Sampling vs Synthesizing

It’s funny sometimes how what you do is often reflected in everything else you do. Back when I played in bands I didn’t care much about synthesizers. I like samplers. I liked taking existing sounds and twisting them around into something new and weird and interesting. I realized a few years ago that I do the same thing with my photos.

I gave up on natural skin tones years ago and only shoot them when models need them for their portfolio. But on my own I’ll always do something to skew the shot. Screw with the lights, the color temperature or the cropping. I don’t have any interest in naturalistic or pretty pictures. I like interesting pictures and they often come from experiments, destruction and happy accidents.

My writing is a lot like that. I like genre fiction. It gives you an armature from which you can hang anything. If you’re running a mystery or a thriller or a Gothic romance you know the rules and so do your readers. You know how to keep the engine running And as long as the motor is purring and you’re pointed in the right direction you can do anything you want. Twist the story. Subvert it. Tweak your readers’ expectations.

I knew that I was going to write at least three Sandman Slim novels because that’s what my contract said. When I started the series I wanted each book to be a little different so I wrote the first one as a crime novel while Kill The Dead is more of a mystery. Aloha From Hell will be a bent kind of fantasy quest. I know the rules and so do you. It all comes down to what you can do with them. What I can do with them. And like my photos a lot of that comes from experiments, destruction and happy accidents.