Genuine Apocrypha

B&N

2012-02-20T04:03:00.002-05:00

Outside the Wire is now available Barnes and Noble!
It's almost viral!

OTW Review

2012-02-19T06:30:00.002-05:00

Outside the Wire received its first review (HERE).

"This author has a natural talent to weave words into descriptive stories ... the style of writing with details keeps the reader's interest ... savor each word knowing the tale will end too soon."

And Sue Mahoney was kind enough to post this to Amazon and Smashwords as well! Thanks Sue.

Made it!

2012-02-17T14:28:00.003-05:00

Lot's to reflect in my year+ as an American Expat* in Georgia. For now, though sad to be separated from my friends and colleagues, but I am just happy to be back on the farm. My 15 year old did an excellent job keeping the place going during the intervals between my too infrequent visits.

I also need to confess an infidelity. Yes, I cheated on my military scifi work in progress (WIP). I not only outlined, but actually started a weird western novella. I know, terrible.

*In Barcelona an Argentinian guest worker said she didn't like it that citizens of the USA referred to themselves as Americans (after asking my nationality). So my questions to her were; 1) what other country includes the word 'America' in their name (It sounds stupid to say united-statesian) and 2)what country did you, Argentine guest worker lady, and everyone else think that I meant when I said American? I didn't think I was being continent insensitive...

Outside the Wire on iTunes

2012-02-13T21:58:00.004-05:00

Outside the Wire is available on iTunes (Free)

So any of you viewing this blog on an iPad can click your way to 30,000 words of bountiful entertainment.
(Be careful, it's scarey!)

Coming Home

2012-02-11T03:06:00.008-05:00

I face the end of expatriate assignment in the FSU country of Georgia, as one might expect, with mixed emotions. I have made a great number of good friends here, I've experienced a rich and charming culture, I've been introduced to foods I didn't know that I couldn't live without, I've racked up a metric tonne of frequent flier miles, and learned a great deal about myself, the International business environment and the world in which we live in a way that I could never have done had it not been for these experiences.
With all that said, it's been a rewarding but also very tough thirteen months. Particularly on the family that I alternatively drug across nine time zones and abandoned to their own fate over the past year. I could not have done it this were my wife and children not possessed of a positive, adventurous and expeditionary disposition. Or set of dispositions, I suppose. So thanks to you, my family.

Back to the states on Thursday! Four days and a wakeup! I'll not be leaving the project, but rather managing it from the states, with regular site visits. It's a tough trip, but I'll be able to put the time in at home that I need to,

SO what do I need to do at home? Well, first kid stuff. Scouts, soccer practice, Karate practice. Next I have a million differed maintenance farm chores that have built up and are all now waiting for me. Trees, a garden and Hops that need planting, sheep that need all kinds of things. A son and daughter that may run this little race in the fall with me that we need to prepare for. A new Army job (remember I'm a colonel in the reserves) to in-process and learn. Little things like that. And, no, the Word Count meter on the WIP isn't broken, it's stalled out for the near term. But more about that later, right now I have packing to do!

Gudauri

2012-02-06T07:44:00.010-05:00

The Caucasus Mountains are an impressive sight up close. This weekend I had the opportunity to tag along on a ski trip. (No, I didn't ski. I am better suited to clumsy sports where something heavy is picked up and bone breaking at high velocity is less likely.)

But I did partake of the Georgian tradition of the 'Supra', the excesses of great food, and the succession of toasts, and great camaraderie. (Georgians really are the best hosts I've ever met).

But the mountains are very impressive. We went to 'Gudauri'. Decades ago it was a bend in the road on the old Russian Military Highway. But over the past 20 years of independence, it's been developed as a ski resort . Panoramic vistas, lots of locals and a few dozen intrepid multi-national skiers (Americans, Brit's, Ukrainians, and some people I knew weren't Georgian, but couldn't figure out). The lift tickets were 30 Gel (about $20) for the day. Now that's super cheap by US standards, for such impressive slopes, but you have to get here, which is no easy task. And of course there is the Georgian tradition of queuing, which takes some getting used to, but overall, a worthy destination.
Oh, and it wouldn't do justice to the country to leave out a Georgian church. The one in this picture is perched on the lip of the gorge, maybe 2500 foot drop, just on the other side.

And no, I got a lot of work for work done, but nothing on the NIP.

The electronic anthology seems to be doing okay. So far.

Amazon too

2012-02-01T22:25:00.005-05:00

Outside the Wire is Available (click on 'Available') on Amazon for 99c!

Now remember this collection was meant to be my own little anthological experiment in electronic publishing. It's been a little bit of a pain to work through, but not impossible, and if you follow the guides that are out there, straight forward. The hardest part of this experiment was of course writing well. (Which I hope that you think I have done, if you have read my 'stuff'). Then there was putting it together into a format that won't end up 'jacked up' on an e-reader ( 'jacked up' you see is the technical term for the default condition of documents typed out in word without disabling all of those helpful auto-functions, like tabbing and spill-czecking). The cover art was a picture I took at the Tbilisi zoo and had a fellow who knew what he was doing edit it into a cover image in order to make the whole affair look professional. Oh, and a little patience too, that was important.

I loaded the anthology to smashwords (where you can download it for free) and from there it is supposed to be made available on all e-reader formats except Amazon , and lets face it Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla of ebook publishing, so you have to do that one. The only challenge with Amazon online publishing was that I couldn't make the book free initially. So I loaded OTW for the lowest price I could- .99c.

Remember, I have alreay been paid for all these stories once, and it is only a 30K word collection, so I didn't feel like I needed to make any money on this. OTW is an experiment in online publishing, but it is also meant to collect all of the stories that are already out there in one spot and advertise my work to people who haven't seen it.

Before I could get the price dropped to zero on Amazon, I even sold a few copies. It also appears to have knocked my two novels, STG and GOB off the peg, selling a few copies of both the paperback and kindle versions on Amazon.

So there you go. Experiment was a success. One more step forward in my plans for world domination and becoming a legitimate pulp-fiction genre writer...

Available Now

2012-01-29T08:33:00.005-05:00

My epubbed anthology is now available at Smashwords (Click Here). I promised that you would love the price, and I hope you will; it's free. I figure that I was already paid once for each of these stories (three times for one of them), and it didn't cost anything but time to put this together (and the cover image), so I thought I would pass the savings on to you. (If you really, really want to pay something, put an extra fiver on the plate on Sunday, or stuff it in one of those boxes that charities leave at the counter of stores, say thanks for the book and pretend it was to me. )

I mentioned in previous posts about the changes in the publishing industry, self-publishing, electronic publishing, etc, so I wanted I to see how it worked. Outside the Wire is my contribution to the movement.

Smashwords (my profile) seems to be a great venue for those that want to publish, but as I have said, there are many many works of varying quality.

Another online community that I have found which is a good outlet for authors is Goodreads (my profile). It's also a great place for people that are interested in books, especially genre fiction, and connect with others with similar interests.

So my next step is to figure out how to get it on Amazon...

Barcelona

2012-01-26T05:42:00.006-05:00

January 24th is an epic day in my household. (And by Epic, I mean that I had better treat it epically or there may repercussions.)

My anniversary!

Okay it's also my wife's anniversary too.

This past 24th marked 25 years of blissful matrimony. I say 'mostly' tongue in cheekily as we've been through a lot together and there have been with us, as with everyone else that marks this silver milestone, many ups and a few downs; we have walked side by side raising four wonderful children, having twelve or so changes of residences over five states (and 2 countries), six churches, college, graduate school, postdoc, Houston (need I say more), attack helicopter flying. deployment to the war in Iraq, nursing school, family (hers and mine), farm chores, all of this with the day-to-day effort of growing together and not apart.

Friends and aquantances often ask how me have managed to 'Make It' to having a good marriage. I try not to laugh when they ask. You see, I don't think we've 'made it' because it isn't over, right? It's like asking a fit person how they 'made it' . They haven't made it to 'being fit' they 'are fit', and the minute they stop working on it is the minute they will begin to atrophy and soon will no longer be fit. Fitness is a state of being, not a goal with a beginning middle and end. Our marriage is like that. We didn't make it to having a good marriage, we are having a good marriage. It is something we continually work on, together, and the minute we stop working on it, it will begin to atrophy and soon will no longer be good.

So how do I commemorate twenty-five years of working together? Well, this year it was Barcelona! (being in Tbilisi and my wife in the US, it was the nicest midway point I could find). It is a lovely place. I highly recommend it. When we got there the weather was lovely, the scenery is lovely, the food great, great museums, arts. I would go back in a heartbeat, and long before Paris..just sayin'.

We started the actual day watching the sunrise over the Mediterranean. Then a starbucks (I really miss starbucks in Georgia) and then went to the Sagrada Familia. A lovely cathedral dedicated to the Holy Family, designed by the architect Goudi. Really awe-inspiring, and I thought an appropriate place for an anniversary. We found a bar with a real American IPA (also very missed in Tbilisi) and ended the day with a fabulous paella.

So, to my wife Kelly, thank you for twenty-five Wonderful years!

(That's her in the scale model of the cathedral arches- isn't she cute?)

Coming in 2012

2012-01-06T03:15:00.003-05:00

Outside the Wire; seven andrenaline-filled, spine-chilling tales from the Author of 'Succumbing to Gravity' and 'The Gift of the Bouda'.

Coming in 2012.

This is an anthology of six previously published short stories, including:
Succumbing to Gravity
The Gift of the Bouda
The Long Road to Sanctum
BEKs
Dougie's Hand
The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation

and one previously unpublished short story;
The Virtual Huntress

The tales feature fallen angels, demons, lycanthropes and those with perception challenges set in the steampunked past, the postapocolyptic future, and the hardboiled present. Genre-wise; horror, urban fantasy, steampunk and near future science fiction. You'll love it. And you'll love the price.

Doorways

2012-01-04T22:03:00.004-05:00

It's natural to reflect as you hit a milestone. We do this collectively at the turn of the calender from one year to the next. Being overseas I've been missed most of the US end-of-the-year retrospectives; only CNN's unbiased voice to let me know what happened last year. And some of the slightly left of CNN English-language Euro channels (I get more channels, but they in Georgian or Russian and it's a great exercise to learn the language, but I have no idea what they're talking about, generally). I ussually prefer to look to what's on the other side door, rather than spend too much time reflecting what has past, and 2011 was a heck of a year.

So 2012? Well, the end of the Mayan calender is in 2012, food for some good end of the world speculation. Sorry if I sound like an apocalyptic buzz kill but I think for the Mayans it already happened; the Mayan civilization (as such) was pretty much done in the 1200's, so I'm not planning on digging a fall-out shelter. Just sayin'

I'll be redeploying stateside in 2012. Will very much miss the friends I have made here in Georgia, but looking forward to getting back to the family and farm in Virginia. From a writing perspective I'll be self-publishing an ebook anthology this year. I also plan to finish up my Mil SciFi epic and begin to shop it around.

The picture should be obvious metaphorically right? And you know, Georgians have some really cool doors.

The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays

2011-12-30T14:25:00.008-05:00

So if you ever travel across Europe, and layover at the worst airport in the world (CDG) remember, the 24

Euros you pay to store your bags, and the 18 Euros you spend on the train, and all the time you spend trying to see one of the most renowned museums in the world will be wasted if you are doing this on a Tuesday...because unlike every museum in the rest of the civilized world, the Louvre is not closed on Monday, it is closed on Tuesday. I know, serious bummer. If I were smarter I would have planned this out better and checked the website. Instead, I show up like a dumb American asking...why isn't there a line?

Duhh.

The worst part is that in trying to get to my first choice museum on the day they were closed, I totally got behind the other 8,000 people that wanted to go to the Louvre and went there second choice Museum, the Museum d'Orsay, instead.

But hey, I did do a little cafe on the banks of the Seine, and had a cappuccino and a croissant and was dissed by a snotty french waiter, so it's not like I missed out on the whole Paris experience.

The last photo is entitled 'self portrait with jet lag and bed head'

Merry Christmas

2011-12-29T01:20:00.005-05:00

I hope that you all had a Merry Christmas (or if Eastern Orthodox, will have in about a week). Mine was great, including a whorl-wind trip from Georgia, through the world's worst airport (CDG), two days on the ground with my wonderful wife and kids, and back. I reindeered my way back and forth, spreading as much Christmas cheer as humanely possible...and I even worked on my NIP on the plane, and the train, and sitting on the floor of the terminal of the worst airport in Europe (CDG).

Yes, It was a little cloudy in Paris, but no lines at the tower!

Good listeners

2011-12-17T23:53:00.004-05:00

One of the things I enjoy the most about performances in Tbilisi is the audience. Performances that I have attended in the States,ballet, classical, opera have much more staid responses (with the exception of country and rock concerts of course- those people go nuts). But not here, Georgian audiences are really generous. And it's a heartfelt generocity that seems to be part of the culture. I attended a Concert at the Didi Darbazi (Grand Hall) with some friends Saturday night. The 200th Anniversary of Liszt played by Alberto Nose (this is a performance with orchestra in 2005 but last night he was up there all by himself), a well noted Italian Pianist. His performance was great (though I was on the lookout for the Hungarian Rhapsody -how can you have a Liszt concert without that?) but alas, other pieces were played that I didn't know. The audience didn't seem to mind. After the performance they wouldn't stop with the clapping. Poor Alberto came out for four ovations after.

The only thing that would have made it better would have been if my wife could have gone as well, but alas, she's back in the states. I'll join them for Christmas in less than a week. So excited...

Oh, and I'll have the long, long flight, with the long long layovers to work on the WIP. You keep telling me you want to see it done, and I'm trying to be a good listener too.

Crunch before Christmas

2011-12-11T07:53:00.003-05:00

Another weekend and another Ballet. Yay. I feel so cultured. This one was 'Laurencia', a rousing tale featuring a peasant uprising against the oppressive Spanish aristocracy. It was put together during the Soviet period (you remember that don't you, proletariat's of the world uniting to overthrow the bourgeoisie and install a criminalized despotic ruling class?). But they did put together some very classy music and dance!

My favorite part of the evening was seeing the wave of little girl audience members, in their best outfits, all practicing pirouettes in the lobby after. Very cute.

Most people get to this time of year really look forward to the holiday. Me too, but I also dread the two weeks before Christmas where I try to pack in as much extra work as I can into the short space I have before the holiday weekend, so that I can enjoy it guilt-free. (Probably not much novel writing in my immediate future.)

But I am hoping to make time for a Lizst concert next Saturday here in Tbilisi. The old boy would have been 200 this past October, after all.

Infamousness

2011-12-07T22:09:00.006-05:00

Seventy years ago today at zero-seven-forty-eight in the morning, a vanguard of ninety Nakajima B5Ns preceded a Tsunami-like wave of aircraft which a swept into Pearl Harbor and changed the course of history. You all know that right, today was Pearl Harbor day, the day that went down in Infamy?

The world would likely be a very different place if not for the events of that one day, that one 'AI' strike on the conflicted, politically complacent, isolationist pond of post-depression America. All those ripples. I wouldn't be here if not for it. Okay that might be a stretch, but my father was an Air Force NCO, and he did go to Germany in the 1960s because America still had troops stationed there, which we had because the Allies won WWII, and while there he met a hot dutch chick, and the rest is my history.

International relations theory teaches us that there are essentially four elements of National power; Diplomatic, Informational, Miltary and Economic (DIME). Nation-states exert power or ensure security through these four means. Primarily. So what motivated the Japanese politico-military decision makers to believe that they had exhausted the DIE and were ready to exert the M? Much good scholarly work out there if you're interested.

And what of the young men that participated? Both sides. What did Captain Fuchida think as he led his men in that loud, slow 'Kate'? If he was like most Aviation Captains I know (or was) he had compartmentalized most everything else and was desperately trying to make sure he didn't screw it up. Keep formation, stay on vector, hey watch your altitude Mitsuo, where are the American planes and ADA, which target should I select, did I arm the Torpedo release squibs...

Little things and big things, eh?

Ogres

2011-12-04T00:05:00.003-05:00

I don’t think it will come as a surprise to those of you who really know me that I enjoy classical music. You wouldn’t know to look at me, I know, and it doesn’t seem to fit with the kettlebell post, nor the Army experiences, but hey what can I say? I’m complicated. Ogres are like onions, right? Anyway, one of the nice things about living in Tbilisi is that they have a really vibrant arts scene. (I’ve hit 2 ballets, 3 opera’s, 6 concerts and a symphonietta since the end of September!) All lovely, some really good, some a little lame, but I attended another performance on Friday that I really really enjoyed.

I think I’ve mentioned that being notified (in English) of events is a challenge here. The system works for the locals, but not so well for the uninitiated, so I often stumble upon these performances. The Friday performance was like that. I saw a poster on the side of the Grand Hall (didi darbazi-it says so over the door in the picture) of the Tbilisi State Conservatory, (it’s on the same street as my gym) and puzzled out that it was a young lady named Irma Gigani that played piano. Fortunately there was an English-speaking gentleman in line who turned to me, and out of the blue said, “You are American.” How did he know? I thought I was blending in sooo well. Well, I pointed to the poster and asked if he knew anything about the performance. He read it and said, “Some girl is graduating from her high school and this is her performance.”

I thought that would be sweet. I’m a Dad, I’ve been to dozens of my children’s performances, so I thought it would be nostalgic. I got tickets for me and a coworker (and her partner) and we went. It wasn’t what I expected. Apparently Miss Gigani is a 15 year old child prodigy, has played all over the world, comes from an arts family, etc. A far cry from what I expected. She played Chopin’s Piano Concerto with symphony. Awesome job.

I also hit another performance Saturday night. Shuman and Shubert. Also good. I know, I promised not to let these distractions get in the way of the next book (people are starting to ask when it will come out) so I promise to work on my book today, need to get it up over 60K words. There’s a ballet tonight, but it’s interpretive and I think I’m all cultured out. I might have to catch up on an episode of ‘Spartacus; Blood and Sand’ instead... Fit better?

Oh and the irony of my pointing out that I find it ironic that others have a preconception about my tastes and abilities, in a post where I had a preconception about a high school students abilities is not at all lost on me…ogres love irony too.

Ode to the Kettlebell

2011-12-03T05:46:00.005-05:00

A friend of mine mentioned he had seen the picture of the Gym I go to in Tbilisi. Real proud of you, I say. But the subject came up as to what sort of equipment it has. Pretty basic, plates, bars, benches, racks, nothing fancy. Not as good as the gym I have in the loft of my barn, but fine. Oh, my barn gym; I spent a year collecting used gym equipment from the DoD DRMO. DRMO is the place where obsolete or broken DoD equipment is offered to the public (remember those apocryphal tales of jeeps still in the crate?). 'Obsolete' is a silly word to use for cast iron dumbbells and plates that soldiers used over the years. Wire brush the rust, a coat of black spray paint and it's beautiful. And it weighs the same as it ever did.

One thing I don't have in my gym that this gym has is a set of kettlebells. I have two 25pounders, but nothing like they have in the Tbilisi Gym. 16, 24 and 32 kilo Kettlebells. (35, 52 and 70 pounders). Remember we talked about Poods before? 1, 1.5 and 2 pood kettlebells. The reason I don't have more in my gym is that they're too new a fad in the US for me to find used ones (yes, I'm that cheap- but its really more of a sport). There are many here in Tbilisi, as in the US it is called the 'russian' kettlebell.

Anyway if you have a chance to grab one of these, or they have them at your gym (or you have a big coffee can, nylon rope and some concrete) I recommend it. The workouts are great to rotate into your routine. (Check these out) I guess you can tell I just got back from the gym right?Remember though, this isn't a magic piece of equipment. You have to use it. Alot. Consistently. And if you do, the results you realize will be 'owed to the kettlebell'. *

(Ah, I kill me!)

* Just because I linked to a cross-fit vid, doesn't mean I want you cross-fit-fanboys thinking I'm drinking the cross-fit coolaide... even if your workouts are tough they're still silly...and of course predispose you to repetitve stress injuries (torn rotator cuff, torn bicep, herniated discs) and rhabdomyolysis...just sayin, there's a balance between working hard enough and too hard.

Publishing

2011-11-30T22:40:00.006-05:00

We all know what happened when the music industry coupled digitization of music formats and the internet: Chaos. (From a business perspective). Napster. File sharing. Torrent. College kids going to jail for sharing their music collections over the web. Anarchy. But the publishing industry seems to have eased into both digitizing books and the web in a little more orderly fashion. I'm not talking about Amazon, or other distributors of paperbooks on the internet, but rather digital publishing and distribution of 'ebooks'. (Which Amazon had a hand in with the kindle, of course).

In the 'olden days' (last year) authors would write a book, seek representation (an agent), find a publishing house, work with an editor and the marketing department, the book would be launched and sell hundreds of thousands of hardback copies, followed by hundreds of thousands more copies when it was released in paperback. Now, not every book went down this path, but this is more or less the Rube Goldberg process. I went down this same road, got really positive feedback from agents (but no representation) shopped my book at the big houses (positive feedback, but no thanks), the medium houses and then small presses (more than one offer to publish each book from small presses). Both STG and GOB were, as you know, published by small presses.

In order for a publishing house of the Old Guard to invest in a book they have to really believe that it will make them money. Cold hard truth; it isn't about literary merit, or the story that is told, it is about being able to move merchandise. (Most celebrity kiss and tell books have very little merit for instance, and their 'authors' rarely actually write much of the book- but... everyone wants a copy of Justin Beaver's autobiography, right?) Every rejection letter I received contained a phrase related to not being able to sell many copies. No sour grapes on my part, they were right. My books have sold in the hundreds of copies, not thousands (combining print and ebook sales). Now with stronger marketing support they might have sold more, but ...

There are other publishing venues. 'Vanity presses' for instance have been around for years. These are publishing houses that you pay to publish your book through. Some authors have done this with the thought selling their books (and there have been commercial successes). I didn't want to go down this path because I think it's easy to get myopic about your own work, and I wanted an external gut check. My Mom liked the book, my friends liked my book, I believed in it and it was the best book I could write at the time I wrote it, but how did it fair as a subjectively ranked, competent work of genre fiction?

Hey guess what? They did fine. Almost universally positive reviews (one guy really panned STG due to the editing- which has been fixed), consistent sales (though not super high) volume, and the people I meet that have read it say they really enjoyed the reading experience. Which is what I was shooting for. Now don't get me wrong, if Baen or Random house wanted to give me a big fat advance to stay home and write books I would be sorely tempted (and externally validated), but most likely I wouldn't quit my day job, as I believe in the work I'm doing in Georgia (but this is a blog about my writing life, not about being a program manager on an assistance program- so I'll get back to my writing point...maybe... perhaps...).

So, dear reader, what does all this have to do with digital publishing you ask? I have told you in previous posts to be patient, I will eventually meander back to my point.

Publishing a print book costs a lot of money. With POD (print on demand) technology it's much cheaper, but there is still a cost involved. With electronic publishing the costs are negligible. So now writers don't have to meet an agent's or publisher's subjective quality threshold (sales being the metric). But they don't really have to meet any threshold, do they? And oh my goodness, there are some self-deluded people out there publishing some real ebook stinkers. But there are also a number of competent writers who have decided to go into ebook publishing on their own, with low prices points, no middle man, and they're doing quite well, in terms of sales (which is a metric), reviews, etc.

Novlr is blog that delves into these issues in much greater detail.

So my point is that I am flirting with the idea of going it alone with my current WIP. I am a member of 'Goodreads', (part of my 'online presence') an online community for book readers and writers and I am being inundated with ebook offers, many free (the idea being to build a fan base just like Randolph Lalonde did).

So I don't know how that would work out in terms of getting my own work out into your hands (or on your eReader device). My motivation is not necessarily maximizing ROI, or sales volume, though I think running off copies of my work and passing it out on the street corner for free wouldn't meet my self-imposed vision of being a competent genre fiction writer. Hmmm, I'll have to ponder that one.

There are many examples of authors who have written competent books and are getting them out to readers with this POD/eBook/Indy renegade author directed publishing movement. Smashwords is an ebook publisher that makes it almost painless... Most likely I will give this a trial run. I have seven short stories that I have sold to various anthology markets, online publications, etc, that I have thought I might like to collect into a small (40K word) anthology of my own. All have my signature hard-boiledish, and mostly manly action-oriented prose, and like I said they were good enough to sell once...(though one sold three times- and funny it was my only short story with a female main character. What does that mean? Do I need to spend more time in the gym? Tell me the truth, do these sweat pants make me look fat?)

The accidental Opera

2011-11-27T04:57:00.004-05:00

I have mentioned before my challenges buying tickets for Georgian venues. It's a challenge finding out about things because there's a big word of mouth component here (and I don't really understand the words too well). Then there is the challenge of communicating at the box office (as I will explain).

I saw a poster for the Georgian Symphonetta hosting a dutch oboe-playing soloist. I fortunately also found an English language version of the same poster near the Tbilisi-State Conservatory. I went to the box office on Friday, to buy the ticket for Saturday night's performance. Well, having thought I achieved success, I looked down at my purchase...it was for an opera on Friday night. That night. I went back, and knowing that an exchange was beyond my communicative talents, I opted to buy another ticket. The box office lady clearly thought me daft, but I was successful. Two tickets...So what did I do with the opera ticket? Well, I went. No idea what it was, who wrote it, but it was Italian, and cute. I am calling it the Accidental Opera.

I also made it to the Symphonetta and saw the oboist perform his solo. Mozart, Bach, Gluck and Boyce. Good seats; I sat right behind the First Lady of Georgia. (Should have figured she might come, as she's dutch).

I can also report that I have put the Thanksgiving holiday to good use, and pushed well through the middle of the WIP. Sitting squarely at 56K words, it feels like when you're on an old wooden roller-coaster and you're clank-clank-clanking up to that first big drop, the first car is nosing over the edge, the last car just finished with the chain and you get that slowly-speeding-up-as-you-go-over-the-top feeling...knowing it's going to be a wind in your face, stomach-losing dash...that's what getting through the middle feels like.

Pushing through the middle

2011-11-23T00:56:00.011-05:00

There are many tough spots when writing a novel. Getting started, feeling like you have the characters, the basic story arc, this takes a while but really isn't that tough. Getting over the 30K word hump is a bit of challenge because that's the point at which I feel the novel is really establishing the 'voice', I know the characters, I'm getting confident with where the story is going, the basic 'vibe' is there. Often I'll tweak and futz, and cut, and uncut, and recut, and reuncut, and reorder, and insert and delete, and change, and use the 'find' function alot to make sure idiosyncracies of dialog, or naming conventions are consistent, and...and......and at some point between 25K and 30K I'll say...yah, that's what I wanted.

Then there's the middle part (about 45K-55K) where I start to second-guess myself, I can see the tempo of the story (I like the vibe, but is there enough action, do I spend too much time on character or scene development, not enough? is Cooper's subplot too overdeveloped, etc) but I reevaluate if this is really what I was thinking about for the story arc in that brief flash of inspiration several month's to a year ago, and...well that's where I am now; pushing through the middle.

As you know (if you've been following the blog) I've taken an expatriate assignment managing a project in Tbilisi, Georgia and it's a bear of a job. Overseas, new area of business, trying to meet family obligations (I know wahhh...). But the reason I bring this up for this little essay is that I'm writing much more slowly than I did in my two previous novels, so this particular angst-ridden patch is telescoping on me.

But it's not all bad, spending more time with my inner-author-insecuritites has allowed me to spend more time with the characters too, and one of the things I have realized is that my bad guys really need a voice. I've struggled with this for a while because the alien's voice, or the alien itself maybe, comes across as a Lovecraftian villain, and this inherently conflicts with the more hardboiled/pulpy/sparse voice with which the rest of the novel speaks.

The military scifi novel features an expeditionary infantry battalion investigating a seeming natural disaster (series of meteor showers) on a colony world. The 'natural disaster' is actually an alien invasion and told from the POV of Salome (a colonist), Captain Vogel (a pilot) and Sergeant Cooper (a Grunt), with a few cameo POVs. The 'alien' invaders are based on Dictyostelium fruiting bodies, and through them I explore some of my thoughts on memes, identity, 'self' and the nature of conciousness (but don't worry- there's lots of gun-play, gallons of testosterone, a strong and independent female MC, a romantic triangle and not every body dies at the end, almost not everyone...). I've been strugling with how to convey the alien POV here in the middle of the book (see, stay with me, I usually have a point!), so I decided to include the enemy as a POV character...hey, it's a big step for me, I don't just give up my POV to any character that comes along with a winning smile and a catchy line.

Anyway, I think I've reached a compromise that works, but you, dear reader will have to be the judge.
I have also include for your amusement, a snapshot of my Tbilisi Gym.

Through a dark alley, down a rickty flight of stairs, in a moldy sub-basement, thousands of kilos of mismatched plates, dumbbells, kettlebells (measured in Pood), is my lifting heaven. These are the bench presses; two vertical pipes sunk into the concrete floor, welded rebar supports hammered into the wall, and bolts to rest the bar upon. Simplicity in form and function. Now all you have to do is pick the bar up off the pegs, lower it to your chest and put it back...many, many times.

And the tough part for me, right?

Yes, you guessed it... pushing through the middle part.

No really...

2011-11-19T04:54:00.003-05:00

The second thing I have to say after I tell people I went to the ballet.
The Tbilisi Ballet put on a production of Minkus' Don Quixote at the Griboedov Theater. It was my first time at the Griboedov, lovely place, great dancers, I had never heard of Minkus before but most of the music I enjoyed.

The funnest part of the whole expedition was trying to buy the tickets. Once you know how, where the box office is, the hours of operation and how to communicate in pigeon Georgian for the purchase of 'erti tiketse, baletze, didi madloba' , it's a breeze. It took some doing, and the help of a Georgian coworker but I had it all worked out...until I got to the box office.

The little old lady at the counter was not impressed. I even tried my winning smile. Nada. She rebuffed my feeble georgian-ticket-purchasing overture and raged at me in staccato Russian..'Ar vitsi rusuli' (I don't know russian) I pleaded. Again, the same Russian sentence, but slower and louder (see it's not just we Americans who feel that if you speak your native tongue slow enough and loud enough to people who don't speak your language they will suddenly understand you).

I caught a single word in the phrase; 'djevichka'. 'Djevichka?' I said. "GoGo?' (Georgian for Djevichka) and she nodded, 'Da..russian..russian..russian..djeveichka..russian..' finger wag from outside to inside. Ah...I was getting it, 'Gogo modis?' (the girl is coming) with finger point. 'Da' said she, and shook her head at me like I needed an entrance application to a state program for the feeble minded.

Well, I waited patiently and sure enough, the djevichka/gogo/girl came in and saved me from mission failure. When I got back to the office, one of my coworkers had let me a text that he wanted me to pick up 2 tickets for him as well. The next day I went back, and getting the tickets was almost a breeze.

As I said the ballet was enjoyable, Dato and Nato and I went to the Marriott had we two boys had no desire for white wine spritzers (proof that we weren't panziefied by the experience). But just to be sure I spent an extra hour working on one-rep max bench press at the Gym the next morning. You can't take chances with these things.

Things you take for granted

2011-11-15T12:06:00.005-05:00

There are many things I took for granted when I lived in the states. I have a very long list. But the one today is 'US Post Offices'. I know, post offices you ask? The institution that inspired the term 'going postal'? Those? Well, yes, you see the US system is Nirvana compared to our Georgian Postal service.

The first time I went to the main Tbilisi Post Office was in response to a little slip of paper that showed up on my desk. All in Georgian script, now I could puzzle out how to say many of the printed words (the handwritten Georgian- no way) but I was no closer to understanding what it meant than I was when I first picked it up. Defeated, I asked one of my Georgian staff.

"You have a package at the post office," she said.

I broke out into a cold sweat. A Georgian post office! I hadn't know there was such a thing. A few days of looking at the little slip of paper, steeling my courage, girding my loins, doing my daily affirmations, and I was ready. I found a cabby with reasonably good english (as my Georgian can get me most common menu items, the check, directions to the water closet, and pleasantries in an elevator, it is NOT up to wrangling a package from a post Soviet civil servant).

After dodging in and out of traffic, up and down small alley ways and side streets, we made it.

It was a mad house.

One thing to know about living in Georgia is that you realize lines are primarily a western covention. Here they understand there's a place you want to end up, and there's the place you start, but all those people milling about between you and the front- who are they?

I eventually made it to the front of the line and proudly handed my slip of squiggly line paper to the four young women sitting on folding chairs, I was rewarded with a postit note with a number on it and a finger pointing me to another line (to pay the 15 lari to get the package out of hock). I went through a confusion of line negotiating, gave my money, got my receipt and a finger pointed me back to the first line. Another shuffle, block, shuffle and I got back to the front of line one, gave a different one of the four girls sitting on a folding chair my receipt and was handed a slip of paper for my trouble ... and sent to another line. Patiently I waited and finally a little old man showed up with a santa sack full of packages over his shoulder. He dug through the bag and I was rewarded with my mail.

All in all, only an hour of my life and a lesson in how postal delivery is done 8,000miles from home. And what did I get for my troubles? Our US-based Company President had mailed 10 pounds of Peet's Coffee! (Georgian Coffee isn't really that good. They really like Nescafe...).

Well today, a Georgian postal neophyte no longer, I received another little slip of paper. No fear. No anxiety. I sprang into action, negotiated the mean streets and alley ways of Tbilisi, and was in and out of the post office in fifteen minutes. And what did I get for my trouble? Seven kilos, two hundred grams of Oreo cookies (no Oreos in Georgia either).

And it only cost me ten lari, a 'didi madloba', and a smile. (Smiles work here too).

Thanks Steve, I'm almost down from post double-stuft sugar high...

The season

2011-11-13T02:17:00.004-05:00

I think I mentioned that the Tbilisi Opera season is in full swing here in Georgia. There's a performance of some kind almost every weekend. Last Weekend I drug some friends with me to see the Tbilisi State Opera and Ballet Theater Symphony play a few Mozart Pieces, the internationaly renowned Turkish pianist, Zeynep Ucbasaran, played one of the piano concertos. It was pretty cool.
This weekend we fast forwarded some fifty odd years where the same symphony presented Verdi's Attila. They did the whole opera, with glass-shattering singers and all, but presented as a stage rehersal (no props, no running around the stage, just standing there and belting it out). It was pretty cool. Later this month we have the Don Quiote and Gizelle ballets.

I will now provide you all with a cogent post comparing and contrasting the late Baroque to the mid-Romantic periods in classical music... nah, I don't know anything about about any of that. (And though it doesn't stop most people..politicians, critics, etc, from writing I try to stick with what I know).

On the WIP front, I was struggling with a turning point in my mil sci fi story. Struggling for me means I end up not trying as hard to carve out writing time, and hence, slow progress. If you've been keeping track about 3000 words in the past 10 weeks (more or less). Pathetic. Ah...but I pushed through the transition for the characters and am now driving through. Yay.

Promoted

2011-11-09T03:01:00.004-05:00

I just heard yesterday from my Reserve Commander that I was selected for promotion from LTC (05) to Colonel (06)in the Army Reserve. This is sort of a big deal, and the selection rate this year was down in the one selected for five who went before for promotion board. Slim pickens for promotion as we reshape the force,pull our soldiers back from ten hard years of war, redefine our National Security objectives and how the Army can support that on a smaller budget.
Glad to Still be a part of it, and it's a daunting challenge in my new rank.

Gonio and the Black Sea

2011-10-28T01:11:00.009-04:00

We traveled to the Georgian Black Sea Coastal towns of Kobaleti and Batumi this past weekend. Batumi is the summer destination of choice in Georgia, and the place really hops from the beginning of July through the beginning of September; jazz festival, operas, Sting even came thi year. October though, is pretty quiet. Batumi is in the Adjara region of Georgia, a contested peice of property for the past few thousand years, from Colchis to Rome, to Byzantium, to Georgia, to Ottoman Turkey, to Russia, and finally back to Georgia (and those are only the big players, there have been numerous small land grabs).

Lovely place with an entertaining mish-mash of architectural styles.

I mention Colchis, most people don't realize that the destination of Jason and the Argonauts was the faraway land of Colchis, and the quest for the golden fleece. That was Georgia. There are regions in Georgia where one still pans for gold by laying a weighted-down sheep fleece out in a bend in the river, the gold flakes gather in the wool, and the panner dries and burns the fleece, sifting the gold from the ash. There is some contention that this is the source of the golden fleece myth. Batumi has embraced this and erected a statue to Medea (the colchis princess that helped Jason out).

No visit to Adjara is complete without a trip to Gonio. This is a remarkably intact Roman fortress, circa 50AD. It was established here around the same time the Apostle Andrew was preaching the gospel in the west of Georgia. Also alleged to be the site of the martyrdom and burial of the apostle Mathias (Judas' replacement) though every Georgian I asked said it wasn't true, he was killed north, probably in Abkazia...

I really enjoyed the fortress. They have a very nice little museum with artifacts from Colchis, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman occupants. The archeological excavations have been ongoing for about 15 years, though not much before. During the Soviet occupation the grounds of the fortress were a tangerine orchard! This in spite of the fact that Henrich Schleimann (the guy who found Troy) did some intial digs back in the 19th century.

Another cool fact about Gonio (not found in wikipedia- for shame) is that it used to be named after Apsyrtus, the brother of Medea. As local legend has it, this is the spot where the peices of his body were brought to be buried (after Jason killed the poor guy, chopped him into pieces and threw his body into the sea- making poor king Aeetes of Colchis have to stop in pursuit of his treasure and wayward daughter to bury the guy. When told from the the other side, Jason seems more like a thug and pirate than a hero, doesn't he?).

The border for turkey (last picture) is another ten minute south and west past Gonio. Georgian's can go across easily (there's a slow line) but Americans need a visa that they can get at the border. Comin gth eother way were hundreds of turkish trucks, shipping goods all over Georgia.

New Review & Interview

2011-10-16T10:11:00.015-04:00

A new review of Succumbing to Gravity is out on the LL Book Review(Review number 245)by Carrie Hunt.

I think she liked it, ending her review with "So if you haven’t read this, you need to, and let’s see if you read the last line of the book and yell: “F#@k Yeah!” like I did."

Carrie is a talented author in her own right (write? HA! I kill me...) and also does book reviews on the side for LL Book Reviews(on her own website as well). She asked me to do an interview and I was happy to do so. It's right here.

Uplistsikhe

2011-10-16T10:11:00.011-04:00

Another weekend in Georgia and another outing.
This trip was to Uplistsikhe the 'castle of God', about an hour to the west of Tblisi, Georgia.

The site is carved into the rocks above the Mtkvari River that flows through Tblisi and has been occupied since 'olden times'.
At one point the capital of Iberia (old georgia, not spain) was located here, and it was abandoned for the last time after Tamerlane swept through Georgia in the 14th Century... olden times indeed.
To the right is an example of the carvings on a stylized ceiling.

Bednieri Tblisoba

2011-10-09T22:46:00.004-04:00

This past weekend the Tblisoba, or city celebration for Tblisi. The 32nd annual celebration of the city's founding some 1500 years ago. Man, but that's old.
The weather was great and the city puts on a nice street festival. Something decidedly different from what you will find in the states.
I also pushed over the 50% mark on my WIP (45K words). Yay. This working thing really has been cutting into my writing, I must say...

End of an era

2011-09-25T05:53:00.003-04:00

In 2007 the US Army entered into a contract with Rosetta Stone to provide distance learning of language to service members. As a Reserve officer I was entitled. But they cut the contract 24 September, 2011, so no more 'djevochka yest yabloko' or 'velosiped imyeet chernyi tsvet'...with the catchy little 'bing' if you got it right, for me. But it means I'll have more time to write if I'm not trying to figure out that the cyrillic C is an english S, and all those gender specific russian language thingees, right?
Bummer.

Tblisi Symphony

2011-09-23T00:52:00.003-04:00

You can tell how busy work is by how frequently I post. Work itself is actually pretty steady (busy), it's the overflow (work taken home) that really cuts into Blog and (break-out) novel writing. I did push over 43,000 words last weekend, but mostly revisions and only a few hundred words of new text.
I did take the evening off to go to the Symphony. Contrary to popular belief, I am not JUST a knuckle-dragging manly man. I had to cut the after-work trip to my old-dungeony-Russian Gym short though, and endure the ridicule of my fellow knuckle-dragging gym inhabiting troglodyte buddies (the English speaking ones, the Russian and Georgian only speakers I couldn't understand their ridicule) in order to go, but it was worth it.
The Tblisi Opera and Ballet State Theater Symphony Orchestra did a lovely job, and the venue, the Grand Hall of the Tbilisi State Conservatory was a big and stately old building.

Horror Fiction Review, Review

2011-09-06T10:47:00.003-04:00

A new review of GOB on the horror fiction review was posted.
Read it HERE. (it's a September 2011 review).

Colleen Wanglund reviewed calling 'an excellent story'...and 'a character study worth reading'.
Doesn't that make you want to zip on over to amazon and buy a copy?)

GOB Review

2011-09-04T13:47:00.003-04:00

Chizine posted a new review of Gift of the Bouda, by Stephen Studach (the review is by steve, the book is by me...).

Postitive but fair, a good read that would make a good B movie (if B movie were good, which they can be). Pretty much what I envisioned it as; a pulpy noir tale (but a little deeper, and a little better researched, I would hope) of monsters, and the men they become.

You can read it here.

He also had me do an interview, you can read that here.

Soccer Match

2011-09-04T08:08:00.008-04:00

This weekend I attended the Soccer (football) match here in Tbilisi between Georgia and Latvia. (Unfortunately Georgia lost 1 to zero- boo).

It was a great match, the Georgian's dominated but a head-in from a Latvian corner kick made the difference. Georgians take their football pretty serious (as do most Europeans, South and Central Americans, Asians..well most people that aren't from the US.

I've included photos of the stadium in daylight, the opening ceremonies and me at a tense moment.
Work on the NIP continues at a blistering pace, I know, why am I going to soccer matches when I should be writing? Ummmm...background..

St. Anton's Monastery

2011-08-28T03:43:00.015-04:00

For those of you that weren't aware, the Country of Georgia is a largely Christian nation. Their Christian traditions date back to proselytizing by the apostle Andrew in the west of Georgia in the first century. But the large scale conversion (as best I tell) came from a number of missionaries from Cappadocia (a region in Turkey where early Chrisitans fled Roman persecution). The most important of which was Saint Nino who converted the then Pagan Queen Nana and King Mirian the third, in the fourth century (see my blog post from April 2011 about the trip to Ninosminda).

There was another large group of Cappodocians who came to Georgia in the sixth century to expand Chrisitanity, found churches and monasteries, all lead by St. John of Zedazeni (with Saints; Anton, David, Shio, Ise, Joseph, Zenon, Abibos, Stephan, Isidoros, Piros, Michael and Tadeoz). Most of the interesting old things to see in Georgia are tied to their Christian heritage, and it has regained support as Nationalism in Georgia also seems to be tied to their faith tradition. So, it was to the monastery founded by Saint Anton of Martkopi that I visited this weekend.

Gorgeous location in the mountains about 1/2 hour from Tbilisi, fabulous vistas (but as it was a cloudy, rainey day so I didn't take any pictures of that). We saw St. Anton's grave in the small church, attended the consecration of a man in the church building where the relics were kept (Gvtaeba), and were fervently prosyletized in Georgian by one of the monks. Dissapointed when he discovered I was not 'orthodoxy', but rather presbyterian, which he somehow assumed was like the 'baptisyists'-not exactly, but I couldn't explain the nuances of the calvinist reformation and the ninteenth century great awakening in my pigeon Georgian.

Finally he found this delightful old monk who spoke much more English than I spoke Georgian, and he wanted to convey two things: first, God is love. That one was easy. Second, he struggled with a rendition of the 10 edicts, of doing wrong and one is not better nor is it worse than another. It took a few rounds of back and forth, but I finally said, "Do you mean that in the eyes of God, all sin is equal?" (A very basic Chrisitian precept). He almost fell over, "You have heard of this?" We went on to talk about a few small points of the congress of Nicea, religion in general and faith, the primacy of grace (although, I don't think I sold him on this one). I certainly did my part to dispel the notion that American Chrisitanity is populated by a boatload of snake charming folks who don't actually read the bible.

A nifty tweaking

2011-08-22T23:24:00.002-04:00

Sheila Merritt posted a Review of GOB on the site Hellnotes.

Click here: Hellnotes Review to have all your questions answered.

Roadtrip

2011-08-21T01:32:00.009-04:00

My WIP is still in progress. I spent much of the past (busy) month picking over edits, rewriting scenes, basically getting it to where I wanted it to be with a total of 1 month worked and 400 words added.

After a Saturday morning run, a trip to the gym (I joined a very old-school Russian Style Gym here in Tbilisi...I am getting pretty good at estimating the weights: "100 kilos, umm...it's heavy, umm...like 220 pounds"...see, pretty good), and a few hours on my NIP, I went on a roadtrip to Kojori, about 1/2 hour from Tbilisi.

Kojori is the site of a Medieval Fortress, a battle between Georgian Nationalists and Soviet invaders (circa 1921), and a pleasant mountain get away from the hustle bustle and smog of the Big City.

The Fortress is to the right. A very impressive location, built right into the rock. It might be difficult to see, but there is a winding, rusted, and partly fallen down staircase that leads to the entrance (covered by a 'murder hole' in the castle entry).

The stairs were in a sad state of disrepair, and required a little effort to negotiate. Missing treads, sheer cliffs, it was awesome, but no where near OSHA approved. Most of the treads seemed to have broken at the weld points, so I carefully tested before I went up.

From the top of the castle the views were phenomenal. In many ways the topgraphy and climate of this part of Georgia remind me of the foothills of California (think Placerville, not Santa Barbara).

We met a young Georgian butcher on a bird watching trip at the top of the fortress. Like most people we meet he was hospitible and engaging and he told us a little of the history of the fortress in halting english (which was an order of magnitude better than my pigeon Cartoli). We also heard a howling in the distance that sounded a bit like a warbly coyote bark and a dog howl to me. After a bit of back and forth, searching for the word, he told us the howling was from the Jackals. Hmmmm...might be a story in there?

Book Give Away at Good reads

2011-08-16T12:54:00.009-04:00

I know how much you all really want a copy of one of my novels. And I know it's soooo hard to go to Amazon and get one, so the good people at Goodreads.com are sponsoring a book Give away for STG and GOB.

(Enter early, enter often!!

First GOB Review

2011-08-09T02:09:00.002-04:00

The first review of 'The Gift of the Bouda' appears in Carrie Hunt's Blog (Here). Carrie is an author as well and a member of "Goodreads", she also posted the review there as well.

Been Busy

2011-08-07T02:15:00.002-04:00

It has been a while since my last post. I have been a tad busy. For those of you who don't know, I am still an actively participating officer in US Army Reserve (Lieutenant Colonel). I spent much of July in Carlisle Barracks, PA, finishing up my Masters Program with the US ARMY War College. Yay,

The degree is technically a Master of Science in Strategic Studies, but I prefer 'Master of War'. It's also the Military Education Level 1 course, or the LAST SCHOOL I have to go to as a soldier, ans d qualifies one for promotion to General Officer rank. I'm just hoping for Colonel (my promotion board already met, but I won't know what they decided until the results are published in November).

On the writing/reading front, I'm at about 30K words on my WIP. I polished off a John Ringo book on the plane, Dance with the Devil. For those who like scifi with a military flavor, Ringo is great. When I posted about his first book in this series, A Hymn Before Battle, I mentioned that I enjoyed it and could also see the junior NCO coming through. I thought I might explain because I saw it here too.

Every unit in the Army blames their next echelon higher for all their problems. It's true. The bosses are usually screwed up, they don't understand the 'ground truth' , they have it easier, yadda yadda. When I was an enlisted soldier (helicopter mechanic) the platoon leader and company commander were all 'jacked up'. When I was commissioned and became a platoon leader (attack platoon leader in a cobra helicopter company) the company commander and the Battalion were screwed up. When I was staff, it was the line company that didn't understand, when I was a company commander the BN commander and staff, as a troop commander it was the squadron commander that couldn't get his shit together. When I was a Battalion Commander it was the brigade commander and the brigade staff that caused all the Cluster F*cks. You see where I'm going with this? You can often tell what level a fellow rose to, by who the fellow blames and nature of the complaints.

I'd also like to think that when I jumped to the next node in the chain of command, my direct reports didn't blame me for all the problems in the world. (I'm kidding myself- they did, but one difference between a good leader and a bad one is the ability to recognize that, listen to the gripes and try to explain why they have to do the stupid shit your making them do).

I can honestly say that I have seen many of the problems with higher ups that Ringo points out. There were many careerists, selfish or lazy commanders. But these are few and far between and tended to 'crash and burn', unless they were really talented. The most common 'bad' commanders I have experienced, both in peace and in Iraq, were the people that lacked critical thinking skills (and most of these were slaves to outdated doctrine) or the ones that worried too much about what their boss would think. It's important to follow doctrine, but it's a guide and if you have the ability to think critically about what the mission dictates and the tools you have available. The people who worried about their 'evaluation' were the ones I couldn't stand. "What impact will this have on my annual report (OER)?" is something I rarely ask myself, and it comes well after; does this accomplish the mission adhering both to the letter and spirit of my orders?

But without question the leader I detest the most is the one that doesn't care for his troops. When Mr and Mrs mainstreet America entrust the welfare of their son or daughter to you, the Army leader, you need to take that responsibility seriously. I could wax philosophic or give bullet point lists for hours on this one.

I picked up a copy of 'Kaboom, embracing the suck in a savage little war' by Matt Gallagher. It's based on the blog he wrote while a cav scout platoon leader in Iraq. Peppered throughout are examples of the points I make above. He refers to his company commander in a mildly disparaging manner, while the Battalion Commander and Command Sergeant Major are known as 'LTC Larry and CSM Curly', don't know who Moe is (3 stooges). My experiences were both the same and different. I was a Major, and an operations officer for an Aviation Task force. We didn't break down doors, or drink tea with 'Haji' (it was well before COIN doctrine was articulated, in 2003-2004). But I have no doubt there were company level pukes that had listed me in their top ten most stupidest list for the things I made them do. But 11 months, 350 missions, no casualties... just sayin'.

Beast Within 2; Predator and Prey

2011-07-19T13:04:00.004-04:00

The Beast Within 2; Predator and Prey was released today by Graveside Tales (Yay), edited by Jen Brozek.

My story, The Long Road to Sanctum, (a Cormac McCarthyesque tale of werewolves, a road, and an ursanthrope in the post-apocolyptic west) appears somewhere in the middle.

Buy it at the publisher (Graveside Tales) or Amazon.

Me and Joe

2011-07-01T23:28:00.010-04:00

I visited the town of Gori, Georgia last week and stopped by the
Joseph Stalin Museum.

Something that I didn't really appreciate before coming to Georgia was that Stalin was from Gori, born Loseb Jugashvili.(aka Koba)

The Stalin memorial has a nice park, a big museum and the house in which he was born. The rather modest house of a nineteenth century Georgian cobbler has had this elaborate columned structure (reminding me a bit of the Parthenon) erected around it.

Incongruity personified.

The museum is chock full of Stalin-memorabilia, knowledgeable staff (some of whom speak English for the tour).

No deep thoughts about one of the more infamous premiers in history, just a comment on the landmark.

And no, not much progress on the NIP.

A walk

2011-06-25T14:59:00.008-04:00

Things I really enjoy about a place are the unique history, the cultural heritage, the use of space. I notice these things where ever I go, and every place has a story to tell.

Tbilisi, being old, at the crossroads of so much of history and then being sort of mired in the Soviet time-capsule, has these things in spades! Tbilisi is undergoing a bit of Urban Renewal, investors are coming back, I meet US banking agents exploring 'emerging markets' at local eateries. (How can you tell they're American? Seriously, we stick out. Our clothes, our mannerismsms, our persistence in the belief that if you you speak English slowly and loudly enough these foreign people have to be able to understand you...).

Public spaces. They're all over the place and filled with the sort of old world monuments Americans rarely see. To the left top, is Shota Rustaveli (1172-1216), on Rustaveli avenue. The Georgian Shakespeare, author of 'The Night in the Tiger Skin' (I have a copy I'm picking through). And right next to this icon, yes, another, this one decidedly American.

As one of the first peoples to accept Christianity (they were beaten out for the title of 'first' by the ancient Armenian Kingdom, but most Georgian's will contest this fact...), the town is also filled with these iconic cruciform Churches. Little old ladies in black (widows) sit on the steps with cups. Everyone makes the sign as they cross. A very different place from what an American is used to.

And yes, I'm still plugging away on my next book. Working title 'Mission First'.

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T08:21:00.007-04:00

Happy father's day to all of you guys that had the good fortune to take on the most important (guy) job in the world.

We have a family tradition on father's day that I managed to uphold sans wife and progeny. You see, (almost) every father's day my wife and kids make a point of taking me somewhere that I would enjoy. As a Dad, I've done hundreds of trips to___ (insert place you have to go as a Dad, and are happy to do so, but wouldn't pick if it were up to you: training bra shopping, the thirty seventh T-ball practice, any amusement park, parent teacher conferences, chuckee cheese-you get the picture).

So On Father's day, my wife and kids make a point of finding something that I would like to do and take me to do it. They get bonus points if they wouldn't have picked to go on their own. Airshows, zoos, museums of any nature- the geekier and more obscure the better here, classical music venues, brew pubs.. the sky is the limit.

Being alone in Tbilisi, I started the day with a scavenger hunt. The fam had hidden a treasure trove of gifts while they were here, and emailed me the locations last night. Coffee mug, check, Georgian Nataktari Beer Stein, check, box of chocolates check, cool statue of the Svan towers check. All that was missing was the geeky venue- which I supplied myself.

The Georgian National Gallery. Yes a museum.

The first picture is of the exterior. An old building bulit in the the 1890's when Georgia was part of the Russian empire. The second is of the interior. Notice it says National Gallery in Georgian and English?

(Actually in Georgian it says erovnuli galerea, which I assume means national gallery. I am getting pretty good at reading Georgian Script, okay, that's relative, 95% of the five year olds in Georgia make me look stupid, but it's coming along. It's pretty phonetic once you know that wavy squiggly line that looks like a fishhook means 'ah', or kh', or 'dz', but just because you can sound the words out doesn't mean I have any idea what the word means.)

It was a very nice gallery (or galerea). Many, many people whose names end in shvili, dze, or eli, who toiled away during the russian and subsequent soviet occupations trying to express themselves and give meaning to what they saw. If you're ever on Rusteveli avenue in Tbilisi, with nothing to do, it is 5 lari ($3) well spent.

Movie

2011-06-18T12:12:00.006-04:00

I have never done a movie review on my Blog, so I won't break that trend. But I did go out to see an English Language version fo five days in August.

So? You say. What's the big deal about a movie in English? Well, it's a big deal in Georgia! They have their own language here. Georgian. I know big surprise not everyone in the world speaks English.

I enjoyed the film. It tells the story of the Russian/Georgian war in 2008 from the pov of a few journalists, a few Georgian's and a few diplomats. I've been to almost all of the Tbilisi sights in the film. In fact many were within a kilometer of the Theater.

I encourage you all to see it. Big news earlier this month when Andy Garcia brought Sharon Stone to premier the film, the same theater in which I saw it ...

Out of place at the ballet?

2011-06-12T03:44:00.006-04:00

I went to the Georgian National Ballet last night. I know, me at a ballet? Well truth be told, I have gone to more ballet's than I care to admit. The vast majority were to watch my post-toddler daughters in cutsie little ballet recitals, but some grown up ones too. When I told one of my staff here in Tbilsi that I was going, the response was 'what's a troglodyte like you going to a ballet for?' 'Well,' I responded, 'I'm a knuckle-dragging manly man on the outside, but on the inside...well, I'm sensitive, and I've got feelings. Really. So shut up.'

The ballet I went to was actually a dance troop that performs traditional Georgian dances from the dozen or so sub-groups and regions of Georgia. It was actually really fun, and the ulterior motive was background for my WIP.

If you've never seen them you can check them out on a plethora of You Tube videos. Like this. And FYI, ballet with daggers is certainly troglodyte approved.

WIP Word Count

2011-06-09T14:23:00.006-04:00

This blog is primarily meant to be a commentary on my writing life. Should what I write be of interest, it's meant to be a place to get a little bit of the 'rest of the story'. It's unfortunate that my work life has intruded to such a great extent that my writing has been slacking off. But, between now and my great American Novel, I have to keep food on the table, don't I?

I've been working in Tbilisi, Georgia now off and on for a year. Moving here full-time (for a year) starting last January. The program I manage is a US government-sponsored, primarily public health support program. It has kept me quite busy, and unable to read much, or to make much progress on my WIP (work in progress, come on we talked about this!). My family was here with me as well for the first three months. But they have had to return to the world, and now I'm here alone.

I have writing friends that keep word counters for their WIPs in order to help keep them focused by displaying their progress for all the world to see. I thought I'd try it. If you don't see it move much, it might not be working.

The hyena has nothing to do with it. I just like hyenas (check out my second novel: Gift of the Bouda).

Hyena Behind the Bars

2011-04-26T13:52:00.008-04:00

I went with the family to the Tbilisi zoo a few weeks ago, and there was a pair of spotted hyenas (and a sleeping striped one - if only there had been a brown one and an aardwolf- the hyenedae would have been full represented). In honor of my recently released book, (Gift of the Bouda) I posted it here.

My first experience with a Hyena, close up, was at the hyena colony at UC Berkeley, after a conference at which I presented a paper.

Up close they were much more impressive than the skulky scavengers of animal planet or the cartoon buffoons on the Lion King.

The image of the heavy, not quite dog-like carnivore crunching through a horse femur on the other side of a chain-link barrier, stayed with me until I put it down in my short story, gift of the Bouda (and book).

The Beast Within TOC

2011-04-15T15:12:00.012-04:00

I posted that I was accepted to an 'invitation only' anthology,
The Beast Within 2; Predator and Prey,
edited by Jennifer Brozek.

The anthology is being put out by the folks at Graveside Tales.And the participants are:
Solitary Instincts by Wendy Wagner ...
The Strange Affair of the Viennese Mathmatician by Joshua Reynolds ...
The Adventure of the Missing Trophy by Mark Coulter* ...
Blood Will Tell by JG Flaherty ...
Vanessa McAvoy's Statement by Kelly Swails...

Ties of Silver by James Sutter
The Long Road to Sanctum by Richard Farnsworth*
Masako's Tale by Michael West ...

Help Wanted by Lydia Ondrusek ...
Act Natural by Tyler Hayes ...

Desperate Housewolves by Eric Scott de Bie ...
Life Decisions by Dylan Birtolo ...

Papa Pirana, by Angel Mccoy ...
Deserter by Gabrielle Harbowy and Marie Bilodeau ...

Corvidae by Kerrie Hughes ...
In One Stride Comes the Dark by Keneth Hoover.

*authors who had stories in the first Beast Within also,

GST is looking at a Late June release.

Bouda, the Playlist

2011-03-07T08:15:00.004-05:00

Most novels have a characteristic vibe, or tone. Especially Noir and Hardboiled (Like..oh, say Gift of the Bouda -I think). One challenge I found in writing my book (over the course of a year+) was that it was hard to just turn that vibe on. You work all day, play with the kids, do your chores, have dinner, put the kids to bed, and then....then.. you sit down and crank out a few hindered words on your breakout novel. (Okay, maybe it won't breakout- I'm stretching, but it's my blog, so I can reimagine any way I'd like)..

Anyway, so over the course of the year, how can I just 'get in the zone'? Well, my way was to have a play list. I selected a few songs that I liked, that captured the vibe I was going for (a little melancholy, fast paced). I sat down, hit my iTunes tab and started by rereading, and lightly editing (sometimes chainsaw editing) the thousand or so words previous to where I started back in, and viola! Vibe inducing...

So what was the playlist? Here it is. After you read Bouda, let me know how it worked for you?

Sandman, Metallica

All These Things I’ve Done, The Killers

Under Pressure, Queen and David Bowie

Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin

I Love Rock and Roll, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

Fight for Your Right, Beastie Boyz

Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen

Gift of the Bouda- released

2011-03-02T11:52:00.003-05:00

My second Novel, Gift of the Bouda has been released by Salvo Press. Though the release date says June 2011? Is this a prerelease? Not sure.
Cover looks fine- another red book.

It was a bit of a surprise, the editor hadn't told me it was going out yet, but I'm not sure it has exactly, so sorry to surprise you all (but imagine my surprise).

Salvo (pre) released it on Amazon as a paperback, kinlde, nook, you name it.

It's a little grittier than STG (I know, grittier than a heroin addict-fallen angel). Werewolves, strippers, mafioso, all in the biggest little city in the
world. You'll love it.

Twelth of twenty-seven

2011-03-01T13:54:00.002-05:00

So, I haven't seen it posted, but I don't think I made the Stoker cut with STG.

Of the 27 first novels recommended by Horror Writers, I was number twelve. Not too bad. They usually take the top five, members vote, and the most popular wins. So...12th...top five...I'm thinking no? But a good showing none the less. They don't have a category for best second novel, so I have to compete with the big boys next time. Yikes! Vote early vote often for The Gift of the Bouda, coming this spring.

New review

2011-02-27T06:49:00.004-05:00

Another review for STG at fantasy book critic. Yay.

Not my strongest review, and a bit rambling and hard to follow, but over all Mahir thinks I wrote a good book that could be better. A true statement of just about everything, isn't it? (And at 'goodreads' he rated it four out of five stars.) But to be candid, I had a lot to say and STG was the best book I could have said them in at the time I wrote it.

I was also happy to see that the critic hit on several of the things I wanted to say in the book (themes....ooohh no, literaryness). STG is a story about flawed people making choices. It's about living with those choices and realizing that the choices you make don't have to define you for the rest of time. It's about relationships, it's about faith, and it's about doing what you think needs to be done, even if you know the outcome won't be in your best interest. (think 'cowboying-up')

Several of the critics also picked out the stylistic components that I was shooting for; noirish, epic themes on a personl level.

This has also been a criticism; 'angels and demons? Where's Armageddon, why such a 'small' book?'

My answer to the smallishness was that most of us make personal decisions that in the grand scheme of things are pretty small scale, they don't change the whole world, most people don't even know we have made them. But that doesn't make them unimportant. In fact the small decisions we make everyday, to show humanity, to do the right things, to be a positive and uplifting influence- rather than making the selfish or thoughtless choices, are the decisions that I think are the most important of all.

If this doesn't make sense, I suggest you read the 'Screwtape Letters' from CS Lewis, then get back to me.

iBook and Nook

2011-02-18T13:13:00.004-05:00

STG will be coming out soon as an iBook and in Nook format. Yay.
The publisher also went through and reedited the manuscript. So all future copies (as of today) should be cleaner copies, Also Yay.

I had two reveiwers that commented on the quality of the eiditing- great book too bad it wasn't edited better. Now, before I point fingers at the publisher, these errors were in the original manuscript I sent in. One would expect them corrected, but it's hard to point to someone else for not fixing what I broke in the first place. But no more. All future editions are clean....

The Gift of the Bouda, the Novel

2011-02-16T12:48:00.002-05:00

The novelization of my short story, 'The Gift of the Bouda', named imaginatively enough by the same name, has been sold to Salvo Press!

Yes, very cool.

I received the first .pdf proof of the edits and did another line edit. It was fun, after not having looked at the manuscript for six or eight months to go through it again. Like visiting an old friend. (I did spend a year writing it, after all, and got to know the characters rather well.) This book tells the story of John Rogers, a GWOT SF Officer bitten by a were-hyena (Bouda) and now back in the states dealing with his affliction. He drifts up to reno where he works as a part-time bouncer at a strip joint and runs afoul of a werewolf pack. Great fun. I wrote it as a noirish horror story (not crime-noir, but noir in the tight prose, but events for the MC keep deteriorating out of control) and hope you will all enjoy and buy many copies.

The novel is my second, following STG. Salvo is also a small press (like the press STG went to). Been around longer, better distribution, some books have made it big, so cross your fingers.

Beast Within 2- The Beast Unleashed

2011-02-14T22:49:00.004-05:00

I just heard from the anthology editor today that my short story, 'The Long Road to Sanctum' has been accepted for inclusion in the Beast Within 2- the Beast Unleashed. Yay.

This is a slightly unconventional werewolf story, written as a postapocolyptic western. I had originally written this for the first Beast Within, but they accepted the Gift of the Bouda first and don't ussually accept two stories by the same author. So I shopped it around a bit, improved it with each rejection and when Beast within 2 posted, submitted again.

It will be worth the wait, as this will be a good anthology. Jenn Brozak is the editor (and top drawer), and the anthology was all invites (me too).

New Review

2011-01-23T11:41:00.002-05:00

Well, I have certainly been neglecting this blog, haven't I?

Work has been a Lot-O-Busy, the holidays, the War College (I'm doing a Masters in Strategic Studies through the US Army War college as an Army Reservist), family obligations, and of course farm chores. Oh, and I have a host of other lame excuses, if you'd care to hear them.

In the past two months I've continued to flesh out the WIP (work in progress) a little, okay barely, but I have scratched away at it. I finish the masters in July and plan to begin writing again in earnest, after that, promise.

But what I really wanted to tell you about was my new review from the Deepening. (Click on Deepening) Overall it's pretty positive, but there is a negative about the editing. And of course the editor takes time to underscore that negative, but he's right. No excuse for writing a good story and then editing it poorly.

Military Sci Fi

2010-11-19T11:49:00.004-05:00

I posted earlier that my current WIP was a Military Science Fiction story. One of the things an author must do when writing genre fiction is to respect the conventions of the genre. By this I mean that people who read a certain genre have expectations. If you are reading a gothic romance novel you need a certain setting (preferably a moor) a strong male lead (preferably a brooding sort) and a plucky female (it wouldn't hurt if she were a bookish sort that could give way to her passions). You don't want to write such a book that violates the conventions of the genre unknowingly. You can bend the rules, be iconoclastic, but it's better if you know what your doing wrong rather than just stumble along. As I have said before, I don't feel constrained, but at the same time I try not to be blatant (like calling Twilight 'Horror' fiction- argghhh!)

For this reason I thought to have a look at some of the premier Military Scifi out there and I came away with this short list (if you think I've missed one please speak up).

1. Starship Troopers, Heinlein (Clearly the all time best of the genre-read it loved, still love it)
2. The Forever War (a Vietnam ere anti-warish sort, but great)
3. Old Man's War, Scalzi (I've read the third in the series and wasn't blown away- good but not terribly realistic from a military perspective)
4. Anvil of the Stars, Bear
5. Exultant, Destiny's Children, Baxter
6. The Kinsman Saga, Bova (Have this to read but haven't yet)
7. The Man-Kzin Wars, Niven (Inspired a whole slew of books, and made it into the star trek cartoons of the 70s- read a few, liked them but not very militarily strong)
8. Armor, Steakly
9. A Hymn Before Battle, Ringo (Read it, liked it, Ringo's first novel, clearly written from the perspective of a junior NCO-even though the Main character is a junior officer, but these are the young men that fight our nation's wars)

What do you think? Have I missed a good one?

"Succumbing to Gravity" is a riveting read that will be hard to put down.

2010-11-10T13:26:00.004-05:00

My Midwest Book Review review came in, and they liked it. About 20 book reviews down in the fiction review section [here]. They were also kind enough to five star me on their companion Amazon post.

The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation - Again

2010-11-07T21:26:00.005-05:00

My Steampunk-ified story, The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation is now out in the 'Cover of Darkness', a biannual digest [trade paperback-anthology] of darker fiction, by Sam's Dot publishing. Yay.

I've commented on the story before (it was first in Steampunk Tales).

My first second sale, and since it's a rewrite of a previous tale that I sold can I count this as a trifecta?

Three British authors and one not

2010-11-05T20:26:00.007-04:00

I knocked out books by three British Author in quick succession.
The first was Ukridge by PG Wodehouse. If you haven't read any Wodehouse, you're missing out (if you like stuffy, dated British Humor- which I do). He is often held up as an example of how to write sympathetic characters, humor, timing. These books are antiques, but timeless.

The next was Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell. I've spoken of him before- he writes great Historic/Military fiction. This one was the fictionalized account of one of the most famous battles in history. A British force outnumbered ten to one (or so), prevails. I think some famous deadguy wrote a play about it.

The last was With One Lousy Free Packet of Seeds, by Lynn Truss. Truss is the author of the best selling 'Eats Shoots and Leaves', a cute little book about punctuation. The book was fine, a sort of Britsh Comedy of errors. When I picked it up I didn't realize it was an early 90s book, as her ESandL was quite recent.

After all this Britishness I had to cleanse my palate with a good old fashioned dose o SciFi. I read Scalzi's 'The Last Colony'. I went to my favorite used book store looking for Old Man's War, or Ghost Brigades, but neither was available, Stand alone it felt like I was missing somthing with this one (some books are like that, if you like the earlier books in the series you are 'on board' with the characters, but if you haven't you don't buy in so readily- this one was like that for me).

Interview on Horroview

2010-10-19T13:16:00.003-04:00

(No, I'm not trying my hand at poetry, the title just worked out that way.)

I recently did an interview via email with 'Catwalk' (not his real name) at Horrorview. And if you go to the main horrorview page you'll see my scary mug!

Horrorview Article (click and all will be revealed).

Stoker?

2010-10-06T20:15:00.004-04:00

My book Succumbing to Gravity has made the list for best first novel in the Bram Stoker Award Recommendations for 2010. Yay.

The Stoker is like the Emmey of horror fiction. Very cool. The recommendations are winnowed down to the final ballot, the winner gets a cool statue, the losers get a letter saying they are a 'stoker finalist'.

If you're an HWA member remember to vote early and vote often...

W.I.P.

2010-09-30T05:10:00.004-04:00

One of the things people often ask me about writing is, what are you working on now? The lingo is, your 'Work in Progress' or W.I.P.

Some author friends of mine that blog will often post their WIPs, detailing story development, progress, weekly word counts. I think it helps to have an external accountability.

Others have even gone on to publish their works as serialized, online novels (covered under creative commons copyrights).

Since I started this blog I really haven't started a new work. I finalized and worked on the marketing of StG, and I edited the novelization of my were-hyena story (Gift of the Bouda) but I really haven't started anything new. Two big reasons were my Army Reserve commitment- I'm doing a Masters degree for the Army through distance learning (a combination of online, group chats and residence phases) with the US Army War College (pretty cool- but also very time consuming) in additon to my weekend army job and my job job. I was bumped up a notch at work and this requires me to travel. I've done 3 round trips to the Republic of Georgia (Tbilisi, not Atalanta) since June.

So I've been pretty much leaving everything on the field and don't have much to devote to writing.
But thanks to poor food prep hygiene, I was gifted with the nastiest case of the shivering-fever-trots that I've ever had. It was great, I lost 10 kilos and was confined to bed. What does a writer do in such a circumstance? He makes lemonade, and begins a new WIP.

Inspired by some of the destruction in Georgia due to the war with Russia, and the scenery in general, I penned out 3 pages of rough outline, and the first three chapters (6k words) of first draft material. It looks pretty good.

As with most of my work, I don't feel strictly constrained by genre conventions but this one would largely fall under 'Military Science Fiction', with a liberal infusion of postapocolyptic science fiction horror (zombies and alien monsters), hand to hand combat, military hardware. Even a hot chick. You'll love it.

I use an alternating first person POV (the Captain of a Transatmospheric assualt craft or -drop ship- which is a cross between a vietnam era huey-of which I have much experience- and a normandy era landing craft) and a close 3rd person POV. Right now the primary 3rdPOV is a fourth generation planetary settler whose world was been blasted from space by aliens and is now in the 'mop up phase' with bioweapons and urban assault forces. The good guys go in light due to civilian oversight. Mayhem ensues. Yes a little bit of an Iraq war influence.

I see it as 90K words based on the story arc I have so far. A lot of Military Science fiction crosses over into what is know as 'space opera' and these books can be monsters (140K words, 300+ pages). I write books about monsters, not monster books. I find with those I tend to skip pages(other people's stuff, I try to pay attention to my own pages), so heeding my friend Elmore's rule number 10...don't write the parts they skip, mine should come in around 250 pages. But that's on this side of the story- there's no telling what the characters will need once they start to have lives of their own...

That's my WIP.

A funy aside, I was editing the second chapter and working on the third on my flight from Munich to Dulles. An early twenty something guy sitting next to me asked, when my laptop battery gave up, and I quit, if I was working on a novel. "Why yes I am," I said. He asked in a manner that made me unsure if it was derisive or impressed, if I'd ever had anything published. "Why yes I have," I replied. Must be hard, he said. "Yes it is," said I.

Reviews, reviews!

2010-09-20T14:40:00.007-04:00

The reviewers are finishing my book and the reviews are starting to come in.

My first Review is live on Horrorview (click on horrorview)!

My second Review is live on Paperback Horror.

My third Review is live on Dread Central.

My fourth Review is live at the Antibacterial Pope.

My fifth at the horror fiction review.

So far they're all pretty positive.

Go...check them out..I'll wait.

StG Now in Kindle

2010-09-16T23:27:00.006-04:00

Thanks to the staff at Reliquary press, my Debut novel,
Succumbing to Gravity, is now out in a kindle edition!

I encourage those of you have read it to post a reveiw or 'TAG' it on Amazon (either the paperback page or the kindle page- or hey how about both?).

I am a member of the Horror Writers Association and they have a program where they pair up junior members with more senior members for mentorship. More how the biz works than the actual mechanics, but that too if needed. My HWA mentor is Dan Keohane (a Stoker nominated author- Stokers are like the oscars of horror fiction) just left a generous review on Amazon. Blurb-worthy.

More Pirates

2010-09-05T18:06:00.003-04:00

I've been a longtime fan of the Richard Bolitho tales of Alexander Kent, but the Last Raider is the first Douglas Reeman book I've read. The irony here being that Kent is the pen-name of Reeman. I wasn't disappointed.

In war one expects to see enemy troops meet on the battlefield. Victory generally consists of one force defeating the other. But what if one of the forces can't take to the field because they lack equipment, supplies, transportation, food; logistics. Then the one combatant would win by default, right? Targeting an enemies ability to get supplies to the fight is a strategic consideration. In WWII US strategic bombers destroyed factories, infrastructure, fuel depots, all with the aim of keeping assets out of the hands of German soldiers. A sea-going version of this approach was to sink supply ships. When done by easily identifiable warships it seems like an 'in-bounds' move. But another approach was to mount guns on a civilian ship, in Navy service, with minimal disguise and have it sink civilian cargo ships...this is the 'commerce raider'.

The last raider is a fictionalized account of the last German commerce raider of WWI. A satisfying read from before I was born, both the content and the book itself ( it published in 1963!) I saw many similarities with the Bolitho novels. Reeman (a WWII British Navy veteran) writes with authority on how men in war behave with one another. I saw echoes from my own combat experiences (though I was a US Army officer- some things seem universal).

This was an older novel than other Reeman/Kent stories I have read. So I presume he was newer at the craft, though I couldn't tell. The books are written in third person, but he has this disconcerting habit of switching around through dozens of people's POV. It was also an ensemble cast, and when you POV wobble like he does it can be hard to follow. I think it worked well, given that this is only the second WWI novel I have read from the German side (All Quiet being the other one..as with most graduates of the American public school system).

Pirates, arghhhh

2010-08-26T20:34:00.004-04:00

I recently finished the penultimate Crichton novel, Pirate Latitudes. His last novel is still in editing and is rumored to be a techno-thriller, for which he is best known. But Dr. Crichton could write a mean historical tale of adventure as well (Eaters of the Dead being the other one I'm thinking of).

As I understand it, an assistant found a copy of this manuscript buried in one of his computers, finished but forgotten. The publishing industry being what it is, they grabbed it up and printed a million copies! I'm not sure why this would have been locked away, but I suspect he wasn't done with it. It was a rougher read. Crichton tells a good story, Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain. Science gone awry with a small group of people trying to survive. In PL, Crichton tells of a 17th century pirate. Affected voice, more exposition than usual, jumpy narrative. That sort of thing. It was Fine. No Treasure Island or anything, but I enjoyed it alright.

Immediately after, I started in on my next read, the Last Raider by Douglas Reeman, also a tale of Naval Hijinks. Not to take anything from an obviously great man and writer, but there is sure a notable difference between someone writing about something they have experienced (Reeman was a sailor in WW2) and someone writing about something who hasn't.

ISFDb

2010-08-21T00:08:00.003-04:00

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database now has a Rick Farnsworth page...who'd'a thunk?

Ch,Ch,Ch. Changes...

2010-08-19T05:54:00.004-04:00

I read my first Jim Butcher book recently. 'Changes' is the most recent installment of the Harry Dresden Files series. You may have heard of this from the show on the scifi channel a few years ago. Dresden is one of the leading Urban Fantasy series out there written with a male voice. (a large preponderance of Urban Fantasy slips easily into the 'paranormal romance' or 'chicklit')

For the unenlightened among you, Urban Fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy where mythic elements are found in an urban setting. It could be any time period, just set in an urban environment. You usually find elves, dwarves, fairies, magic mixed with the modern world. The second hellboy slipped into an urban fantasy.

I think I should have started at the beginning with Harry though. As with most series the author needs to up the ante as the character goes along, right? Changes is #12, so the events, rather than being the story of a wizard in a modern setting (which sounds clever), turn pretty quickly into epic battles between a vampire army, along with every mythic figure, from norse, to celtic to aztec, that I have ever heard of. Butcher is a competent writer, his first person narrative is believable and he has an interesting premise. I can see why he has a following. I wasn't a fan of the all-in and kitchen sink approach to fantasy though. It felt like a long mixed metaphor, but understandable if all of the characters had been introduced over the past few years.

My friend Elmore

2010-08-15T22:02:00.003-04:00

I recently finished the novel Glitz by Elmore Leonard. I think this is over number 12 for me (of his crime books, I haven't read many of his early westerns, 3:10 to Yuma for instance). It was an early eighties vintage tale of bad guys, doing bad things and the women who watch them do it. Atlantic City, Puerto Rico, and the human psyche. One thing I enjoyed was the seeming randomness of events and the banality of the bad guys. No evil geniuses masterminding the end of the world, just bad people doing bad things for stupid reasons.

Like all 'EL' books, it was a satisfying read. If you read 'how to write better' books, you'll find that he is often singled out as an example for pacing, and snappy dialogue. And it's true. The thing to keep in mind is, there's only one Elmore and trying to ape his style is a bad idea. So go for the flow, be cool, don't plagiarize the actual verbage.

EL was also the person who I think gave the most sublime writing advise.

His ten rules of writing go something like this:

1. Never open with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than said to carry a dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said'.
5. Keep your exclamation marks under control.
6. Never use the word 'suddenly'.
7. Use regional dialects and patois sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Ditto, places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Clearly number 10 is my favorite, and the one I try hardest to follow.

Amazon Review

2010-08-05T13:53:00.004-04:00

My first Amazon review was published today. Hooty Hoo!

Check it out here {Click Here with your mouse cursor}

I think it was pretty good, hope I can be as circumspect when I get one that's less complimentary. But that is part of putting your work out there for others to see, isn't it?

My publisher sent a note that orders through Reliquary Press will be sent out in the next day or so. They are just now getting in from the printer.

*NOTE: orders of the last week shipped Thursday 5 Aug*

Book Reviews...

2010-07-31T06:26:00.005-04:00

STG has popped on the 'currently reading tab' at Paperback Horror! Paperback Horror is a book review blog that covers the horror genre, which Succumbing to Gravity can fall into.

Remember in a previous blog post where we discussed genre? I don't think what I write falls neatly into a genre bin, but you have to put a label on books so that they can be filed in the right section of the book store, or library, right? And I am a member of the horror writers association...so.

Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror are often grouped under the title 'Speculative Fiction' or Specfic. Horror can be further split into a large number of 'subgenres'; supernatural horror, psychological horror, splatterpunk (think blood splatter) and on and on. It gets more complicated when you realize that the psychological horror novels are often also marketed as crime. Think Silence of the Lambs or the Red Dragon- psychopathic serial killers. Sounds like Horror to me.

As I mentioned, I don't think STG fits neatly into a genre, though I am glad PBH is reading it. The non-neatness-of-fit is not just my opinion. I sent it off to a number of agents before I sent the manuscript to Reliquary and a common complaint was that it didn't fit 'neatly' into a genre. Complaint because agents want big books that can be easily marketed, not untidy books that one must equivocate on the genre from the start. STG had elements of religiously or supernaturally inspired horror, dark fantasy; one agent even said after review that it seemed more urban fantasy than horror but with elements of both. (I queried around 50 agents, 20 of them asked for partials to review and almost half of those asked to read the whole manuscript. So I did get a good sampling of people who knew what they were talking about.) And here I thought it was just a little road-trip book about a fallen angel, with a heroin habit, that was just trying to get by in the world.

Anyway, I can't wait to see what the reviewer thinks about STG. Unless he pans it, of course. That I can wait for.

Hellnotes and HWA

2010-07-29T19:36:00.009-04:00

David Silva runs the Hellnotes blog, a blog about...well, hell. Really it's a book review site for horror, dark fiction, movies books, etc. He was swamped with reviews so didn't have time to review STG, but being a Class Act he posted my press release all the same.

Check it out here. (Click on 'here' -I figured out how to do that hyperlink thing)

Also, since I'm a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) I rated a note on their members new release website. Also cool.

Invitation Only Anthology

2010-07-29T06:24:00.002-04:00

You know you're making headway as an author when you get an Invitation to submit a short story to an upcoming 'Invitation Only' anthology. Most anthologies have open calls, you submit a story, wait a year, bump your way up from slush, to hold, to final selection list to contract etc.

Jen Brozek sent me a note the other day asking that I submit a short story for consideration in the new werewolf anthology by Graveside Tales. (Gift of the Bouda appeared in the first GST werewolf anthology.) Exciting. Not the same as a a guaranteed slot- that's the next step (and it's a big step). It should be a great anthology as Jen just published a really nice one for Apex (Close Encounters of the Urban Kind) that is on the Stoker recommendation list for 2010.

First a book published, then an anthology invitation. Hooty hoo.

Hotcakes and Giveaways

2010-07-29T06:06:00.002-04:00

Well, STG is moving. It peaked (so far) as the 65,000th most popular book on Amazon!

Admittedly it has a ways to go to make the NYT bestseller list (or to be compared to hotcake sales), but still, copies are moving and this is good. My own copies will be here from Reliquary any day now (and I can hardly wait).

The ladies (and one dude) in the book club at work were generous enough to select STG as their book for August, and they asked me to sit in on the lunch-time review. Yikes. I'm not sure how I'll stack up against Reading Lolita in Tehran, or the Kiterunner..but they also read Paluniak's Survivor and Gaiman's Graveyard book, so maybe not so bad.

So the Giveaway you ask? I loaded a picture in Amazon, and tagged the book, but I stop short at providing a review. So I leave that to you dear reader. To the first person that leaves a (generally positive) review I will mail you your own free copy of STG. Gratis. Freeeeeee. Should you have already purchased one on which to base your review, and don't want another, I would be happy to substitute a copy of Abominations: 17 Spine-Tingling Tales Of Murderous Monsters And Horrific Creatures (Shroud Publishing, ISBN-10: 098018701X) which holds pretty steady at under 200,000th most popular book. Yes, I have a story in it- BEKs.

So there you go, post a copy of your review and email in the comments section, and I will delete your email before I post it. I'll contact you and get a shipping address, and these fabulous prizes will be yours!

Succumbing to Gravity- Now available

2010-07-27T10:44:00.005-04:00

Yes, I know you have all been waiting with bated breath for the release of Succumbing to Gravity. Well, wait no longer, here it is! (Click on 'here')

The Back cover copy:
**************************
Succumbing to Gravity
by
Richard Farnsworth
Greg used to be an angel, but that was an eternity ago. Back when he was Araqiel, part of the celestial chorus. Back before he gave in to his temptations. Before he fell. Now he roams the wet streets of a hopeless city, feeding his addictions and punishing himself for sins that cannot be forgiven. But when a desperate girl and a host of vengeful demons cross his path, Greg must choose between redemption and damnation. For him, the two may not be so different.

Author Interview

2010-07-26T06:31:00.002-04:00

My author interview for STG is up at the Reliquary Press website. It doesn't seem to have come out too schmarmy. My interview for the Beast Within anthology is still up also, so I have 2 interviews floating around in cyberspace.

Waiting

2010-07-26T06:12:00.002-04:00

Mike Stone is a friend and fellow writer I met through my online critique group, critters. We shared a table of contents in the GST 'Beast Within' anthology, he's a fabulous writer and is working on, what else, but a novelization of that same short story. Anyway, I found this sight on his blog that will tell you which famous author (and I am unsure how many there are) your writing resembles. Here's me, a Cory Doctorow wannabe. Could be?

The things I do while waiting waiting waiting for my proofs to come back from the printer...

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

STG the Novel- update

2010-07-22T20:12:00.005-04:00

My first novel, Succumbing to Gravity- is in final proof.
It has an ISBN number. (978-0-9841833-4-0)
Next it's going to the printer.
Then it will be available online at all your favorite online book buying places...

I'm sending ARCs (advance reader copies) to all my favorite book reviewers.

Dead Bird is still great

2010-07-11T13:30:00.004-04:00

Was it, 'I Want Candy' by the Bow Wow Wow's, or "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles? How about 'Ride Captain Ride on Your Mystery Ship' by the Blue Images or 'In A Big Country' by who else, Big Country?

Nope, it wasn't.

Of all the one hit wonders to ever hit big, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was clearly the biggest of big. Since it's publication in the 1960's Ms. Lee's book has sold well over 30 million copies. 30 Million. Can you imagine? And if you check Amazon it's in the top 2000 books right now. (If my book spikes at 2000 for an instant I'll fall over, apoplectic.)

I finished it for the second time in several years (the first time being in middle school which was... like I said several years) and really appreciated it more now than I did then. I can see why I was made to read it. It's elegant, understated, and emensly powerful. I don't need to run through a critique, there are 50 years worth of those. If you haven't read it since you were made to do so as a kid, then you should revisit. In spite of the blantant racism, the adult content that I didn't catch when I wasn't an adult (for instance, the accusation of incest that Tom R obliquely makes against the little terd Ewell- do you remember it? If not that's what I mean) it's still great both in spite of and because of, for different reasons.

As far as a one-hit wonder (Ms Lee never published another book) I am reminded of a quote from Joe Heller I once read. Paraphrasing: An interviewer noted that in his subsequent writing Heller had never written anything as good as Catch-22. He replied that the interviewer (nor most people that write) had never written ANYTHING as good ever.

Here Here.

STG Update

2010-06-25T21:30:00.002-04:00

So, word from the editors is that Succumbing to Gravity, the novel based on my short story in Nossa Morte will be out in the next few weeks. It will be available through reliquary press, amazon, and iBook.com. When I have the ISBN and such I'll be sure to post.

Also, keep an eye out for an opportunity to win a free copy of your very own....free...yours...

hardball

2010-06-22T20:12:00.005-04:00

If you look up lists of noir, or hardboiled fiction (and I do), you often run across Sara Paretsky's name. Dr. Paretsky writes a crime series featuring a private invesitgator named V.I Warshawski (Vic); Chicagoan, whiskey drinking, mustang driving, butt-kicking lady.

In all I find her writing certainly competent and entertaining, and recommend it. But I do have an observation for you to take and do with as you will. In previous posts I have mentioned differences in writing audiences. Manly-not manly. Much of the hard-boiled or noir fiction, the really edgy stuff, is geared toward men. Then there are the 'cozies', Agatha Christy type 'crime' books that you can cozy up with that I usually see women reading. There is a large body of crime fiction that is pretty gender neutral (to me). Paretsky's work is that body of noir that I don't see as appealing to the strictly knuckle-dragging crowd. To me, the thing that keeps me from really engaging in Paretsky's work to the degree that I do with others, say Robert Parker for instance, is in the details that I will gender-biasedly call manly details.

Compare and contrast a Sunny Randall book with a VI Warshawski tale. Different.

It's in the details.

When Vic pulls a weapon out, it's her 'colt'. The gun she keeps in a tuck holster. But what kind? Colt has made 100s of guns in the last century....

When a noir (anti) hero slides his (or her) weapon from the leather (or nylon) shoulder holster, it's a 9mm Glock 17 with pacmyer grips, laser sight. Heavier in his (or her) hand than the Glock 19 and redolent with the smell of cleaning fluid and old gunpowder, or better yet, cordite.

Accessory or life partner? This isn't to say crime fiction written from a manly viewpoint wouldn't also assume that a gun is just a prop...it's just not the manly crime fiction I read.

Rest for the wicked

2010-06-12T07:33:00.003-04:00

I polished off two very different books this past week; Paul Tremblay's "No Sleep till Wonderland"and Joe Hill's "Horns". Both held my attention until the end but neither really did it for me, even though they are both 'dark fiction' writers (which I also aspire to be).

First, Tremblay. He's a high school teacher and published a number of short stories in anthologies and magazines. This story falls into a "flawed Private Investigator, duped by girl, crime" sort of story. He did a good job of writing and I usually like these, but Tremblay has made the character so irredeemably flawed that I couldn't really embrace him. The protagonist is Mark Genevich, a narcoleptic attending group therapy or his mother will kick out of his rent-free apartment. It reminded me a lot of a cleaned-up Chuck Paluniuk. I think the part that kept me from embracing it was that the first person account was very internal. The protag editorializes everything, all the time, in a wisen-himer manner. I expect this is needed as Mark is facing some serious internal issues and we get a real sense of what it is like to live with the disease. But still...
The constant use of tough-guy talk and overly involved metaphors was sometimes entertaining and sometimes distracting. The other thing that threw me off was the use of present tense.
So, in short, a clever take on the detective novel, competently written, but I didn't love it- but then there is no accounting for taste.

The second book was Joe Hill's "Horns". I was really looking forward to this one as I enjoyed his debut novel, "Heart-Shaped Box" very much. It was an updated, edgier, and faster-paced Steven King. Ummm... if you didn't know, Joe Hill is the pen name of Steven King's son. And in that first book you could see the lineage. This one too, but not in a good way.

You see, I like King. He writes these genre-busting novels. But the thing I don't like about his writing, especially in his later work, is that he seems to meander through the story. Think Lisey's story... Dooma Key was an awesome book, but for me it was 30% too big for the story it told. I think his work certainly matured and progressed, but I haven't liked anything he's written as much I liked the shining. But this isn't about Steve, but rather Joseph Hillstrom King. Hard not to do though, isn't it?

Anyway, I didn't really like Horns as much as I had hoped I would. First, the theme, a guy turns into a demon. This didn't overly offend my Christian sensibilities, but the author's several rants about the Devil being the first superhero and God generally being a no fun blowhard didn't sit well. The characters are devoutly Catholic, but Hill really trivialized the mechanics of being religious, and being Catholic in particular, which made me feel it a bit unrealistic. The other part I didn't really like (and I confess, I actually skipped over text- which I try never to do) was that the flashbacks and the 'present' of the book seemed really unbalanced. If that makes sense. Time is moving along in the book, big flashback to explain something, short present, long long long flashback, repeat. Otherwise, he can certainly tell a story. Writing advisors tell you to not be easy on your protagonist, and the poor protagonist in this story went through hell. Which in the end seemed to be the place he wanted to go after all.

The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation

2010-06-08T20:59:00.003-04:00

I mentioned that I have a new story in Steampunk Tales, The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation. I also promised that I would tell you where the story came from and what Steampunk is.

There are lots of different ways to cluster fiction, stories or novels with similar conventions, tropes, etc are in the same genre. (Western, Romance, Mystery etc) Genres can in turn be split into subgenres. 'Steampunk' is a subgenre of science fiction. There is an adequate definition on the wikipedia page, but the name comes from 'Steam' the primary motive force of the Industrial revolution and 'punk'. From punk. Like punk rock. It was a play on a subgenre of the early nineties known as cyberpunk, 'edgy new fiction' where people would plug right into computers, or have augmented neural pathways; cybernetics.

In general steampunk stories are science fiction placed in the past or in an alternate present where steampower and antiquated weapons are the rule of the day. There are a number of essays out there on the steampunk movement (there are steampunk bands, bars, retro-future steampunk devices, etc) but to me it is fun when it reminds of the Jules Verne novels I read as a child or the Flash Gordon serials I would watch late Saturday night, just before the stations signed off for the night (that was before infomercials). Old-fashioned people, with old-fashioned equipment, setting off into the future. You see its influence a lot in contemporary scifi, look at Stargate Universe...the ship is old, cranks, clicks..

There are those that would then split Steampunk into more discreet clumps. Were I to be such a splitter I would agree that my story, The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation, which, did I mention, is out in the latest issue of Steampunk Tales (click on the name) anyway, TSoAT would fall into the Steampunk genre 'Gaslight Horror'.

So where did it come from? Well, I wanted to try a Steampunk story, I had been thinking about it for a while. And I thought how well the story arc of my first published story, Outsourcing Blues would fit. Man against machine. The age of computers harnessing the power that haunted the dark outside the camp-fire light. That sort of thing. So, I did it. I kidnapped Toni and slipped her into the wayback machine and sent the story from 2008 to 1890, with all the associated changes in norms, theme etc. Antonia Farragolo is given a complete body makeover, but her kick-ass attitude just wouldn't leave. Oh, and for once the graduate student wins out over the thesis advisor. That NEVER happens in real life.

I hope you enjoy it. Steampunk Tales, the iPhone app and penny dreadful for the 21st century. How cool is that?

Steampunk Tales , Lucky Number Seven

2010-06-08T06:07:00.003-04:00

My first Steampunk Story is now out in the latest issue of Steampunk Tales, number 7. The magazine bills itself as a 'penny dreadful for the twenty-first century', and is sold as an iphone ap! (Or a pdf for those of you not so enamored with all things Mac.) I've never been an iphone ap before...hmm.

The story is 'The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation'. Check it out, and in my next post I'll discuss both Steampunk and where the story came from. I'm also behind on a few book posts so I had better get to those too.

More Manly books

2010-06-03T19:47:00.005-04:00

I finished in rapid order (thanks to a transatlantic round-trip plane flight for work) two books. Robert Parker's Appaloosa and Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Siege.

Very different books, but certainly the type to appeal to guys. I've mentioned Parker before, a writer of contemporary crime fiction who decided to try his hand at a Western. I think it came off well. Tight, hard-boiled-ish, gun fights and cool no-nonsense heroes.

Sharpe's Seige on the other hand is much like the Alexander Kent book I described earlier. Rather linear, manly. Cornwell is one of the best writers of historical fiction out there, writing of the exploits of Major Richard Sharpe in the Napoleonic Wars. As Kent and others write of the British Navy, Cornwell writes of the British Army. Infantry in fact. While the majority of British Infantry was armed with the venerable 'Brown Bess', .75 caliber, smooth bore musket, Sharpe is a rifleman armed with the 'Baker Rifle', a .625 caliber rifle. (Note: a rifle is a long arm where there is 'rifling' or spiral grooves inside the barrel that cause the bullet to spin- makes them more accurate at greater ranges, but also takes longer to load).

The average sailor in the 19th century British Navy probably wasn't the most reputable person, but the Infantry soldier was down-right disreputable. Sharpe is an officer that was raised up from the ranks (prior enlisted). So he comes across as a bit of a hard-case. I like spending time with him.

A visit with a futzy uncle

2010-05-23T16:10:00.003-04:00

Imagine spending the afternoon with a slightly eccentric foreign uncle. He's amusing in a doty, understated, dry-British-humor sort of way. His puns and set ups are deliberate. Not a rock-concert, or a frat party, but you enjoy yourself all the same. This is what reading an Alexander McCall Smith book is like for me.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, as the second Smith book that I've read (the first being Portugese Irregular Verbs). He's much better known for his #1 ladies detective club books, and I keep meaning to pick one of those up... AMS is an academic, born in Africa but Sottish.

tULoS is an episodic novel that revolves around the lives of a small cadre of characters that live in and around #44 Scotland street in Edinburgh. The characters are all for the most part well drawn and it seems a bit like a Seinfeld episode if reimagined with a larger cast and more elaborate problems by a BBC writer with a slight 'comedy of manners' bent and a desire to make social commentary. I think it's the fourth or fifth in the series and there may be merit to starting at the beginning, but I think it stands by itself as well. (But to be honest I enjoyed Portugese Verbs more).

Manly Books

2010-05-16T21:02:00.006-04:00

It's pretty well accepted in the publishing industry that women read much more fiction than men. Go to any book store or stop by the rack of books by the magazines at the grocery store and you can clearly see this in the available selections. Honestly, how many guys do you know that belong to reading clubs? A bunch of manly men sitting around discussing enduring themes and how a novel made them 'feel', while balancing a plate of finger sandwiches and sipping green tea. Seriously. I can't even conjure an image.

My coworkers in the office have a monthly book club, and when I asked if I could join, I was scoffed at. Openly. "Your a 'manly-man', why would you join?" one Lady asked. And this after they had chosen Neil Gaimon's Graveyard Book as their selection. "Did you at least note the structure of said novel (short story-like), or the parallels to Kiplings works?" I asked. Nope. But they did invite me to sit with them on their next selection, Reading Lolita in Tehran...

Pa-shaw. Not manly enough.

Honour This Day by Alexander Kent is a manly book. Douglas Reeman (the real name for the author) is a World War II British Navy veteran. As Kent, he writes the story of Richard Bolitho, a British Navy Officer set from the end of the US revolutionary war through the Napoleonic Wars. Great stuff, but alas, never to be seen in a women's reading circle...

And why exactly? I think there is action, certainly (and Reeman does an excellent job of making you feel like you are there, with a host of details you would only think to include if you had actually served in the Navy and been to sea in war- think Horatio Hornblower only better). But the plots are also fairly linear. There aren't a lot of twists and turns, they're there, but not so much so that they detract from telling a great story. Or maybe those twists make it more suitable for the reading circles?

Most of his books are out of print, and he is one of the first authors I look for when I hit a used book store. (I know you can find these on amazon, but I like the thrill of the hunt). The aspect of the writing that I really don't much like is his shifting POV. Most authors use 3rd person, where you describe a person (as opposed to first person where the writer uses 'I'), but Reeman will liberally shift POV through 3 or 4 people in one short scene. A little hard to follow at times.

HTD was my most recent Kent novel, and I loved it. When Reeman is detailing the seamanship, the battle sequences, how leaders and men in war interact, he does so flawlessly. (And I can say this with some authority as I was a leader of men in war). The romantic aspects (there is a love interest, a point of honour, an affair) not so well played. But then, this is not meant to be filed in the stacks with the Romance novels, this is high adventure. No lace doilies and finger sandwiches here!

Book Trailer

2010-05-15T22:47:00.003-04:00

A new trend in Book Publishing is the book trailer. Sort of like the little snippets of movies, but as the name implies, made for books. Check out the trailer I put together (with extensive technical assistance from my son- kids and technology) for STG.

Succumbing to Gravity- update

2010-05-10T19:20:00.007-04:00

As I sat to type out this post I heard a tapping at the window. When I turned, there was nothing at the glass. Then a tapping, turn, nothing.

The third time I turned I saw the culprit...a mockingbird, a-tap-tap-tapping on the glass. Not so ominous as Poe's Raven, to be sure, but I wonder what the little bird could want in here? I looked square in those (little flakes of black marble) eyes of his and he flew away.

Hmmm..

Well, the novel has a new cover image with a proposed release date this summer. Exactly when this summer, I'm unsure. But let's hope sooner than later. I like it much better than the previous one. But I wonder what people will think when they see it?

I had the same thought when I finished the first draft (which was really about the third or fourth draft, with all the futzing around) of STG. I was pretty sure I'd said the things I wanted to say, that I had conveyed the messages and theme I'd meant to. I was curious to see how my small cadre of first readers and critique group members would see it. Funny the things people pulled out of the book that I hadn't intended. Whether my unconscious inclusion or the reader's projection; unexpected results.

Probably the same thing with that mockingbird. He saw his reflection in the glass and pecked at it, while I pondered the significance of his actions to my own life. Were he able to talk he probably would have said something like, "What are you looking at?"

True blood

2010-05-04T21:54:00.003-04:00

When people find out that you like to write short stories (and novels) about monsters, they often give a puzzled half smile. And then they search through their experiences to try to make a connection; "Oh, like (insert name)" or "You must like (insert name)".

With the increased popularity of monsters in a certain cross-over genre...we'll call it...I don't know, horror romance...no how about paranormal romance.. well with the increased popularity of tortured vampire love interests (from Anne Rice's Lestadt to Stephanie Meyer's Edward) the 'insert name' name is less likely to be Steven King or Dean Koontz and more likely to be someone writing about tortured vampire lovers.

Well, one I've been asked about more frequently (especially after the HBO show True Blood came out) is Charlaine Harris. So, I finally knuckled under and gave one of her books a read. Or, in this case a listen (audio book). I picked up her collection of short stories A Touch of Dead.

Clearly not my cup of tea. But it wasn't bad. Paranormal, southern romance with a chick-litty chatiness. The character, Sookie Stackhouse, was believably likable, there was a chatty understated quality to her dialogue. It certainly didn't take itself too seriously and was fun. But she did disconcertingly dump every trope of supernatural horror and urban fantasy and swirl them around. And I just went through the 5 short stories. Vampires, elves, trolls, were creatures...telepaths, witches..even catahoula hunting dogs! My head hurt.

I would recommend with a qualified 'if you like that sort of thing'. And many many people do, as she spends a lot of time on the NY Times lists. Certainly smarter than...egads, Twighlight...but a bit of stretch otherwise. I wouldn't turn my nose up, but I'm not running out to buy the next book either.

STG the Novel

2010-05-02T21:52:00.005-04:00

Succumbing to Gravity was a short story that I wrote for Nossa Morte. This was the first paying market that paid 'real semi pro' rates and allowed me to apply for affiliate (semi-pro category) membership to the Horror Writers Association.

STG is also my first novel. (Actually my second, the first was a practice novel that I will probably never discuss in an open forum). I floated it past forty agents and had 8 partial requests and 5 requests to read the entire manuscript. They all ended up passing and then I started in on the direct submissions to publishers.

And yay, the gentlemen at Reliquary Press requested the partial, the full, some revisions and tada, they bought it. I'm expecting a mid-summer release as they have a few others in the queue ahead of STG. I'll keep you all apprised as it gets closer and I've posted one of the early cover ideas, because I thought it was pretty cool. A little busy for me, but cool all the same. And making the publishing of my own first novel a little more real.

The image comes for the statue of the fallen angel in Retiro Park, Madrid, Spain.

Hard Boiled Crime/Mystery

2010-05-02T21:20:00.004-04:00

I finished Split Image by Robert B Parker, the ninth and last Jesse Stone novel. It's also the last novel that features his other successful series character, Sunny Randall.

Last I'll see either character because Dr. Parker passed away last January. A terrible loss for his family to be sure, but to the genre and his large fan base as well. I know I was sad when I heard.

I recommend all Parker's novels as a matter of course. I love them for their crisp elegance. My favorite Parker books are, I must admit, his Virgil Cole westerns, but his most famous character is of course Spenser (39 novels from 1973 to 2010- a pretty good run). Like in the Spenser books, here there is humor, there is an adept insight into psychiatry, there is competent writing with mostly complete characters and snappy dialogue. Unlike the Spenser books, Jess Stone is very much a flawed character (so is Sunny Randall which I suppose makes them a good match). But Jesse struggles with obsessive behaviors and alcohol.

Well, the novel. Again a novel very much like the other Jesse Stone Novels (Oh and Tom Selleck comes off as a much older and grittier version than I imagine the book version of Jesse to be in the TV specials) without being overly repetitive. Or worse yet, being derivative! The novel follows Jesse, and to a lesser extent Sunny, as they try to solve crimes. Jesse struggles with his inner demons and goes on a bender, spending much of the rest of the novel trying to understand what set him off. A quick read. Dr. Parker left the ends rather well tied for me to believe these two characters may have a future.

The only real criticism I have, and it's really something I've seen in many of the books, is that the characters all get each other. What I mean is that there is a sort of ironic-self depricating-sarcasm to the humor one character will express to another. And for the most part all of the other characters 'get it' and have the same sort of snappy comebacks. Except for the criminals who all seem to exhibit the banality one would expect of a thug.

("It looks like it was hard to get into those pants' says Jesse; 'For who' retorts Sunny. That sort of stuff).

Something to keep in mind, most people come at conversations from different angles and don't always see irony or sarcasm as funny. Being an ironic-self depricating and sarcastic person myself, I feel that I can say with authority that not everyone 'gets it'. And even if they do get it, that doesn't mean everyone thinks it's funny. Well, me anyway. But then, I don't have such a skilled and experienced writer putting my material together.

Thrillers

2010-04-25T13:58:00.004-04:00

(And I don't mean of the Michael Jackson variety.)

I finished Eric Van Lustbader's 'Last Snow', a thriller.

EVL is known for his fantasy and thriller series, but also for reviving the Jason Bourne, (of the Bourne identity movies) series on contract from the estate of Ludlum, the creator.

An aside:
Generally literati talk about Plot driven novels, versus character-driven novels.
In the plot driven novel, what happens in the story is of primary importance. The characters seem to be pawns driven around through the novel like chess pieces on a board. In the character-driven novel on the other hand, it seems as if the characters are the masters of their own fate, and the story told unfolds because of the choices they make. I prefer novels that combine the two. The best examples of character driven stories are 'literary fiction'. I've been known to criticize this 'genre' as often the stories are so beautiful and they employ such incredibly powerful imagery, the prose is so lush, but I finish one and say.... so what was the point?

Plot driven stories are quite the opposite. There is a story. But sometimes the plot can be so contrived as to force me to the other side of the 'criterati' and scream at the pages; "That would never happen. Protagonist would never act that way!" (Most genre fiction has conventions. If a story didn't follow some of the conventions of the genre for instance, it wouldn't be labeled, right?) Of all the contemporary genre fiction, Thrillers are far and away the most plot-driven of them all. And this was very evident in Lustbader's novel.

Okay, back to my post.
In short it was a story of Jack McClure, ATF agent, hero, Presidents friend on special assignment where he breaks a 27 year marriage off with his wife, sleeps with an FSB (old soviet KGB) agent, foils high crimes, saves people, has shoot outs, survives arsenic poisoning...okay, get the picture? The political thriller is always an over the top plot-driven romp. It was well plotted, carried the story along and sold millions of copies. It will probably be a movie. But, I really didn't enjoy it and had to resist skimming to the finish. (I try never to do that. Elmore Leonard said his novels move along well because he never writes the parts people skip. So when I am tempted to skim, I ask myself why exactly I have that impulse.)

I think the biggest problem is that the author doesn't have a firm enough grasp of current Russian/Eurasian geopolitics and energy policy. News paper level, but there were too many instances where he tried to make the Russia of today be the Soviet Union of the 80's (the peak of coldwarspynovelthrillerdom). Then there were the instances where an event would happen but it wouldn't impact the rest of the flow of the novel. For instance, main character kills two assassins sitting in the car on the street below his apartment. Main character goes off to bordelo for top level meeting with bad guy. Main character returns to apartment and has dinner with hot widow next door. Okay. So why was the front of his apartment, where presumably there is a car full of dead guys, gone? No crime scene? I don't know, call me crazy, but I would expect such an event to have repercussions. And yes, I know it's a story. And it never really happened. And yes, I know that such a criticism from someone who writes stories about monsters seems a tad ironic. But still, help me suspend my disbelief a little bit longer.

Gone but not forgotten

2010-04-23T20:57:00.006-04:00

It would appear that Atom Jack online magazine has closed up shop. It's been happening alot lately, small presses start with a burst of energy, flourish and then life catches up with the publishers and they fall by the wayside. Adicus Garton bought my first short story, "Outsourcing Blues", for the May 2007 issue (Issue Seven). It was nice little mag, with good taste...I mean he bought my first story, right?

It would appear that the publishers are trying their hand at spec fic anthologies, you can check them out here.

Jaw Bones

2010-04-18T15:35:00.000-04:00

I recently finished two books in rapid order, first 206 Bones by Kathy Reichs and second, Jaws by Peter Benchley. It was an osteologically-themed reading week.

Kathy Reichs holds a PhD in forensic anthropology and writes genre mystery fiction with a bit of a police procedural feel. Her character, Temperance Brennan, is the inspiration for the TV show 'Bones'. I picked this up thinking this was the book that the series was based upon, not realizing that it was in fact the twelfth book in the series...

It was pretty good. I'm a science geek, so the preachey asides which bordered on direct address of the reader, weren't so bad.
A common technique in old-fashioned literature, is referred to by contemporary literati as 'Breaking the fourth wall', but I assure you dear reader, this is much frowned upon in contemporary writing circles. Unless of course you are going for a pastiche of some sort, which Kathy Reichs was not doing. Anyway, her asides took time to explain very technical aspects of anthropology, forensics, etc and worked pretty well. The preachy references to the need for a 'board-certified-forensic-anthropologist' was a thinly disguised professional rant against the unprofessional use of 'mere pathologist who lack forensic anthropological training or board certification' at the end though.

Anyway, you can read the wikipedia review for the plot; different than the tv show, not bad on its own, better than some I've read, realistic, but not as terribly gritty as I expected from a crime novel about someone dealing with bodies.

The second book I devoured was Jaws. Ha!

Like most children of the 70's, my first summer blockbuster was the movie Jaws. I had the Jaws poster. I had Jaws T-shirts. I saw all of the sequels over the next 10 years. But I never read the book.

I picked it up from the library a few weeks ago....
... da-dum
With that same scantily clad swimmer..
... da-dum
With a torpedo-like shark with a grinning mouth-full of teeth beneath...
... da-dum

...And I was expecting pure camp.

(Don't get me wrong, I love camp. I love pulp. I like old Dr Who -The Tom Baker version, Dr #4, for max camp and minimum special effects budget.
Conan the Barbarian is one of my top ten favorite films of all time for crying out loud.)

But you know what? Jaws was actually a great read. I not only enjoyed it, I thought it was pretty good. The characters seemed extremely dated, but real. A little over the top with the frustrated housewife and the 'old mystery man of the sea' Quint. The children were props. But still I was pleasantly surprised. The tension held up well even though I knew what was going to happen, but I could see how the screen writers took scenes that were slower, more drawn-out but real and jazzed them up a bit to increase the tension and give the scenes more 'pop'.

It was a classic, but was much quicker at getting to the point than Ayn Rand...

Oh Lazarus

2010-04-05T20:41:00.000-04:00

I recently finished,and enjoyed, the Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon.

Friends know that my tastes are eclectic, reading is no different. Even though I am a wide-ranging reader, I don't think I would have picked up this book had it not been a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award. I mentioned previously that the center of a writer's life is reading. So I read, a lot. I read pulp, I read Pulitzer winners, I read Newberry award winners, I read genre fiction by the box full(except romance- I tried...I just couldn't do it). I try to read things I enjoy, and things that will instruct (both in general terms and with regards to the craft of writing)and LP hit both marks.

The book is a story of a modern day Bosnian immigrant like the author who is conducting research for a book (about a Jewish immigrant killed in Chicago in 1908) and while tracing the path of the Jewish immigrant his companion (also a Bosnian, but one who had lived through the siege of Sarajevo) relays his story of the war. So really 3 stories in one.

Overall I thought it was well done and worth a read. But there were many instances where I experienced problems with the text that some of my critiquers have pointed out from time to time in my work.

First, the novice writer is told that the writer should be invisible to the reader. By that I mean that when you notice the writing you are knocked out of the story. Hemon's prose was overall very good, but he often used descriptive language (in particular adjectives) that seemed a bit incongruously and awkwardly wedged into the text. Maybe it's just me, but these instances brought me out of the story to wonder if these were really the right words to use.

Next problem for me was the reuse of vivid imagery. In particular 'vines of hair up the back of his neck'. First time you use it it's cool. Second time it is not only not cool it's awkward. Didn't happen often, but enough that I said to myself, 'Self, that's what that critter was talking about'.

Recycling is great, but not if it's really obvious in your story. The author recycled the same names, the same descriptions of people etc. I think the point was that there are echoes in history, but when it's really apparent that the author is doing it I think of it as 'cutesy' and I didn't really like it.

The last thing that tripped me up was not giving me enough information up front to have a clear image of the characters. If your character wears glasses and these will be important later then you need to tell me about them up front, otherwise I'll ask the blank pages 'where did those glasses come from?'.

It may sound as if I'm nitpicking, and I am. But I did enjoy the book, and would recommend it, even though it was a tad too literary (and postmodernist even) and just sort of...

-ended-

Dougie's Hand

2010-03-27T06:54:00.000-04:00

My short story, 'Dougie's Hand', has been accepted for the Spring issue of Rose and Thorn by Kathryn Magendie.

The story goes live 15 April 2010.

There are many different ways to go about constructing a story. (I think the only universal method these days has something to do with a word processor...some imagination..and I'm not always sure about the imagination). I still read a great number of 'how to do it', or preferably 'how I do it' writing advice articles. Some authors plot extensively, write notes, draw diagrams of story arcs and character interactions, maps of the place where the story takes place, etc. I did this for GOB-the short story and BEKs (see below)and I have to do it for my novels or it they turn to unintelligible goo in my hands.

Other people just start writing and see where the story takes them. You can try for a certain 'mood' or a 'voice' or just write. In short stories I can get away with this to some extant. But I still need to do some plotting of where I want to go. I have heard the writing of a story like planning for a road trip (an old school road-trip, no Garmins or Tom-Toms allowed here). You know where you will start, you've looked at the map, made some notes of where you want to go, but you reserve the right to deviate a bit if you see a Shoney's or a sign for one of those road-side museums (some of the best are along I10- the prehistoric alien in Arizona, the alligator farms in Louisiana, the Crocket county museum in Ozona Texas...ah, memories!). But every once in a while even OC road-trip planners like me just get in the car and see where they go. That was Dougie's hand for me.

I started with a voice. I knew what the main character sounded like. He was a millenial slacker in college. He was self-deluded and superficial. And he was FUN. So with that premise, I started typing away.

Dougie's hand is a story, really a 2200 word vignette, of a young man suffering from Anarchic or Alien hand syndrome (also called Dr. Strangelove hand). This is the conflict, because without conflict for the main character to overcome or deal with there's nothing happening in the story. Stories without conflict are usually called 'literary fiction'. Sounds great, but what was the point again?

After voice and conflict There was also a quality that I wanted the story to have, and this came in the rewrite, because even though I just got in and drove doesn't mean that I couldn't go back over and over and over...

So, the quality I wanted was one in which the narrator was so convicted in his obviously erroneous belief that the reader took a minute to doubt his/her own convictions. It's hard to explain exactly what I wanted, but the best example is from the movie
Neverwas . Maybe not your cup of tea, but I loved it. In it there are a few instances where Gabriel Finch is so convicted, and there is evidence to support his delusion, that the audience asks...could it be that he isn't a nut?

Well, you judge for yourself on 15 April how well I did to capture this with Dougie's Hand.

The story itself was a joy to write. My critique group provided valuable feedback. I submitted it and it sat in second and then third and then fourth round review with first ASIM (Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine) for a year. Then it was bought by Arkham Tales, where it waited to be published until the magazine folded. And then...Rose and Thorn had at it.

Atlas shrugged and so did I

2010-03-24T21:42:00.000-04:00

This is meant to be a blog about my writing life. Almost every 'how to write' book, article or interview by an author advises that the novice author read voraciously. For this reason (voracious reading is part of my writing life) it seems appropriate to include those experiences here.

My inaugural post-reading post is Ayn Rand's Atlas shrugged.

It's been long in coming.
It was a long time in the reading.
And I'm left with an "..eh.."

As with most famous works, I was familiar with it before I read it. In fact, before reading the book I had read more about Ayn Rand's objectivism than I had ever read of Rand directly. I think as a work meant to pontificate a world view, in it's time it was probably great. But for me...yawn...it just took long to do it. The characters were either one of three people; 'looter', 'noble industrial egoist' or one of the masses with his/her hand out. No middle ground, they all sounded the same. They all gave one or the other monologue. For a long time. Didn't really care for the characters, couldn't buy into the dystopian world. I tried, honest.

The parts I really did enjoy were the datedness. The hunt for a long-distance phone connection (as I flick open my black berry), the obsession with cigarettes, the very 1950's ish-ness. That for me was fun (though I don't suspect this was the author's intent).

Glad I read it, because I have felt like a phoney all these years for reading about it, but not reading it. It will be a while before I dig into the vault of great tomes, I paid my dues for the near-term.