienced and educated than I am that way, I’m mostly self-taught.

JRS: Oh, I’m self-taught, too. I’m just smarter.

RNL: Yeah, that too. I always think of you as having way more schooling than I do, but that may just be the Laura Ingalls Wilder pioneer school marm demeanor you affect. BTW, I still need that gingham dress photo of you never missin’ a prairie sunset. You do have quite a bit of experience as an editor, though, and I have much less. Let me compliment you about one goddamn thing at least, woman.

JRS: No.

RNL: She also busts me when she thinks I’ve written beneath my abilities and gotten lazy — there’s a lot in the stories that wouldn’t have the punch it does, maybe, if Julia hadn’t caught me slacking.

JRS: Which is hardly ever, but very obvious when it happens. Editing this was a dreamily light gig compared to other work I’ve done, where the authors had A. less of a clue what they were going for, and B. less command of the language, word-by-word, to realize their will. Robert has a real vision in what he’s doing, and he’s worked hard as hell to make sure these stories do what he wants them to, in every word; he knows exactly what he wants to get across and the voice is almost unfailing. (I eliminated the failures.) That general consistency makes it really easy to identify weak spots, really. He slips in a flat or rote turn of phrase on a page packed with Lee Colorful Expressions™, ♪♫ One of these things is not like the others ♫♪, I redline it, he rewrites it, hey presto. I get to feel like a god and the story is what it was obviously supposed to be.

RNL: Everything I’ve ever had published and been happy with has been a collaboration, really, with an editor, or multiple editors. This is no exception, certainly.

JRS: I still think he should have added more butts. People love butts. I love butts. I love butts.

RNL: Get butts trending for a week or so next month, and the 1964 story will be all #datass, all the time.

You’re running a series of blog posts about what you didn’t make up for the series; what’s the thing that surprised you most in your research?

shesnotthere The thing that surprised me most and sticks with me hardest, I didn’t end up using for any of the stories. I never intended to use it — I read a lot about the last few days of Martin Luther King’s life in Memphis, especially, but King was not going to be a character in “Finest Kind.” So most of that reading wasn’t direct story research, it was just…building the world in my head around the story, outside the story, I guess.

Anyway, I found this detail of history I’d never known before, and this sticks with me, for some reason: about an hour and a half before King was killed, he had a pillow fight in his motel room with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young.

Speaking of cultural weight, I don’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t aware of King’s life and work and  assassination. There must have been a time, early on, but I don’t remember. It’s this massive thing, this pivotal thing, this horrific thing, this sacred thing, really. And this detail, these three friends all of a sudden breaking into a pillow fight, at once sort of freed me from all that weight of history and culture and story after story and made the events of that day real life events. These friends had a dinner to go to and they horsed around  and then got straightened up to go out and then they went out and one guy was fumbling with his keys or whatever and one of them got murdered. It happens every day.

And then the weight of it came rushing back and the whole thing was even more tragic, even grander for the smallness of its parts, if that makes sense.

JRS: This is what I saw as a great opportunity for butts action. Blackballed by Mr. Funbuster here.

RNL: Things I Didn’t Make Up for 666ties: butts.

What the strangest thing was that you didn’t have to make up? Like you’re all “hey, I’ll put Manson in a rocket to the moon” and then whoa, you found out that happened.

I have had some weird things happen, like they do when you’re writing, where I made things up and then looked up real history to see how it synched up and…things were perfect, it was crazy. I can’t remember any offhand right now except one Evonne was present for — we’re writing the first/last 666ties story, “Santa Medusa Novela,” together. Anyway, we were brainstorming and coming up with character names, and the main character is a superhero with a 1960-style Hollywood star fake name. And we wanted it to have some kind of religious significance, maybe, but…related to the story in a unique manner that wasn’t religious.

I came up with Connie St. Claire, and then we went and looked up the actual Saint Claire/Clare, who…turned out to be the Patron Saint of Television. Which was pretty fucking perfect.

Oh: the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave. I had no idea that had happened or that Delia Derbyshire and Unit Delta Plus had performed until I got into researching and writing “The Live Lady of Down Town.” That…was kind of a spooky one, like THE UNIVERSE IS TELLING YOU TO WRITE THIS STORY, ROBERT. She seriously played at an all-electronic rave, and right when I had this story set already, in 1967. Wha?

Apparently I ask everyone this now, but what is your favorite Ray Bradbury story/novel?

RNL: I already answered this one…

JRS: I’m a Martian Chronicles man.

What’s the best book you’ve read this year?

I’m probably not a great person to ask, as I’ve read very little new this year, but…I did read one of the best new genre novels I’ve read in several years, and best novels period: Doug Lain’s Billy Moon. That book is amazing. And it’s about the sixties!

JRS: I don’t read. What a waste of time. Candy Crush is where it’s at, kids.

RNL: As usual, Julia gives herself too little credit. She’s like a walking encyclopedia of 1960s fanfic about butts, for starters.

JRS: Okay, that’s a compliment I’ll take. Could you endorse me for it on LinkedIn? I’ve been reading East of Eden for the first time. I grew up in Mendocino, in northern California, a very preserved and quiet old town set against dramatically gorgeous, stoically powerful nature — in fact, it’s the town where they shot the James Dean flick and he allegedly hung out in my house — so it’s been striking all the right chords to make me get all oogly. Definitely recommend this hot newcomer. Check him out if you can find him. Jim Steinberg, I think, really great stuff.

What’s next, if not the 777ties?brucelee

There will be a collection, coming after the series wraps up in February. We may do a print edition, we’ll see if there’s any call for that. We got a request this week — somebody wanted to buy a poster of one of the covers, “Live Lady of Down Town.” So now we’re selling posters of all the 666ties covers at the Awesomedome.com site.

In terms of what happens after March, I’m not even thinking beyond the next couple of months and getting these stories out, right now. Back to subbing stories to magazines and anthologies, I guess — I’ve only got three out now and writing new stuff for that pipeline is on hold for the moment, obviously. I have a few non-666ties stories in ready to write condition and occasionally nagging at me, though, and a handful more almost there. So I’ll be busy.

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