Seeking Permanence, Quality, and Independence

Living in  a body that has an expiration date leads people to seek things that will endure, that have the permanence that they don't have. Inevitably, that leads to a search for things we can possess that have the quality to endure for generations and that can be passed between generations. The necklace above is a four-thousand-year-old piece of jewelry created as a defense against the Sun Gods so that the wearer can remain independent of their influence. It was handed down within Tyco's Mayan family for many generations along with the knowledge of how to use it. In "Stefan's Owl from Oblivion", Tyco receives the medallion from his father when it becomes apparent that the Sun Gods were again going to visit Earth. The medallion connected each generation of the family with the previous generation in a very tangible, comforting way. The medallion lured the attention of each new generation of the family, allowing the current generation to capture the minds of their children and pass down the stories that are a part of the family, that define it as an entity independent of oppressive external influence.

With today's corporate cultures being focused on ruthlessly harvesting wealth rather than serving humanity in some way, people now more than ever seek out that independence and permanence, that quality that says that what they possess is a symbol of the family's progress toward a sustainable existence. They seek a book that is not merely some transitory trinket that will self destruct, vaporizing their hard-won money, and reducing their efforts to serfdom serving some soulless corporation who forces them to give their wealth to its masters. The opinion piece on Bloomberg, "Why Vinyl, Books, and Glossy Magazines Will Never Go Away",  opines that people are rediscovering quality made, tangible objects that embody art. They are surging in popularity, serving as a representation of the soul of the acquiring family and as their direct connection to the creation of art. As the article points out, many creators of art (authors and musicians) have once again taken possession of their art away from corporations who only seek to extract money from their customers. The artists seek to give their patrons a connection to the art's soul.

Permanence, Quality, and Independence is exactly what I seek to capture with my strategy to publishing. I have chosen to spend years producing an illustrated novel of literary fiction that represents the high quality care, my soul, that I like to infuse into my writing, uninfluenced by corporate mass production culture. I intend for each book to be one that can be handed down for generations, with the previous generation reading it to the next: a memorable experience  carved indelibly into the family collective consciousness. The book itself will be manufactured with a quality that no corporate plant would ever pursue because the expense will deprive them of profit. They have tried to train their customers to expect something transitory, an endeavor in which customers must pay to keep the experiences coming or risk the image of them fading away. EBooks are an ideal medium for this, for the quickly produced entertainment has no lasting significance and the lack of a tangible artifact means that the consumer must continue to pay to refresh those reading memories. The access to those memories is at the leisure of the lawyers of the corporate, literary "drug" lord.  I want to produce a work of art, where each and every copy has been touched by the author/illustrator in a personal way... a book that can establish a new family tradition handed between the generations.
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