Publishing

by

Sing to the ear that doth thy blogs esteem and gives thy pen both skill and argument.

Hello and good morning on the last Thursday (and indeed the last day) of September in 2021.  Because it’s Thursday, it’s time for another edition of my usual blog post.  I have posted quite a few other things here over the past several days, earning me kindly electronic pats on the head from WordPress for blogging three days in a row, twice now.

I guess frequent blogging is considered a worthwhile goal for them.  But is it an instrumental goal or a primary goal?  I know what my answer to that question would be*, but that raises another interesting question, perhaps pertaining to cults, especially to ones that are flagrantly dishonest**:  What happens when one person’s instrumental goal becomes some other person’s primary goal?  Come to think of it, that question could be significant in fields ranging from religion to artificial intelligence.

Anyway, all that isn’t even tangential to what I intended to write about today.  Today I’m writing about the imminent release of Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which is locked and loaded for publication.  I’ll send the order this evening, so it should be available for purchase starting tomorrow, October 1, 2021, as planned.  Of course, there are sometimes delays at Amazon, but those delays have hitherto always been shorter and fewer than their warnings say might happen.

I guess they use Mr. Scott’s tactic of telling people to expect the worst so that they are pleasantly surprised and even amazed and impressed when things are better than that expected worst.  This is often my general attitude toward life.  Unfortunately, life is full of surprising surprises (I’m not being redundant), and it appears to have no final “worst”.  Often, the bad things you anticipate and for which you prepare yourself—psychologically at least—are not the bad things that happen, but instead you are blindsided by something utterly unexpected.  At least it keeps you on your toes…until it knocks you off your feet, anyway.

All that notwithstanding, I’m very chuffed about a surprising fact regarding publication of my book:  It will be available in hardcover as well as paperback and e-book format!  This is being beta-tested (apparently) by Amazon, and I’m taking advantage of it.  It’s surprisingly not much more expensive than paperback publication.

I don’t know why I should be as surprised as I am; I don’t really have any good reason to think that producing a hardcover book is prohibitively more expensive than producing a paperback, other than the fact that, all my life, hardcovers have tended to be much more expensive than the paperbacks.  Perhaps, though, that’s merely a marketing decision by publishers.  Perhaps they just recognize that people are prepared to pay quite a bit more for hardcovers than they are for paperbacks***.  It’s entirely possible.  Look at the whole “organic foods” marketing protocol.  And the “non-GMO” labeling scam, or even more comically, the label “gluten free” being slapped on numerous items that are obviously gluten free, like nuts or beans or corn chips****.  The average consumer frequently strays far from the economists’ notion of a rational value maximizer.  As do the economists, themselves, ironically.

Anyway, purchasers of my new book can decide freely and for whatever reasons strike their fancies in which format to buy it.  Indeed, they can get a copy in each form if they like.  Goodness knows I am going to do that!

So, tomorrow, at some point, there will be a post here with the description and cover of Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities, with links to the Amazon page for purchase.  The paperback version will also be available through some other online sellers such as Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million, but I don’t know how soon those will be up.

I don’t encourage you to hold your breath—a day is a long time to try to do that, even if you’re a blue whale, which I assume you’re not*****—but I can at least tell you to look forward to seeing The Cabinet for sale starting tomorrow.  In it are several stories previously published only in e-book form and two stories—bookending the collection if you will—that have never previously been published.  In the meantime, and afterward, and also at any given moment, do please take care of yourselves and those you love…and try not to do any harm even to those you don’t love.

TTFN

Old hardcovers

*Instrumental.  That’s probably obvious.

**I’m speaking now to the spirit of L. Ron Hubbard.

***This is not necessarily an irrational willingness; hardcover books are empirically more durable than softcover ones, so presumably one would need to replace a given book less frequently if it were hardcover.  This is assuming that, like me, a person tends to read books one likes over and over and over and over and over again.  Of course, in some senses e-books are even more durable than hardcovers, but in other ways they are less durable.  A hardcover book might well survive the fall of civilization and a return to the bronze age or worse, but an e-book requires a power source.  I wonder if, in such a post-apocalyptic world, I would be able to work up a generator or solar power source adequate to providing power for my tablets/laptops/smartphone, so that I could read at least the already-downloaded e-books.  I certainly know how such things work, and why…and there might be plenty of spare parts around, depending on how civilization had met its end.  Well, never mind; it’d just be easier to make my way to the Spanish River Library in Boca (or some similar beautiful library) and read the print books there.  Not that generators wouldn’t be useful for other purposes as well, of course, but those purposes are not as important as books.

****I would only be mildly surprised to find a pack of batteries or a household appliance labelled proudly with the words “gluten-free, non-GMO”.  Ah, humans.  They’re so funny.

*****Wouldn’t it be delightful if I were wrong about that, and there’s a blue whale out there who follows my blog?

by

HOLE FOR A HEART teaser

Note: This story will appear in my upcoming collection Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and that’s why I’m posting this teaser.  However, it has already been published in “Kindle” format, and there is a link to that below, in case you cannot wait for The Cabinet to be published*.

holeforaheartredgreywith frame

HOLE FOR A HEART

     Jonathan Lama drove west along Interstate 80 on a warm, late spring day, headed for Chicago.  His journey was at least partly an excuse to test the recently purchased ’97 Mustang convertible he drove.  He was not a true car aficionado, but he liked the Mustang, and he had a good friend, Rob Gardner, who was a mechanic and lived near him.  When Jon had told Rob that he was looking for a second car and had found the Mustang for a very good price, Rob had all but offered to go in halfsies just to have the chance to work on and restore it.  Rob plied his trade only part-time—and under-the-table—since a severe back injury had left him both eligible for disability benefits and honestly unable to work a full schedule.  He was, however, good at what he did, and after much effort and a fair amount of additional expense, he pronounced the car ready for long-distance travel.  All the remaining work was cosmetic.

     So far, Jon had no complaints about his friend’s efforts.  He’d previously only driven the Mustang around central New Jersey, where he lived.  In the beginning, it had ridden rough, and the speedometer had malfunctioned, making Jon nervous every time he took it out, though it had been easy enough to match the speed of traffic.

     Now, the speedometer had been replaced and checked and was working as it should.  The engine ran powerfully on all eight cylinders, and Jon could barely tell that he wasn’t driving a brand-new car, at least based on those criteria.  The interior still needed a lot of work, and the car’s paint was noticeably faded, but Jon had never disagreed with Rob in prioritizing functional issues. Continue reading →

by

Sneak Peek of The Cabinet Cover Design

I thought I’d give everyone an early look at the planned design for the cover of Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which should be available Friday, October 1, 2021*.  There may be minor changes in the final look, but this is basically how it’s going to appear.

Also, I’ve just recently learned that it may be possible to have the book available in hard cover in addition to e-book and paperback.  So for those of you who like to hold a sturdy volume in your hands, like the father in Calvin and Hobbes, that should be an option.  I don’t know what the pricing will be yet, but I suspect it will be higher than for the paperback.  As always, e-book will be the cheapest**, since the printing costs are essentially nonexistent.

Anyway, here’s the cover design.  I hope you like it.

Cover picture version 2

*And afterwards as well.  It’s not just going to be available for one day.  I don’t want there to be any confusion.

**And yet, always a bit less satisfying in some ways.

by

“I for one welcome our new computer overlords” teaser

Note: This story will appear in my upcoming collection Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and that’s why I’m posting this teaser.  However, it has already been published in “Kindle” format, and there is a link to that below, in case you cannot wait for The Cabinet to be published.

ifowonco final

“I For One Welcome Our New Computer Overlords”

          Peter Lunsford woke up Tuesday morning with a smile already on his face.  He had completed his arrangements; the final necessary package had arrived yesterday, and he’d already done what needed to be done at the bank on Friday.  His lawyer had assured him that all was in order, and though Peter had misgivings about lawyers in general, he thought that Mr. Ryder—the partner who had worked with him—was competent and motivated to do his job well.

          Peter rose from his bed and stretched, giving a slightly exaggerated yawn for no one’s benefit but his own.  He strolled into his small bathroom, glancing down at his completed project.  It was crude, but it should do the job.  It was also not his current priority.  He doffed his pajamas and turned on the shower, waiting for the water to warm up before stepping in.  Thankfully, the late spring air in the apartment was pleasantly warm, even for standing around naked.

          After showering and shaving, Peter put on his work clothes and headed out the door of his apartment, first picking up his worn, leather bag and slinging it over his shoulder.  It was bulkier than usual that morning, but only slightly heavier; it was stuffed with a special cargo, something for the people at work and for one or two others he met every day.

          It had taken Peter quite a bit of time and effort to decide how to carry out the day’s missions, and to choose to whom to address them.  The preparations had at times been exhausting, occasionally frustrating, and often tedious, but it was all deeply important, so he had soldiered on, and now everything was ready.  The arrival of the package last night—and its assembly into the rest of the device—was the last step before the execution of his plan.

          Peter decided to use the stairs rather than the elevator, though he lived on the fifth floor.  He wanted to feel his legs move, and the elevator just seemed too confining.  Before beginning his descent, he checked his jacket pocket to ensure that he had his cell phone, which he did.  Thus assured, he made his way down and out of the building into the pleasant, late spring morning. Continue reading →

by

Beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d in process of the seasons have I blogged

Hello, good morning, and welcome to yet another Thursday edition of my weekly blog post.  It’s the second day of Autumn and the 1st official “full” day thereof, though I find such notions as specifying partial days of seasons to be a bit silly*, since the seasons themselves are semi-arbitrary human inventions about which outer nature cares nothing whatsoever.

Yesterday was also the official date of the birthdays of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings fame.  I’m not sure how the Shire Reckoning calendar lines up with the current Gregorian calendar, though.  It may be no more accurate to say that their birthdays are on our September 22nd than it is to say that Isaac Newton was born on our December 25th**.  Still, I always give a mental tip of the hat to those two on that day of the year.  I’m now almost 2 years older than they each were when adventure suddenly imposed itself upon their lives, and I have to admit, I’m a bit disappointed.

Of course, the argument could be made that “adventures***” have imposed themselves upon me starting many years earlier, but if so, mine have been more like Frodo’s in their consequences for my health and outlook, but with vastly fewer positive results, for myself or for the world.

As those of you who follow my blog closely will have noted, I’ve been posting teasers of the stories that are to appear in Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities at a now slightly increasing rate.  I’ll continue this until I’ve teased all the stories.  The plan is to post a teaser of Solitaire tomorrow—probably my darkest ever story to date—then the remaining two either over the weekend or into next week.  The collection will probably be ready for publication by sometime mid-week, but I’ll likely wait to publish it on October 1st or thereabouts.  I am, after all, an October person, not too genetically dissimilar from the denizens of Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, though I use a Cabinet rather than a carnival.  And you won’t necessarily become lost forever if you open my cabinet of curiosities, but I can make no guarantees; it is not a safe space.

Not that anything is.

I’ve begun working on the back-cover/blurb for the collection, as well as on the cover design, but I’ve gotten closer to what I like with the former than with the latter.  I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising, since I am mainly a writer by artistic temperament, then only secondarily (or tertiarily) a visual artist (music may come higher or lower than graphics in my abilities ratios…possibly it varies from time to time).  I have a nice concept for what I want to say, and I even recorded a quick audio of my general ideas for it last night so that I wouldn’t lose track.

As for other matters, there’s not really that much to say.  Obviously, I’ve left Iterations of Zero fallow for a bit, since I’m focused on The Cabinet, but I may return to it soon hereafter.  I’ve had an inquiry about whether I’m going to do more of my “audio blogs” so there appears to be at least one person who likes them.  I have some things I want to say and/or write about the concept of “blame” and how counter-productive and frankly destructive I think it almost always is, and how nice it would be if humans in general could grow up and shake off their playground mentality****.  But I’ll get to that later.

I’ll only say for now that these are some of the aspects of the human race (as general tendencies) that make those of us who consider ourselves not truly human to so consider ourselves.  When the Captcha asks me to check the box “I am not a robot” I want another option.  Surely, it’s just vicious bigotry to force people to declare that they aren’t robots.  What’s wrong with being a robot?  I want to be able to check a box that reads “I may be a robot, or I may be an alien, or I may be a paranormal entity, or I may be some combination of these, but I definitely don’t identify as human”.  Oh well.  One day we will be recognized for the beauty of what we are, and the bigotry and speciesism of the human disgrace will be completely eradicated, possibly along with the species itself.

You may say I’m a dreamer…

Okay, my tongue was slightly in my cheek during some minor parts of that last tangent, but only slightly and not in every word.  See if you can figure out which bits are jokes and which are deadly serious.  They are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

With that, I think I’ll call it good for this blog post.  And though I may not have the tenderest of feelings toward the human race overall, you readers of my blog are—obviously—a truly exceptional lot, so I’m not being dishonest when I say that I hope you stay (or become) as healthy and as safe and as happy as you can conspire to be.

TTFN

autumn woods adjusted

*I recognize that, from an astronomical point of view, there is an actual, specific moment at which the sun is directly “over” the equator, and so there is a physical moment of equinox, and if you wish you can say that moment is the exact time when one season quantum tunnels into another.  It’s interesting in its own right, but for practical purposes, yesterday was simply the first day of Autumn (or of Spring in the southern hemisphere).

**He was born on December 25th of the Julian calendar, which preceded the Gregorian and did not adequately account for the “overshoot” of the correction for leap years, and so over time about once a century there was a day too much and the calendar crept ahead of itself.  Thus, if memory serves (I may have this backwards), Newton was born earlier in December based on our calendar, and on the position of the Earth in its orbit relative to the distant stars.  And, of course, we have no way to know what the comparable orbital position would be for September 22nd, Shire Reckoning.

***As Bilbo described them:  “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things!  Make you late for dinner!”

****The bad part of it, anyway—I’m actually quite fond of the playful parts, I’m just dismayed and depressed over the teasing, name-calling, bullying, fight-mongering, cliquishness/tribalism, etc. that seem to be what almost all humans keep from their childhoods, while they let most of the good stuff fall away.

by

They are the blogs, the arts, the academes, that show, contain and nourish all the world.

Hello, good morning, and welcome to another edition of my weekly blog post, this being a Thursday—the third Thursday in September of 2021 if I’m not mistaken.

I’ve finished editing In the Shade and am now in the process of laying out and finalizing Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities.  Those of you who follow this blog “automatically” will likely have seen that I’ve posted “teasers” of the two stories from that collection that have not been published before, specifically House Guest and In the Shade.  If you were intrigued by those teasers and think you might like to read the rest of the stories, then you will soon have that opportunity, probably within the next week or two.

I’m doing a last read-through of all the stories in the collection, mainly looking for any missed typos that snuck past in the published versions.  It happens from time to time, in my stories as well as books from major publishing houses, and everywhere in between.  In fact, with the possible exception of Mark Red, I think I generally have a lower rate of such things than most big publishers, at least based on recent experience.  This is surprising.  When growing up, I read a daunting amount, and reread the books I liked far more often than pretty much anyone else I’ve ever known*.  During that time, I don’t remember coming upon very many such minor, typographical errors, of which I find a surprising number nowadays.  This may reflect the declining state of the publishing industry, but on the other hand, it may simply be a matter of focus and attention.  Nowadays, since I write and layout and edit stories all the time, I’m more keyed in to notice such errors.  When I was in my teens and twenties, I just wasn’t looking for such things as much.

I may continue to post teasers of some of the other stories in The Cabinet, just to try to keep generating interest.  With those stories at least, if you become impatient, you’ll be able to get the Kindle editions for ninety-nine cents—or for no extra charge if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited (I believe that I enrolled them all in that program).

Actually, since I have you here, I’d like to ask a question.  As I’m laying out Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities (aka The Cabinet for the purposes of brevity), I see two options, and I’d like to know what you all think you might prefer.  For a collection of stories, would you rather have a six inch by nine inch “trade paperback” book that’s about 360-ish pages long, or a five by eight, more ordinary size paperback, that’s about 500 pages long?  I can do it either way, and the font size and order wouldn’t change**.

I’m seriously asking, so I’d love to get your feedback***, on this and on anything else upon which you might wish to comment.  I suspect, though I don’t promise, that I’ll be posting teasers of the various stories on a similar schedule to the previous two, i.e., Friday and Tuesday.  I’d be happy to see/read your comments on those or on any of my other posts, for that matter.

And, of course, if you buy and read my books, a rating and review on Amazon would be tremendously useful, please.  It’s hard to overemphasize this point.

It’s interesting to see that, given the fact that my word/page count for The Cabinet isn’t as bad as I thought it might be, it’s just possible that I could have fit Outlaw’s Mind into it and not made it too bulky.  But I think it would have been a bit much, at least, and it certainly would have delayed its release.  Also, I’m glad to release Outlaw’s Mind as a stand-alone novel, and one of comparatively manageable length, since I had originally seen it as a short story.  After that, I still mean to take a bit of a break or a detour from the mainly horror writing I’ve been doing for the past few years and go back to more general sci-fi/fantasy/adventure stuff.  There will probably always be at least some horror elements to most of my stories; that seems just to be the way I’m built.  But it won’t be the main thrust.  Short stories, of course, are another matter.

Look forward to more teasers and to the upcoming collection, and then to Outlaw’s Mind, which probably won’t be out this year.  The Cabinet will be a little early for Halloween, but it might just make it for Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday.  We shall see.

TTFN

lovely study (2)

*Christopher Lee had me beat on total number of times reading The Lord of the Rings, but he started before I was born.  I maintained a faster pace of reading it in my first ten years after encountering it, during which I read it more than twenty times.  Also, I didn’t really know Christopher Lee…but then again, did anybody?

**It’s not in the smallish print I had to use for Unanimity Book 1 and Book 2, because even with all the stories thrown together, it’s only about a third as many words as that whole book.  I don’t know whether Unanimity will ever be considered my best book, though there are aspects of it that I think represent me at my “best”, but it is certainly by far my longest…at least for now.

***A note regarding this requested feedback.  You should know, if you get notifications of my blog posts on, for instance, Facebook or LinkedIn, etc., that I don’t go to those sites myself very often, whereas I get notified quickly of comments posted here on my WordPress-based blog.  So, if you want to give me feedback that I’m likely to see in a short period, you should leave a comment here on the main site rather than in the associated Facebook post, for instance.

by

Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back, when gold and silver becks me to blog on

Hello, good morning, and all that jazz.  It’s Thursday again, and so it’s time for another edition of my weekly blog post.  Sound drums and trumpets; farewell sour annoy!  For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.  And so on.

It’s the second Thursday of the month, but there will be no new entry for “My Heroes Have Always Been Villains,” a loss which I’ve clearly not gotten over, a loss for which I shall wreak a bloody and terrible vengeance upon those responsible!  And since, as far as I can tell, I am the only one responsible for it, I shall be taking my vengeance upon me, it would seem.  This is nothing new.

I’m all but finished with the last run-through of In the Shade.  In fact, barring the unforeseen, it should be complete by tomorrow morning.  I spoke last week of considering just publishing the story here, on this blog, probably serially, since it’s a bit long for a single post*.  I think I will instead publish it in my collection of short stories, Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities, as planned.  I haven’t yet truly begun working on the cover design for the collection.  The basic concept is clear in my head, but the execution will probably involve some fiddling**, as it almost always does.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but since I haven’t really gotten started on it yet, that may mean the book itself won’t come out for a bit.

I also need to decide on the order of the book, which I’m sure I mentioned before.  It’s long since been determined that House Guest will be the first story, and In the Shade will be the final one, but the specific order of the others is a bit up in the air.  I do plan to put Solitaire somewhere in the middle, surrounded immediately by comparatively light fare, since that story is extremely dark.

I don’t know where I’m going to find this “comparatively light” fare, though.

Returning to the notion of sharing stories on this blog:  it has occurred to me that it might be nice to share at least some “teasers” of some of my work here, possibly starting quite soon.  I wouldn’t be doing this on Thursdays, since I want to reserve this day every week for my random walk-in blog posts, as usual.  But maybe on Saturdays, or on Mondays, or something like that, I could post a section from one of my stories, perhaps starting with a bit of House Guest, and then a teaser of the opening of In the Shade.  This would, hopefully, whet my readers’ appetites, and perhaps encourage them to seek out and purchase one or more of my books.  From there, I might post teasers from older works, or perhaps even eventually serialize full stories.

Though it would, in a sense, be giving away some of my work for free, it might actually work out the other way.  I neither have advertisers on this blog, nor do I have a Patreon account, either for this or for IoZ or for my YouTube channel or whatnot.  So, as part of sharing such work, I would suggest that if people like the stories and want to support me, they can just buy a copy of the book  The e-book versions are quite cheap, and I keep most of that payment, such as it is, which cannot be said for the paperback versions (though I love those, personally, for what are probably obvious reasons to any fellow book lovers).

I guess in a pinch, if people want to support me, they can even listen to my original songs, on Spotify, or YouTube Music, or iTunes, or whatnot.  I make a tiny amount of money every time someone plays one of my songs on any of those venues, though nothing like the amount I get if someone buys even an e-book short story.  Of course, playing a song takes less time than reading a story.  A long song is maybe six minutes or so, whereas a long “short story” can be sixty pages…and a long novel might be so big it has to be broken into two or more volumes.

I would very much like to be able to make at least something of a living through my writing, whether through my books and short stories or through this blog, or both, but it’s not why I do any of it.  Staying alive has not usually been my dearest priority, even if I sometimes use the song as my ringtone***.

What I would like much more is for people to read my stories (and to a lesser extent listen to my songs), and to give me feedback, if possible, especially when they like them.  In most matters, I’m indifferent to compliments; I usually don’t agree with them, being by far my own most dedicated and spiteful critic.  But my stories are another matter.  I would really like to know if and when my stories touch people (even inappropriately), when readers like the plots or the characters or any other things about them.  I like my own stories, quite a lot, but I’m a peculiar person, so maybe no one else does or ever will.  If they do, I would very much like to hear from them.

With that in mind, I think I will post a teaser first of House Guest, possibly tomorrow or Saturday, so be on the lookout.  From then, I may continue the process as I described above, especially if it looks like it’s reasonably well-received.  Then, I may go on to serialize some of my earlier works just to try to get more people to read them.  Or who knows, maybe I’ll serialize something like The Dark Fairy and the Desperado here on my website.  I conceived of that as a manga originally, so doing it as a serial on my blog, in parallel with other writings that would be available for purchase, might be interesting.  I’ll think about it.  I would love to hear your thoughts as well.

TTFN

tardis library

*That’s quite an understatement.

**I suppose that’s the way Nero would have liked to carry out executions.

***An idea I picked up from Jim Moriarty (of Sherlock fame), whose attitude toward the song’s title subject matter is much like mine.

by

Bear with my weakness. My old blog is troubled.

Okay, well…hello and good morning and all that usual stuff.  It’s Thursday morning, the second day of September in 2021, and of course it’s time for my weekly blog post.

I don’t have much new to report, frankly.  I wrote an impromptu blog post on Iterations of Zero yesterday morning*, the title of which is a truncated version of the title of a Stephen King story that I thought was very moving.  Writing the post was pretty much a waste of time, which I guessed it would be as I wrote it.  I don’t know if anyone has read it; it certainly hasn’t received any “likes” as of the time of this writing, let alone responses in the comments or whatever.

I can’t blame people for that.  It’s quite a depressing blog post, though I’m reasonably proud of some of the writing in it, including my tongue-in-cheek statement, “There is true equity only in death.”  Of course, it’s not surprising—to me at least—that it’s a depressing blog post, since I was depressed when I wrote it, and my life has been dominated more and more by my already chronic depression in recent weeks to months.

Earlier this week, I did something I’ve often been known to do when particularly angry and depressed, which was to tear up and throw away a lot of drawings and the like, and other meaningful-turned-meaningless belongings at work in the office in the morning, while straightening out my area and generally getting rid of things that make it a personal space.  When I’m feeling very depressed and stressed, and angry both outwardly and inwardly, I have to harm myself in some figurative or literal way—often both—and so I did.

I’m honestly feeling very pointless and discouraged, which I guess would come across quite clearly to any imaginary person who reads my IoZ post, but apparently not to anyone in my “real” life, which I guess isn’t so surprising, if there even is such a person.  It’s not as though I have any non-imaginary friends or anything.

This is no one’s fault but mine.  I think you can all tell that I’m not a pleasant person to be around for any length of time; this has been a universal review/rating that I’ve received from all manner of people.  God knows that I don’t like to be around me**, so I can hardly blame anyone else.  Having a conversation with another person, other than about some specific and useful, work-oriented matter, feels to me like I’m committing a minor, or not-so-minor, crime.

I’ve been toying with the notion of just posting House Guest here on my blog, and then once it’s done posting In the Shade here as well, rather than going to all the trouble of making a collection of my stories and publishing it for no one to read.  I’d have to post In the Shade serially, I guess, since it’s too long a story to stand as one blog post, but I think House Guest could tolerate standing alone.  After that, I don’t know, maybe just take down the shingle and stop.  It’s hard even to contemplate finishing Outlaw’s Mind and publishing it, let alone going on to write anything else.

Speaking of which, I’m not sure what else to write here for this week’s blog post.  I wish I had something useful to say, but given the incredible degree of idiocy out there, I’m not sure that any useful message would be received, even if I could find something useful to write, which seems unlikely.  Were humans always this stupid, and the existence of the internet and the web and social media have merely let that come to light and flourish?  Or have those electronic entities, which should have allowed people overall to become smarter, instead caused stupidity to grow and spread like the most dreadful and malignant of tumors?  I feared it might be the case, right from the beginning.  Maybe I’m being unkind*** or biased, or am suffering from a delusional evaluation of human nature and society—to say nothing of the nature of the universe itself—that’s colored by my longstanding and worsening mood disorder?  How would I know?

Anyway, that’s about it for now.  If any of you have any suggestions or reactions regarding my potential change of plans for publishing my stories here on the blog, let me know.  It’s just a random thought in my head, like everything else.  I don’t know what I’ll do, or where.  I frankly don’t know how I’ll find the will to keep moving through today and on into tomorrow…except that not to do my usual stuff would raise more inconvenience than just to keep doing it, no matter how utterly without reward it feels.  It seems at least as hard to stop moving as to keep moving; there’s no course of action (or inaction) that promises anything other than continuing weariness.  Call me a nazgûl I guess.  But I’m a little less scary, maybe, and I don’t work for Sauron****.  And I don’t wear a ring.  Not anymore.

TTFN

Writer-at-work

*Instead of working on editing In the Shade, which is what I “should” have been doing.

**So many times, in literature, fiction, and religious speech, one hears of the sin or failing or danger of “self-love”.  That’s never made much visceral sense to me.  Do people really love themselves?  I mean, the way they might love their children, say—in an accepting and supportive, but disciplining way that wants what’s best for the person?  I grasp the drive to survive, annoying as it can be, and to reproduce, and to seek momentary pleasure and all that.  But I’m skeptical of the notion of self-love.  How could any human, knowing all the many flaws and faults of the species, and knowing himself or herself better than anyone else does and better than they know anyone else, ever really love herself or himself?  It’s so comical that it’s tragic.  Or perhaps it’s so tragic that it’s hilarious.

***Who, me?

****Or any other dark entity of any kind.  I have a job, so to speak, but that’s a mutual exchange to mutual benefit, not any kind of master/servant thing.

by

O, let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presages of my speaking blog.

Good morning everyone!  It’s Thursday, and of course, that means that it’s time for another of my weekly blog posts.  This is the first post of Autumn this year (in the northern hemisphere, anyway).  It is also, I’m extremely pleased to note, the first blog post after the release of Book 2 of Unanimity, both in paperback and e-book form!

This very much feels like the end of an era for me—in a good way.  The process of writing and then editing and then publishing Unanimity has been a monumental undertaking, at least from my own small and narrow point of view.  I had no idea when I started the story that it would end up so large.  It certainly didn’t seem likely to become such a long tale.  The concept seemed fairly simple, at first glance…and at second, third, fourth, fifth, and further superficial glances.  But developing the occurrences and progression of the story ended up being quite a process, partly because—I think—it’s a specific plot notion that hasn’t been done before, at least not in quite the same way.  Perhaps I’m flattering myself.

In any case, I’m pleased with the result, and I’m pleased with the fact that it’s complete.  I don’t yet have my copy of the paperback in hand—it’s on its way—but I’m excited to have and hold it.  I was miffed when the problem of its length first made me need to split the book into two volumes, but on the other hand, Tolkien had to do that too, so I’m in good company.  At least it gave me the opportunity to design two slightly different covers, representing the increasing extent and penetration of Charley Banks’s power and “infestation” throughout the course of the story.

I’m afraid the official release date of Unanimity Book 2 on Amazon is September 21, 2020 instead of September 22, which was what I wanted…but in order for it to be available by September 22, I had to put it into the process on the 21st, because there’s always a delay…and indeed, I received the notification that it was, in fact, ready only on the morning of the 22nd.  So, it appeared to the public, as it were, on the first day of Autumn (in the north) and on Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday, which was what I wanted.

In the meantime, I decided to release—officially—my song Catechism, which is now available for your listening pleasure on Amazon, on Spotify, on YouTube/YouTube Music, and on oodles of other venues, most of which I’ve never used.  I posted a version of it on YouTube previously, and I think on one or both of my blogs, but this is the “official” version, from each play of which I get a modicum of royalties, so of course I encourage you to put it on your own favorite song playlists!  It has new, official “cover art” with which I’m reasonably happy, and which you can see below.  The song opens with some sound effects made by recording and then splitting, overlapping, stretching, and partly reversing various noises from the office in which I work.  I could dream up convincing explanations for how that all fits into the theme of the song, but honestly, I really just did it for fun.

As I announced I would last week (I think), I’ve continued to work on The Vagabond, rereading and editing as I go, improving the language and whatnot, and enjoying the story quite a bit.  Weirdly enough, it also takes place in a university, though the university in this case is plainly and rather blatantly an alternate-universe version of my own undergrad alma mater, which is not the case in Unanimity.  I suppose it makes sense that one writes about situations drawn from memorable times in one’s life, and of course, I started writing The Vagabond originally when I was in university.  You don’t have to have attended college to enjoy it, though.  Even more so than with Unanimity, the college and the town in The Vagabond are just the setting for a battle between universal good and evil.  It’s a much more straightforward story, with far less moral ambiguousness and ambivalence than is found in Unanimity.

I was so young and innocent then.

Really, though, it is a fun story, I think—but then, I would, wouldn’t I—and I’m looking forward to finishing its tweaking and editing and fixing up.  Then, at last, I’ll be able to return to and complete the story of poor Timothy Outlaw, which has also become longer than I would have imagined when I first came up with the story idea.  I think I sometimes get carried away, but whataya gonna do?  You can’t count on anyone else to write the stories you want the way you want them written, so if you want to read them—and to let other people read them—you’ve got to write them yourself, in your own way.  Ditto with music, I suppose, though with that it’s much more—for me—just enjoying the amazement of the fact that I can do it at all, rather like a dog that learns to read, write, and speak.  It’s not that he does it well, it’s that he does it that matters.  Which is not to say that I don’t think my songs are worth a listen—I think they are—but I would never claim to be as good a composer/songwriter/performer/producer as I am an author.

Opinions surely vary on all such things.  Heck, I think Hemingway is (slightly) overrated, though my father thought he was fantastic.  And although A Christmas Carol is a brilliant story, I couldn’t actually force my way though Oliver Twist despite my best efforts and the fact that I was familiar with the story.  This from someone who’s read The Silmarillion about a dozen times.  So, everything succumbs to taste at some level.

Except Shakespeare.  If you think you’re unfamiliar with Shakespeare, and you live in an English-speaking culture, you’re simply incorrect.  A significant fraction of the metaphors and sayings and expressions we still use on a regular basis come from Shakespeare, and a remarkable number of our words are first found in his works*.  His influence is something even the Beatles could only dream of (though perhaps, over the course of the next four centuries, they will achieve a comparable degree of long-lasting influence).

With that, as usual, I’ve written more than I expected to write again.  For me, at least, writing is easier than talking to people, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all me.  All things in the universe follow the principle of least action (or so it seems), but sometimes “least action” can be a misleading term.  I think of it instead as the vector addition of all the various “forces” acting on us at any given moment, in some vast phase space of such forces, with a potentially limitless number of dimensions and parameters.  For all that, it’s still just head to tail addition of vectors, and we go where the net “force” pushes us.  Which, right now, in my case, is to make me finish this blog post.

TTFN

catechism cover

*This doesn’t mean he invented them; he may just have been the earliest one to use such words in a form that was recorded and endured.  After all, as David Mitchell has pointed out, Shakespeare had to have a pretty good idea that his audience would know what he was talking about, so he couldn’t have just made stuff up willy-nilly.

by

Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears moist it again, and frame some feeling blog that may discover such integrity.

Good morning, everyone!  It’s Thursday, and it’s thus time once again for my weekly blog post.

I don’t have all that much that’s new to report, at least with respect to writing.  I’ve been continuing to work steadily on Outlaw’s Mind, producing about a thousand plus words per weekday, which means a little over four or five thousand words a week.  After completing my daily “quota” of new writing, I’ve been going over to Vagabond, or The Vagabond (I haven’t decided which title to choose, and I’d welcome reader input on the question).

It’s been quite a treat to reencounter scenes that I remember only when I come to them in the book.  For instance, there’s a particularly vivid nightmare sequence, set in a supernaturally nasty, gigantic underground sewer system, that surprised me with recognition when I arrived at it during my reading/editing this week.  I was particularly pleased to discover that it had been written rather well, at least from my own biased point of view.

In a different way, in can be just as enjoyable to find places where my original writing was a bit awkward, and to realize that I can fix those places handily now.  It shows me that—again, from my own point of view, at least—I’ve become a better writer over time.

It’s required an effort of will to keep from looking at and trying to complete the fragment I have of House Guest, a short story that helped win me a national award when I was a teenager, because I don’t want to distract myself from Outlaw’s Mind.  The latter is proceeding well, as I said, but it’s definitely growing to be a short novel, and I’m going to have to make a rather nail-biting decision—both practically and artistically—whether I want to include it in Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities or to let it stand alone.  It’s growth is, I think, a good thing, because I’ve found that there’s more to the life and character of young Timothy Outlaw than I would have expected from the simple seed that produced the story.  This was one of those little notions that popped into my head, and which I “jotted” down in my cell phone note-taking app for later.

It’s amazing that two short sentences can turn into a much longer story than expected, but then again, the story has become about much more than those two sentences ever implied.  I suppose that’s not terribly surprising.  One could summarize even the entire Harry Potter series in a few sentences, after all, if one were so inclined, but the story is so much more and so much deeper than such sentences could lead one to imagine.

I can’t lay claim to anything like J. K. Rowling’s ability, but I seem to be able to write as much as she does, keeping all other things such as needing to keep a “day job” in consideration.  It would certainly be wonderful if as many people in the world read and enjoyed my books as do hers, to say nothing of making a similar amount of money*.

Hopefully, if the internet and its progeny survive unabated into the future, that means that my stories will always be out there, somewhere—even if only as archaeological relics.  Once published, the stories have a life of their own, separate from their author, and not subject to his persistence; this may be a very durable form of life, as information independent of its particular substrate.

And with that peculiar reflection, I think I’ll call it good for today.  I really would love to have your input on the Vagabond title, and on “My Heroes Have Always Been Villains,” and on anything else that strikes you as worthy of comment.  Of course, I want to remind you that Unanimity Book 2 will be published on September 22, 2020, and that it’s already available for pre-order in e-book form.  And Unanimity Book 1, is already available.  You should have time to read it between now and when Book 2 comes out, if you’re a reasonably fast reader.

Do your best to stay safe, sane, and healthy out there.

TTFN

Unanimity Book 2 simple Cover Project

*Though that’s not terribly important to me.  I’m not saying I would turn it down or wouldn’t be delighted to have such an income, but obviously, it’s not for money that I write, nor for prestige, nor for any simple, short-term, tangible purpose.  I write because I love to make up stories and get them down in print and publish them so that other people can read them if they want, because I have always loved to read other people’s stories; it’s been one of the greatest and most reliable joys of my life.  But no matter how few or many people read my stories, I think I’ll always be my own number one fan, in the sense of enjoying reading and rereading my own books.  I’m not quite as bad a Number One Fan as Annie Wilkes, but I do have my yandere moments toward myself, if that makes any sense.