cover work - new 'secret sidewalk'

'secret sidewalk' was partly inspired by the town of morro bay, and especially one bit which takes place in its seedy cinderblock aquarium. i mashed up this old photo of its poor captive octopus using gimp.

cover work - new 'zombie nights'

figured my old 'danger' sweatshirt ought to come in handy, considering that company is now a zombie itself, having been murdered by microsoft, and now staggering to its end of life

zombie nights feedback via obooko

from Kevin

: Hey, i don't know if you were wanting criticism or review for your novel Zombie Nights, but I was gonna give you my impression if you want or care.

I really enjoyed it, it flowed very easily yet sophiscatedly at the same time. The story was very original - most zombie stories are the same old thing: theres zombies, people run away from em, some make it some dont, open ended ending - the end. its very tiresome. Zombie Nights was really cool in how it went completely against the norm. The only negative feedback id have to give is that when it got to the gang and they way they acted and talked, it felt a little corny. of course us not being legitmate bangers, its kind of hard to write for scumbags so i could definitely the difficulty in writing for them. but otherwise, everything about the book was great. i honestly wish it was longer because there was lots of potential to expand on from the premise. but what you did get in there was ver ingenius. Fun read. Great job!

and my reply ...

Hi Kevin
Thanks for the comments - I always like to hear from people who've read something I've wrote. I know I really enjoyed writing 'Zombie Nights' but this is the first thing I've heard from anyone out there (other than friends and family). I tend to imagine people getting really mad to find out it's not the usual zombie thing, and angrily clicking on the 'move to trash' button :}

I'm sure you're right about the gang. They're really just a bunch of overgrown middle school bullies, and the truth is I lifted them from another book i was writing at the same time, and just posted on smashwords.com - called 'Raisinheart' - which is a pretty mainstream (and very depressing) little book about bullies in middle school. Rick Fripperone is the main bully of the second story in there, and a young Dennis Hobbs is also featured (no Racine, though!). Hobbs and Racine, by the way, are also in another little book I also finished lately, a crazy sci-fi romp called 'Death Ray Butterfly', so I kind of used these same characters in three parallel universes. I guess I didn't get enough of them in any one story.

Thanks again
Tom

Raisinheart - now in print

                                   in paperback from lulu and in ebook formats from smashwords

good writer, bad person

this interesting excerpt:

[Dickens] gave an interview in 1862 to a young Russian journalist named Fyodor Dostoevsky which Slater guesses Dickens thought would never see the light of day:
"He told me that all the good simple people in his novels [like Little Nell] are what he wanted to have been, and his villains were what he was (or rather, what he found in himself), his cruelty, his attacks of causeless enmity towards those who were helpless and looked to him for comfort, his shrinking from those whom he ought to live, being used up in what he wrote.  There were two people in him, he told me: one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite.  From the one who feels the opposite I make my evil characters, from the one who feels as a man ought to feel I try to live my life."

r heart

thought i was one episode away from completing the third part of raisinheart, but once again, sitting down and improvising led me in an unexpected new direction. now i don't know where to go next ... so, i stop, and wait. it'll come.

so it did, the next morning. part three is done. will there be a part four? that's the next question. originally, there were supposed to be four. the hobbs/kruzel connection ... but maybe only an epilogue.

zaudiobook

with the boy heading out for a sleepover/birthday-party weekend, it seems like a good time to do the audio book version of 'zombie nights'. people do like their zombies, so, you've got to give 'em what they want! (not that they want MY zombies, no, they prefer their own, traditional kind). anyway, it's a short book and should be a fun 'read' (or 'listen') once it's up on podiobooks.com

playing the percentages

If having people add your book to their online 'library' is an indication that they really liked the book, then it's been pretty consistent that about 3 of every 100 people who read my books, really like them. How many just plain like them is hard to say, but measuring by how many people listen to the whole audiobook instead of quitting early or in the middle, then around 40-50% like them enough to finish them. I wonder how the 3% rule compares in general. i know there's plenty of stuff i like, but much less that i really really like, maybe in the same proportions. still, our of 1000 readers, that's only 30 of 'em, and even out of a million, it would be only 3000!

Mediocrity

My comment on this article about how self-publishing is ruining the whole idea of 'great literature' (i hope)

This article sounds suspiciously like a new twist on the same old complaint about 'popular' culture in general. Once upon a time it was mass market paperbacks cheapening "great literature". Traditional publishing has long since become a centralized, corporate, profit-centered production of nothing but lowest-common-denominator bestsellers and in-crowd-community-approved 'literature'.

The internet was bound to open this up, just as it has done with video input via sites like youtube. 99% of everything may be crap, but the more stuff there is, the more good stuff there is as well. People will find it, or not. It's not like there's any shortage! We have so little reason to complain in this world.

The whole mythology of "greatness" in literature is tiresome. Who needs it? Let's just read and write and not worry about superstars and immortality and other such transient vanities.

She Weaves a Tender Trap - Lyrics (Swervedriver)

You know she weaves a tender trap
Once you're there's no turning back
She don't even feed you

How does it feel to be fine
Then you're hanging off her line
She don't even thrill you

I will always see it through
I may break my back for you
I have found that it's all true

Are you waiting for the world to get it?
If you're waiting for the world forget it
I'm not waiting for the world

You know she weaves a tender trap
Once you're there's no turning back
She don't even feed you

How does it feel to be drained
Now you're hanging off her train
She don't even thrill me

Take your time don't let it fall
I'm the one who always calls
You're the one for whom life means so

Are you waiting for the world to get it?
If you're waiting for the world forget it
I'm not waiting for the world

You know she weaves a tender trap
Once you're there's no turning back
She don't even believe you

How does it feel to be torn
Then you're hanging off her lawn
She won't even bereave you

I'm the one to see it through
Girl the living final proof
I have found that it's all true

writing uner the influence

I'm an "uppers" writer myself - I imagine you'd have to put Dickens in that category too.

How the Trees got their Leaves

How the Trees got their Leaves

by Johnny Lichtenberg

In the time of the dragon, when the trees were completely bare, there was one force that made everything that magically fell from the clouds, green. One of the trees was tired of being bare, and he says,

“How can I get something to stick to me?”

So he went along and asked the wisest dragon of all.

“I will tell you when I find out”, he says.

Tree wasn't happy, so he asked everybody he knew. Bush said if he knew, he would have already done it. Flower said he was too beautiful and he didn't need anything to stick to him. Monkey just laughed and said,

“Oh, that's too easy. Take the super glue and put it all over yourself!”

So Tree did what Monkey had suggested. When he got to his stump and roots, he sat down and began to cover himself with the white, extra sticky glue, and rooted to the spot he began to wait. Days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months. Months turned to years. Years turned to decades. And after a very long time of waiting, decades turned to centuries and into the time of men. After all that waiting, the trees were cut down and he was standing alone with Monkey. Tree was furious.

“You tricked me!”, Tree says angrily.

“I did not. Look at yourself!”, says Monkey innocently.

Tree looked at himself for the first time in ages. Over the time it had been raining. The natural forces had turned the rain green. Tree called the forms on his body, leaves. Over the years, the tree had dried to be brown. And to this day, the trees are brown with green leaves.

realistik

in a return to the weird world of 'realistic' fiction, i had some ideas tonight about the third part of the 'raisinheart' trilogy: the story of jimmy kruzel. part one concerned some best-friend-dominance and female-usury at the hands of alan belew and dana sanderson. the second concerned the bullied middle-school years courtesy of rick fripperone and his gang, with intervention by savior dennis hobbs. the third part will return to some best-friend-dominance, even if well-meaning, by the same dennis hobbs, combined with adolescent-romantic-obsession-and-unrequited-love. kruzel will be yearning for annie barnes, as does his perceived main rival, dave connor (of subsequent zombie renown). annie, who was his friend in grade school, is far above him now, a popular tomboy who can have her pick but who wants dennis hobbs. hobbs has returned from summer vacation tired of being a dumb football jock, with a burning desire to improve himself. he enlists kruzel as his mentor and soon takes over their study hall period together. in return, he makes annie be nice to kruzel (unbeknownst to the latter). when kruzel tries to get serious, annie lets him down, hard, letting him know she was only being nice to him for the sake of dennis hobbs. well, that's the jist of the story as i see it today ...

Pigeon Weather Productions

reading/writing/listening

reading: 'Martin Chuzzlewit', Charles Dickens. Wonderfully great - story, characterizations, language ...

writing: 'Death Ray Butterfly', finished and published (ebook, free@smashwords, paperback, notfree@lulu).

random influences: writing is a live adventure for me, and every day some small thing might come my way to steer the book in a completely new direction, or simply add some flavor. Along for the ride this time, among other things:

the butterfly on the gas pump (leading me to change the title AND the cover on the next to last day of writing)

my son mentioning that every book he's read lately has someone named Fletcher in it (so I threw one in)

frozen cavemen

subatomic particles

'steampunk' and other assorted pet peeves

listening: while writing the book i was listening to Swervedriver's '99th Dream' almost every day while commuting, and had many great ideas at the same time

on a side note: last week I was reported as the #1 view author on the Smashwords site. I've since fallen to #3, behind a female Erotica author and a gay male Erotica author. It's a dog-eat-dog world of giveaway fiction!

breaking the laws of physics

When a butterfly flaps its wings, pop celebrity physicist Arab "Cricket" Jones gets mad. He hates that saying, and if he gets his way, there won't be any more butterflies flapping around in this world or the next, or the one after that. It's up to Inspector Stanley Mole to track the crazed scientist across multiple alternate realities, encountering more improbabilities along the way than could fit on the head of a subatomic spin. One cold case after another gets even colder in Mole's fantastic pursuit of the ultimate infinite criminal.

Title Change

"Inspector Mole and the Frozen Stiff" is a good title and I like it, but the book has turned out to be something else entirely. Now considering changing the title to "Death Ray Butterfly"

Atheist Barbie (courtesy of Boing Boing)

O'Reilly Maker - Retreat, Reload, Retard

O'Reilly Maker

- Retreat, Reload, Retard

lumberjacks

My son and his friends (all eight years old) had decided to perform the Lumberjack Song (by Monty Python) at their school's "lip sync" program this spring. The idea was shot down by the Woman in Charge, who thought it too inappropriate for young people. She's a fairly "moral" person, as we know (in this case, meaning "one who imposes their version of morality on others whenever they can), and yet, she promised them she would allow them to do it next year, when they were nine! I have to admit, I don't understand either of her decisions, the no this time, or the yes next year. If they want to do it, let them do it. The idea is to have fun and it's funny. I was proud of them for being brave enough to do it. At the same time, whatever ... It's not a federal case.

drunken history

mostly enjoyed this little film about Tesla and Edison (Crispin Glover's my fave). could've down without the drunkeness bits

obooko

pigeon weather productions' books are also now available from obooko, they having downloaded same from lulu.com

almost number one

'Zombie Nights' is rocketing up the charts, about to pass 'Time Zone' as my number one downloaded book of all time. In honor of that, I posted my old 'Diary of a Zombie' video to that page. It had a grand total of 69 YouTube views in the past 3 years. We'll see if it gathers any more now!

People do love zombies, it seems.

Don't know if they like the book much, though. No comments or reviews so far, although a number of people have stashed it in the smashwords libraries, if that's any indicator of anything.

I like my Inspector Mole book. It's coming along nicely, I think, and I'm about to see my way clear to the end. Usually at this point (2/3 written) I suddenly figure out where it has to go. Then I tend to rush headlong to the ending. I'd like to go a little slower this time, put in some more stuff. Luckily I have not exhausted the list of character names yet, so there have got to be some ancillary stories:

Sigismundo Rey
Melvin Eldon
Eldon Melvin
Jan Etor
Elle Bee
Kerd Palliver
Rae Beth Smirkins
Benny Schnizzle

ebooks ascending

ipad breathes even more new life into ebooks:

short fiction in particular is "native to the Internet," Davis said.

For any length of work, digital formats are being embraced by many writers, who weren't getting paid much for their printed work anyhow and were fools if they were in it for the money. Hanas, who has been published in several respected journals, says he has been paid a total of $250 in 10 years for this body of work. Besides, he said, if you give a writer a choice between $10,000 and 10,000 readers, the writer will always choose the latter.

parallel processing

in the story, there is no time travel, there is only the infinite recursion of adjacent, contemporaneous universes, each one only slightly different from its neighbor (like a source code revision) - the more boundaries you cross, the greater the diff.

this will explain a number of things in the story (Reyn Tundra, Racine, Macedonia)

IM chars

some of the names remaining as fodder for Inspector Mole, which is about 1/3 done.

Sigismundo Rey
Filcher Peron
Marka Willander
Melvin Eldon
Eldon Melvin
Jalapeno Perez
Krispy Talbot
Kiki Photescu
Jan Etor
Elle Bee
Kerd Palliver
Rae Beth Smirkins
Benny Schnizzle
Kram Fletcher