Fifth in the series. Read after the break…
Jun 292019
Jun 282019
Fourth in the series, the first set well after the death of HP Lovecraft, and after a bunch of real-world events that I would have loved to have seen his take on. Read after the break…
Jun 272019
Third in the series. Read after the break…
Jun 262019
Second in the series. Read after the break…
Jun 252019
A year and a half ago I made a single post describing the “interstitial tales” that I wrote for “War With The Deep Ones.” WWTDO is a book filled with short-ish stories about the first day of an invasion of H.P. Lovecrafts “Deep Ones,” waging a war to wipe out humanity. These stories, set all over the globe, were to be separated by little-bitty sub-stories set in the more than a century from the time of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” to the start of WWTDO. These little tales string together to give a basic history of one organizations efforts to understand and prepare for the threat.
As I said, I made one post, and promptly didn’t make another. Because follow-through is for suckers, I guess. But what the heck, I’ll try again. I’ll post one a day till I’m through them. They will be in simple blog-text after the break, not EPUB or PDF or any such. As always, comments, critiques and large sums of cash welcomed.
Jun 222019
On the one hand, it’s just a funny commercial that uses humor to grab interest, though the humor has virtually nothing to do with the product. They could be selling diet soda, late-term abortions, hair care products or yellowcake uranium for all it matters.
But on the other hand… this is a cautionary tale of the importance of proper crew selection not just for Antarctic expeditions, but also for long-term spaceflight. And it’s a tale of cosmic horror, of humans struggling to survive and stay sane in a vast universe that cares nothing for them and which will exterminate them in the blink of an eye, without so much as a glance in their direction. This could be the followup to”The Thing” or “The Terror” or “At The Mountains of Madness.”
This is crew on the edge. Kevin is just the first, and he won’t be the last. Something will have to change and fast or otherwise their habitat will soon be surrounded by corpsicles. The inevitable US Air Force rescue crew will, some months later, approach the night-shrouded hab stealthily, guns drawn; the first thing they will see through their night vision goggles will be a few bodies standing naked in the snow, frozen solid with looks of mixed boredom, madness and relief on their faces. When they finally reach the hab itself, they will notice disturbing red stains painting the interior of the windows. Inside they will find a few more bodies, or at least portions of them; bits and viscera scattered around, lengths of intestine used as Christmas Tree garland. The last cryptic message will be scrawled in blood on the wall: “You made me play second base.”
The rescue team will of course be streaming video from helmet and gun mounted cameras, signals beamed to the C-130 orbiting above, then encrypted and bounced to a communications satellite, then to a facility in a nondescript office in the industrial outskirts of Denver. Grim-faced men will observe in real time and will note sadly that the rescue team themselves are already beginning to display anomalous behavior. An order is given; while the rescue team pokes around the interior of the hab, the C-130 drops a small package, no bigger than an office waste paper can, surprisingly heavy. The object will deploy a parafoil to control and slow descent; the C-130 will promptly go full throttle and head for the horizon. The package will drift downwards in a quick spiral. A few meters directly above the hab, explosive charges compress a hollow sphere of plutonium into a critical mass; the prompt X-rays will bounce off an internal shell of uranium, compressing a billet of lithium deuteride. A small second sun will bloom over the hab, vaporizing it, the rescue team and the frozen corpses… and, hopefully, the eldritch alien force lurking under the hab that those in Denver have seen in action before. Many fast calls will be made to government officials both in the US and in foreign lands; especially in Russia there will be expressions of outrage over the detonation of a hundred-plus kiloton thermonuclear device in the atmosphere. But with the uttering of a few key code words, those officials will blanche white, mutter in agreement, hang up, close their offices for the day and go home, there to either hug their confused and concerned wives and children or sit in the darkness and slowly get drunk, each to their own natural inclinations.
At least, that’s how *I* see this commercial…
May 182019
Here’s a little story I wrote late last year. Not meant for any attempt at publication, just a little something Because I Wanted To. It’s a “Zaneverse” story with the crew of the commercial starship Corpus Georgi, which you may have read about before. Feel free to read and discuss/compliment/critique in the comments. Assume spoilers in the comments.
“The Creature” PDF File
Going on two years ago I wrote a novel starring these folks. For right at one year I tried to get it published by way of a literary agent, but… pfffft. Since then I have written *another* novel with these folks, which I have no desire to try to get published; rather, it’s for background to make sure it’s all straight in my head. I’ve grown somewhat attached to this cast of characters, and have a number of other stories that I’ve written and have vague doomed hopes for, as well as several more stories and novels in process or planned. Not, perhaps, the most practical of hobbies. But if you like them, perhaps you could point me in the direction of a literary agent, editor or publisher who would like to see published the next Twilight Potter literary juggernaut, sure to be turned into a series of major motion pictures that will wipe the floor with Star Wars. Or just hit the tip jar…
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Apr 182019
For no good reason other than pure curiosity I gathered together all of the “Zaneverse” stories I’ve written and totaled up how many words they have. Assuming a standard of 300 words per novel-sized page… it turns out I’ve cranked out around 1,200 pages. This surprised me and initially impressed me; then I realized that Stephen King could probably bang out a 1,200 page novel in a single drunken weekend and I promptly became less impressed with myself.
The question remains what to do with it all. For a year I tried going through a literary agent to get “Novel 1” published, but he turned out to be a bit of a disappointment (apparently health issues… shrug). One of the short stories was submitted for a sci-fi anthology… but I never heard back, not even a notice of receipt of the manuscript, never mind an acceptance or rejection. Grrr. “Novel 0” is something I’m currently hacking away at, and it is specifically intended to *not* be published; it’s weird and from a literary point of view not needed, in much the same way the “Solo” movie wasn’t needed. However, having the origin story of the main characters put down on paper (so to speak) will help me keep things straight. Plus, I just wanted to do it.
Anybody know any literary agents who might want to be in on the ground floor of the next publishing powerhouse, sure to leave Harry Potter in the dust? Self publishing is always an option, but given that I have neither skill nor talent in the area of effective self promotion, that’s not terribly appealing.
Nov 212018
Welcome to cultural enrichment, now endorsed by the judiciary!
Charges dropped in first federal genital mutilation case in US
A Detroit judge has dropped nearly all the charges against a Michigan doctor accused of performing female genital mutilation on at least nine underage girls, according to court documents.
In a decision filed Tuesday, Judge Bernard Friedman ruled that the federal female genital mutilation law is unconstitutional and that Congress did not have the right to criminalize the practice, and therefore he dismissed six of eight charges in the United States’ first federal case involving the procedure.
Fan. Bloody. Tastic.
The article doesn’t give the whole decision, but the bits it quotes seem… lame.
Nov 132018
I’m pondering just how to go about self-publishing “War With The Deep Ones,” the collection of Lovecraftian tales I wrote a bit short of a year ago. It would be simplicity itself to simply upload the Word document to Amazon and publish it that way, but my prior experience with that has been… a bit disappointing. The trick as with most things is publicity, and self promotion has always been one of my lesser attributes.
A novel is by itself incredibly dull, graphically. Pages and pages of text. To give it visual appeal, it needs good cover art, something outside of my skill set. But it seems to me that a Kickstarter could be used to contract an artist to create some good cover art… and if sufficiently successful, perhaps pen & ink drawings within.
So… is this sort of thing a decent idea? And if so… what sort of “extras” would fit in here, what sort of target should be aimed at, and, not inconsequentially, how does one go about getting artists? There is a print shop not far from here that makes some high quality books, both paperback and hardback; they’re pricey, but they’re Made In The USA, which is nice. Seems to me that the basic project would aim at a paperback with cover art, with interior art if the Kickstarter gets to some high level of funding.
Any thoughts, comments, suggestions welcomed. Another stupid pointless doomed to fail idea, or might there be value here?