Get a Job: Santiago as Fisherman
NICK MAZMANIAN

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Part 3 in a series where Nick Mazmanian examines the occupations of fictional characters and whether or not they’ve excelled at their chosen fields. [Read Parts 1 and 2.]

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Name: Santiago
Occupation: Fisherman

Santiago is a fisherman in the strictest sense of the word. He makes his living at it, but for 84 days he hasn’t done this very thing. Looking over the story of the formerly banned book, The Old Man and the Sea, many a reader would think that this evaluation is an open-and-shut case. Be that as it may, let us see if Santiago should keep his job.

1. PATIENCE

A fisherman must have patience when he is out at sea. Start fishing too soon and you scare the fish; too late, and you miss them completely. The fact that so many people hate doing this is why they stay away from it entirely. Fishing, while peaceful, isn’t for everyone.

Santiago has patience, almost too much. After 84 days of not catching anything, he should have moved on to another profession, like becoming a cobbler or maybe a social media manager.

2. STRENGTH

Leaving industrial fishing to the side, actually fighting a fish on a line takes a lot of strength. There’s a reason why most fishing line can hold 500 pounds. It’s because physics is a bitch, and that fish doesn’t want to go where so many have never returned.

Santiago fights this giant fish, single handedly, for three days. Three days! To train for something like that today would take weeks on a Shake Weight, because our modern bodies are spongy and soft.

3. LUCK

A fisherman can stack the odds in his favor by using technology to track the fish down and bait the hook, but no matter how many times he radars the water, he still might not catch a fish.

Santiago is carved from a slab of wood that was unlucky enough to be cut down in the first place and was sent to a mill to be made into boards, but the place burned down during the cutting process. Luck ran away from him like an atheist from church, and it was so bad that people from the village were afraid of catching it.

Should he keep his job? Verdict!

Santiago sure as hell should! Why? Because he is a fisherman in every sense of the word. Sure, he didn’t wind up being able to profit from the fish (spoilers), but he still caught it and brought it into town.

Now, get this man a Bass Pro Shop sponsorship and a tie-in video game!

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Nick Mazmanian is the author of Where Monsters Lie & Other Tales, and when he isn’t banging away at the keyboard writing stories or emptying his thoughts onto his website, Ironcladwords.com, he can be found working on a multitude of projects that range from video games to podcasts about Batman to YouTube shorts to adventuring into the wide world with his wife and dog. You can also find him on Twitter and Tumblr.

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Indie Book Radar
WHAT WE’RE READING, & WHY YOU SHOULD BE, TOO

With so many books coming out daily, it’s hard to know what to read. Here are some gems that Alternating Current staffers have read and loved lately, so go read ’em while they’re hot!

A Tree Born Crooked, by Steph Post, is a tale of family ties gone askew. James Hart, content for a while to outlive his checkered past, is called back home by the death of his father, but he remains there to sort out the trouble his brother, Rabbit, has gotten himself into. Fans of Daniel Woodrell and Elmore Leonard will recognize the grit and burn in this book full of trumped-up crooks, tough women, and wicked plans.


Evan Guilford-Blake’s story collection, American Blues, is a heavy, heady, smoky bar of a book. True to its name, there is an undercurrent of desperation and depression throughout these stories that often ends in violence, and Guilford-Blake does a careful dance that balances these darker elements with the inimitable, vibrant soul of the blues.


Beth Gilstrap’s debut collection of stories, I Am Barbarella, drives the reader down a number of crooked, winding roads. The characters in this book are long on complexity and short on solutions, and Gilstrap does a wonderful job of making it clear that we’re only allowed a brief glimpse into their world. Intriguingly, and refreshingly, the windows we’re given often aren’t of the tumult itself, but instead of the dead calm and clarity that comes on either side of upheaval.


With Where Monsters Lie & Other Tales, author Nick Mazmanian has created a number of disorienting, yet all-too-familiar worlds. These are stories in which evil is grand, but mankind crafty, and the battle between the two wild. Where Monsters Lie & Other Tales stands as an addition to the ranks of new Lovecraftian cyberpunk-noir pulpy sci-fi.


Jeannine Hall Gailey’s The Robot Scientist’s Daughter brings to life the secret town of Oak Ridge, a lesser-known Los Alamos critical to the Allied production of an atomic bomb, and the lives of the people there long after Oak Ridge lost its purpose. In poems full of flowers, deer, and nature, Gailey crosses our wires by exposing the truth below the Kentucky soil; radiation is ever-present, men tinker with better ways to bury their mistakes, and the animals themselves become harbingers. Timely and important, Gailey’s collection stands to teach us what it’s like to live in a poisoned world.



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Get a Job: Clark Kent as Reporter
NICK MAZMANIAN

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Part 1 in a series where Nick Mazmanian examines the occupations of fictional characters and whether or not they’ve excelled at their chosen fields.

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Name: Clark Kent
Occupation: Reporter

There are so many versions of this character that I am going to choose the comic book version rather than the film and TV versions.

Clark Kent is a reporter for The Daily Planet. He comes from Smallville and is clumsy; oh, and he wears glasses. How did this guy secure a position at one of the biggest newspapers in the country? Well, he started off at an entry-level position and quickly rose through the ranks because of his ability to scoop the other reporters.

Oh, and he has all the exclusives with Superman. All of them.

Cornering the market with one of the biggest names in the superhero world is quite the feather in his cap, but does it make him a good reporter? Let’s look at the characteristics that a reporter should have in order to be a success:

1. PERSISTENCE

As a reporter you must, (not try,) must be persistent. You have to chase down leads, make people talk to you, and get what you need in order to get the story out.

Clark doesn’t do any of this, ever, really. He is a pushover, overly polite, and is constantly cut off by other people, and his actual interviews are cut short. The only reason he ever gets a story is because he is Superman, so he is the story, and it’s easy to write what you know, right?

2. SPEED

You have to act fast in this business, which means you have to get the facts as quickly as possible and get the story out. Of course, integrity was something that still existed in the 1950s when it came to the news, but still, being the first one out the gate is important.

Clark did have a knack for getting to crime scenes before anyone else or to the scene of an incident before anyone else, but the reason why is because he is Superman!

3. WRITE STORIES THAT ARE WORTH READING

Even though that rule today would boil down to a series of pictures with giant text on them, it still holds true. The stories that are worth reading are the ones that are the hardest to find, so you have to do some sleuthing every once in a while.

Clark usually gets lost or captured when sleuthing anywhere because he has to turn into Superman and save the day. This does create a story worth reading, but again, for the umpteenth time, it’s because he is Superman.

Should he keep his job?

I say no, but because he gets the exclusives with Superman, the editor-in-chief is going to say yes. Clark Kent is only a good reporter because he cheats, while Lois Lane is constantly having to bust her ass to get a story in a male-dominated industry. I’d say that Clark Kent’s superpower is white privilege, but that statement is A.) lazy and B.) bullshit, because he’s Superman. Clark creates the story in order to write about it, and if this were real life, that would be really creepy.

Replacement job:

Well, since the point of Clark Kent for Superman is to be his secret identity, then the logical conclusion is for Clark to become a telemarketer. Why? Because I’ve never met a telemarketer in my life, so it must be a really secretive position, which is perfect for a secret identity.

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Nick Mazmanian is the author of Where Monsters Lie & Other Tales, and when he isn’t banging away at the keyboard writing stories or emptying his thoughts onto his website, Ironcladwords.com, he can be found working on a multitude of projects that range from video games to podcasts about Batman to YouTube shorts to adventuring into the wide world with his wife and dog. You can also find him on Twitter and Tumblr.

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• Authors receive ~80% of your tip, after necessary transaction and administrative fees. Even small change makes a difference. • Permalink • Tag: The Spark