I’ve been slowly working on what to do about the Paragraph Line web site and social media and whatnot, as both me and John have been releasing books and have no idea how to sell them. Anyway, I did a quick reboot of the web site, and it’s live again at http://paragraphline.com/. It’s currently an incredibly rough static site, just so if someone sees the link on a book cover or whatever and clicks it, they get something.

None of the blog is there, so none of the fiction we published about ten years ago is there. I still have this stuff stashed away, and I’ve thought about republishing it, starting up the slush queue again, and going back to daily blogging, releasing other flash fiction, and that whole thing. Ultimately, that had an incredibly low ROI, and I wasted a lot of time for very little traffic. I got a lot of submissions from people who obviously never looked at the site whatsoever. I also got a lot of traffic from people who had Bizarro-related fiction who couldn’t get it placed at any official Bizarro outlet, so lots of second-rate stuff. There were exceptions, but I did not like spending all my time sifting through the queue, begging people to read the damn thing, and screaming into the void. Faced with that versus actually writing, I chose the latter.

Aside from the content generation and the general algorithm issues, I struggled with tooling. WordPress is basically a virus vector disguised as a CMS, and the “you can do anything with WordPress” people are all designers charging an obscene amount for development. I tried firing up a Ghost instance in AWS and moving everything there, and it didn’t really work well. I also recently tried pulling it into Hugo, and it was a bit of a disaster. I finally gave up and used a static template, which looks okay, but blogging there is not going to be a thing at all.

Social media-wise, I have no idea what to use. I’m absolutely not using Twitter. I think all Meta platforms are impossible to get any reach. All the kids are using Bluesky now, so I just created a profile @paragraphline and maybe someday someone will follow it. This all falls firmly into “I have no time for this” and I’m trying to get the next book done, so it won’t happen in the immediate future.

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Related: John has re-released three of his books in one volume; check out After the Jump: A Trilogy. And I’ve still got my book from December you should check out, Decision Paralysis.

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One of the things that came to mind as I was assembling this books page was the large number of books I have that are now out of print. This was intentional for a few reasons, but I fret over what I should do about this. It’s not as easy as “well just re-list them” because, well, it isn’t.

I currently have 18 books that were published at one point, and four of them are currently for sale. I think the short answer here is a combination of the fact that I am really proud of the four that are currently out, and four is more than zero, so at least there’s that. But when I think about reissuing the others, there are a few things stopping me.

First, there are quality issues. I get unending shit about “you need to hire an editor” which always bothers me. In one sense, it’s like telling Iggy Pop he needs to re-record Raw Power with autotune, because some of the notes aren’t hit perfectly. Also, I’m not going to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to an editor on a book that’s going to sell 14 copies with a profit margin of like 29 cents a copy. That said, I find typos in these old books, and if I’m going to reissue them, I at least want to sweep through them and fix things.

And the problem with pulling that thread at the edge of the sweater is I will quash typos, but along the way I’ll find paragraphs that are uneven or places I wish I’d expanded or stories that didn’t end right or… whatever. There’s an argument for changing things significantly in a new reissue. Like William Burroughs published three very different versions of The Soft Machine in his lifetime (and a fourth posthumously) and he had no problems ripping out half the book, adding back as many new pages, and rearranging the whole thing. Part of me thinks doing that would be fun. Part of me thinks it’s a bit too George Lucas. And either way, this would require a lot of time I don’t have.

I think there’s also the issue of me having past work I’m not proud of. Sometimes I go back into an old book and find it’s aged well, and parts are still funny or well-written. But there are times I look at some stuff like the trilogy of flash books (Earworm, Sleep, Thunderbird) and I feel like maybe 50% of it is solid, and the rest is plain embarrassing. (The two zine-book things, Help… and Ranch are similar. And I reread He recently and it’s absolutely horrible.) There’s a lot of gonzo writing that’s largely scatological and stupid, and I feel the people who are fans of that aspect of my old writing, that persona I used, will never get what I’m trying to do now. And it’s definitely not stuff I want coworkers or potential employers to read. A lot of it would straight up get me cancelled at this point. I don’t want to write like this anymore, and spending time reintroducing stuff that I’m actually ashamed of now is a fool’s errand. Maybe I could do a “greatest hits” with just some of this stuff picked out. Once again, that’s a lot of time invested that could be used on writing new books.

There are books that are simply too far off my path to even deal with. Memory Hunter was a fun experiment and I loved doing it. The writing maybe 80% holds up. But nobody got the joke, and those of my fans who did read it all said it was good but not Konrath enough. Summer Rain is tough, because it was my first book and it meant a lot to me. And its fans are into that heavy 90s nostalgia, but I absolutely do not want to work in that genre anymore. Nostalgia is pain, and it doesn’t help that 40% of the country is actively destroying this country trying to go back to a time that never existed because of their delusions about the past. The Necrokonicon falls into that category, too. The Vegas book and the journal book that nobody read were both quickie get-something-out experiments that failed.

That leaves Rumored and Atmospheres. Spoiler alert: both of those have sequels that are well underway. So there may be a tie-in rerelease of either or both, but there’s a combination of all of the above problems with them. Like I’ve been rereading Atmospheres a lot recently and there are some absolutely solid riffs in there that I love. And then there’s some borderline sexist diatribe or embarrassing scatalogical bit that does nothing for the story and is just “look at me! I’m crazy!” writing. I’ve actually paid an editor to proof both of those books and search out the typos, but I don’t know what to do about questionable content.

And case in point on all of this: I reissued Vol. 13 last fall. I did a quick editing pass, changed the ebook layout, and redesigned the cover. I don’t know how many hours I spent on the project, but it was not a quick job. Since then it has sold five copies. I make about two bucks a book. So the “you could just pay someone else to do it for you” argument sort of falls flat, as I’d probably sink a few hundred bucks into it and get back ten of it. And I’d be rolling the dice on getting a layout I’d actually like.

Bottom line: I’m writing a lot right now, and that’s the focus. So, more of that, right?

As expected, before this Norway trip, I had a big freak-out about what cameras to take, which led to too many discretionary purchases. Let me explain.

There were two main cameras before the trip. The big one is the Canon EOS 6D mkii. It’s a great camera and ticks a lot of boxes: full-frame, weather sealed, uses the EF lenses and I’ve got a couple of great L lenses for it, runs forever on a single battery, excellent sensor, built-in GPS and it’s a DSLR so it doesn’t have the usual problems a mirrorless has. More than that, it’s got the usual Canon design language and I like the way it feels, the way the controls are laid out, and the way the Canon works. And as much as I like it, it is not light or small. Glue two pounds of glass to the front end of it, and it’s really not great to haul around all day. And I’ve taken some okay photos with it, but it seems like I was almost doing better with a much lighter crop-sensor camera.

In 2023, I got a Sony Alpha a6400. It’s half the weight of the 6D and much easier to shove in a bag. I’ve taken this camera to India, Singapore, and Spain, and it’s okay, but the ergonomics of it are bugging me. It’s just different, and I can’t explain it. The menu system is complete garbage, but it feels so toy-like and cheap, it’s not enjoyable to use at all. And there’s something off about the color space or the exposure program or something, and I’m constantly blowing shots with it. It’s hard to use in daylight, and isn’t entirely capable at night. And regardless of the time of day, it seriously chews through batteries. I often think that I need better lenses or more practice or more patience with it. And then I go take a hundred shots in an afternoon and look at them and wonder what’s wrong.

And I struggle to say what “kind” of photographer I am. I’m not like a street photographer or a devoted landscape photographer or specialize in portraiture or whatever. I don’t know if I am even a photographer in the artistic sense of the word. I like to capture things, and I like to go back and look through photos to revisit a mood or relive a trip or write about something that happened in the past. I am more of a “document everything” person, and if I get a great shot out of it, cool. But that lack of a specific genre or focus makes me flail when it comes to buying gear, because that’s really the first question someone asks when you are trying to find out what to get, right?

I also have been wandering back and forth on photos versus video, and I have no answers there. Since the 90s, I’ve experimented with different cameras, thinking I needed to shoot video to capture a mood or feeling or vacation or whatever. That started with buying a Hi8 camcorder back in like 1996, which was entirely impractical and largely useless to me. I never took that camera with me, because it weighed so much and I was never comfortable walking around with it and taking random video. I absolutely love the videos I did capture (see https://www.rumored.com/randomlife) but with the impracticality of it, I never used it.

So, two things. First, I decided to get another Canon mirrorless. I was reluctant to do this because i bought an EOS-M1 about ten years ago and bought into their flop of a mirrorless system. They’ve since moved to a new platform, and it’s stabilized and picked up steam, so I thought I’d give it a try. I also thought maybe going back to crop sensor might help. So I bought a Canon EOS R10. It uses a new type of lens, the RF; I didn’t want to buy into that with all my EF lenses, so I bought the adaptor. This also lets me use some of my old EF-S crop lenses from when I had Rebel cameras, so that’s useful. The R10 is amazingly light, uses the same batteries as my old Rebel T6i, and isn’t horribly bad on battery life, especially compared to the Sony. It’s not weatherproof (which was a problem in Norway, walking in the snow all day every day) and there’s no more GPS. (I don’t know why, but I love having a GPS on my cameras.) It also has incredible autofocus and a great sensor. Not only does it have eye tracking autofocus, but it can eye track on animals, which is useful for someone who takes a thousand pictures of their cats a year.

More than anything, the R10 feels like a Canon camera. The Program mode works like I’m used to. It feels the same in my hand. I don’t have to think to know where the knobs are. It’s not as full-featured as the 6D, but it feels the same. It feels the same as both of my Rebels, and even my old EOS 620 film camera.

The other thing, the video thing: I don’t know why, but on a lark, I bought a DJI Osmo Pocket 3. It’s an amazing little gizmo, a gimbal camera in a thing the size of a TV remote, with a screen that flips from portrait to landscape. This was largely a useless purchase, as I’m not going to be full-time vlogging over on TikTok or anything like that. But it does shoot incredible video, and it’s extremely small. I think it’s close to being the perfect “document-everything” camera, and I got a few good shots out of it in Norway.

So, the Sony’s probably going to go. I’m too lazy and impatient to sell it on eBay, and I know I’ll get nothing for it on KEH. But I think the Sony experiment is over. I am not sure if I’m going to start buying RF lenses, although given the current state of things, probably not a good idea to be dropping more money on gear. And the film thing - I’ve still got a few dozen rolls on ice, but I have lost all passion for shooting film these days. I feel like if I’m going to make a bunch of mistakes with exposure, I shouldn’t do it at a dollar a shot. I was completely unhappy with the film I burned in Iceland in 2023, and haven’t gotten back into it since. Fair enough.

And all of this is secondary to what I should be doing: writing. That’s the main priority, so I should get back to it.

I mentioned on my birthday post that I was on the move for my birthday, and I was. This may seem counterintuitive, but I took a week off and went to Oslo, Norway. In January. Yeah, I didn’t think through this one at all.

I’ve been struggling to write a quick summary of this trip, mostly because the trip was… well it wasn’t awful, but it was tough. It was an experience, and I do always like to see a new country and just feel what it’s like, see the little differences, look at the buildings and see where things came from, what the history was like, what was torn down and rebuilt and destroyed and grown. The very first time I ever left the country—a quick bus trip up to Canada to see the Shakespeare Festival in high school—I remember holding a metric can of Coke in my hand and feeling how it was different in some weird way, and realizing there were 190-some other places like this on the rock we call Earth, and they all had these little (or big) differences. I always like that.

But this trip. The lack of sunlight really put the zap on me, as well as the food situation (vegetables this close to the Arctic circle are not really a thing, and I’m not a fan of fish), and the general aloneness of being by myself in a country where everyone knows English, but don’t necessarily speak it. In many ways, I was way out of my element and it all felt very bleak.

So I didn’t do much. I struggled with time, nutrition, navigation, and weather. I was asleep while everyone was awake and vice verse. The news cycle last week was… not ideal. I had my birthday in another country where I think I said a total of ten words all day, and that included ordering the absolute worst vegan pizza imaginable. (Don’t ask.) And every time I start writing my usual bulleted list about this week, it ends up being this bitch-fest of negative things, and I start thinking, “Why am I doing this?”

So, let’s not do that. Let’s be as zen as possible about it, and let me write a list of what I did like about this trip.

• I stayed in the Centrum district, which reminds me a bit of my 2022 stay in Stockholm, dusted with a few memories of the 2023 Iceland trip. It’s a mix of contemporary Scandinavian three or four story urban architecture of muted pastels and light brick, but many appearances of super-modern aesthetics with sharp edges and metal and glass walls. It’s all ultra-designed, efficient and well-built and wonderful to see.
• Neighborhoods are all incredibly integrated. There’s always a little grocery nearby. Trains go everywhere. There are abundant little shops. I went to dinner at one place that was in a complex of buildings, all built into a hill maybe ten years ago. It was a maze of passages, underground parking, small grocers, barbers, ramen shops, upscale restaurants, gyms, a small music venue, small shops, and apartments for young professionals. In the US, we try to build these fake city center places, and they never work out; they’re all half-abandoned except for a token Subway restaurant and a dry cleaner that’s never open. This was a fully-integrated system, a very cozy arrangement, where I could imagine never having to drive anywhere to meet my basic needs.
• The weather wasn’t bad, maybe 20-30F all week, and snowing, occasionally turning to slush. But there was something magical about waking up and seeing all the Scandinavian buildings dusted with white. And while I wouldn’t want to do this for the next 100 days, it was nice to walk around and feel the snow in the air and watch the people strolling to work all bundled up in their Arctic jackets and hats.
• The Edward Munch museum was awesome. Seeing “The Scream” in person was great. But that building and the Opera House across from it, as well as the gigantic public library looked like matte paintings from the background of a Star Trek movie, just super-modern looking architecture. That whole area is absolutely striking with its futuristic buildings are all so perfect well laid-out. They didn’t just slap down square buildings next to each other for the whole block; they’re carefully placed, and then in between them, there’s an ice skating rink or a playground or some botanical garden or something, or it carefully leads up to a set of piers on the waterfront. And of course it’s all punctuated by frequent bus lines and streetcars and a perfectly laid-out subway system. The urban planning is absolutely next-tier there.
• Driving from the Oslo Gardermoen Airport to Centrum in the middle of the night was sort of amazing. Yes, I’d been awake two days, and yes it was not great weather for the drive. But that E6 highway, the 45 minutes or so of traffic is all carved into hills, surrounded by evergreens, and everything was blanketed in snow. This was only the third time I’d ever driven a car in another country, the first with my new international driving permit. (The other two are Canada and Iceland.) It’s always fascinating to me to see the new signs and minor details, and of course everything in Kilometers.
• I stayed at the Thon Rozencrantz. They gave me a top-floor suite with a separate living room, and a nice set of windows that overlooked the west part of Centrum, with the Royal Palace on the horizon in the distance. Free breakfast every day, and while there were some oddities (brown cheese?) it was the standard eggs and bacon and whatnot every morning.
• One night I drove to the Sandvika Storsenter, a large mall about 20 minutes outside the city. It’s interesting to see a place like this with basically no anchors or hypermarts and lots of local shops and brands, softlines and upscale apparel. There weren’t a ton of people out on a Tuesday, but it definitely wasn’t a dead mall at all.
• I’ve written about my obsession with Surge soda a while ago, and how it was one of the factors in me working on my second book. Anyway, Surge was in Norway, but it was called Urge. I tried a can, even though I can’t drink sugar like that anymore. It tasted like I remembered, though.
• I ate an absolutely excessive meal at this Michelin star restaurant and every part of the meal was stupendous and way too much and something I’d never eat (lots of fish, not just reindeer, but reindeer heart) and it was awesome, even if it took me 24 hours to recover. It made me realize these places are more like performance art, the way the server explains all the crazy combinations and where they came from. My server would rattle all this off, and it was great, but then I’d see her telling the same story a few minutes later and it made me think this was much more of a theatrical thing, in addition to culinary.
• This is dumb, but I always think it’s hilarious when I fly halfway around the world, and there’s 7-Eleven. I never thought back in 1988 when me and Ray and Larry were loitering at the now-gone 7-Eleven in Elkhart that I’d be going to one in Ho Chi Minh City or Singapore or Stockholm. The one thing I got in Oslo that I’ve never seen before were dried dates that had various flavors to them. The one I liked the most was sour cola flavored. No idea where I’ll ever see those again, unless I go to Denmark or something.
• Norway is 100% cashless. I never even got any local money the whole time I was there.
• I complain about the language and the complexity and the ø and å and æ and such, but I think Norwegian is maybe as complex as German, but in different ways. Some words are very similar, but I think pronunciation is a bit easier and grammar is way more simple. Maybe I need to spend more time on that.
• As much as I go on and on about the lack of sunlight and the weird angle of the sun during the day, there’s something interesting about seeing it, the odd golden hour that makes you feel like you’re on the surface of an alien planet in a Christopher Nolan movie. It’s not ideal, but it’s a real blast to experience it.
• I did meet up with a writer I managed back in 2021 who I’d never actually met in person. She was in Bangalore, but moved to Norway three years ago, and it was good to catch up. And I think that was one of the real high points of the trip, not only because she is awesome, but because I’ve been thinking a lot about community and connection, and these dumb trips shouldn’t be about going to see some random museum or record store or largest ball of twine. I should be planning these trips entirely around seeing old friends again, or new friends I’d never met. Why am I not doing that?

I didn’t get many great pictures, and I only captured a few videos on my phone while I was walking around. But the memories are amazing. I have a very clear view of sitting by the maritime museum in the snow. I’d arrived early, before the big tour busses rolled in, and hiked around the Bygdøy WW II Navy Memorial on the waterfront. The snow was whipping down, and I trundled around maybe four inches of fresh powder on the waterfront. I was entirely unprepared, jeans and New Balance tennis shoes, mid-cuff in this snow, walking around the Bygdøynes ferry terminal, looking at this 19th-century three-mast ship sitting in the water. The Oslo Fjord stretched out in front of me, the island of Hovedøya on the horizon. Everything was so crisp, cold, and quiet, the snow blanketing all sound. This was Norway, in the purest sense. I didn’t care about the food or the jetlag or the loneliness or the cold. This is what I needed.

And yeah, why am I not seeing anyone anymore? If you’re ever in the Bay Area, the email’s still jkonrath @ this domain. Or pitch me why I need to come see you. Let’s do it.