Category Archives: Books/Literature

Books/Literature

Haze, the 2015 version

Many, many years ago (we’re talking the early 1990’s) I decided after years of writing short stories and scripts that I would finally take on the task of writing an honest-to-gosh novel.

My inspiration for this novel wound up being auto-biographical: At that time I was working at a Rehabilitation Center and caught a nasty cold that just wouldn’t go away.  It lingered for a very long time, more than two weeks, and after experiencing a weird (possible) hallucination while driving (I’ll get to that in a second), I decided to go see a Doctor.  I was checked up and told my system was in bad shape and that I was on the doorstep of having full blown pneumonia.  I was prescribed antibiotics and, after a few days, made a full recovery.

The weird (possible) hallucination I experienced occurred a few blocks from my house and on a main road.  I was driving up to an intersection and beside my car was a stopped public bus.  Its rear hood was open and the vehicle was going no-where.  In my very weakened/feverish state, the bus and its exposed motor looked like something out of a dystopian sci-fi film.  I did a double/triple take and stared at the thing and couldn’t help but wonder how alien the whole thing looked (hence the reason I say “possible” hallucination).

After I recovered, the bizarre image of that bus lingered in my mind as I considered writing that first novel.  I used the bus image as a springboard to think up a story of someone who, like me, becomes seriously ill and, subsequently, sees things that aren’t there.

In those early days of writing what eventually became the novel Haze, the process went along like many of the books I’ve written since.  I had to grasp for ideas and shift through ideas that worked and discard those that didn’t.  The story was originally conceived as more of a sci-fi work, but the concept of making it a murder mystery wound up being far more appealing.

One of the first things I wrote, a fictionalized version of the novel’s protagonist seeing a bizarre mechanical contraption on the side of the road, basically a written version of what I experienced and the very inspiration for my writing the novel, wound up having no place in the work when all was said and done.  Much to my regret, I had to cut that scene out.

In fact, that first novel taught me one incredibly valuable lesson regarding writing: Focus on telling the story you want to tell concisely.

Concisely (adjective): expressing or covering much in few words; brief in form but comprehensive in scope

The fact is that the early drafts of Haze spent waaaaaay too much time on the protagonist’s illness when the meat of the story, indeed the whole point of the story, occurs immediately afterwards.  At this late date I couldn’t tell you how many drafts I poured, sweat, and bled over before that realization hit me.  In those early drafts I was boring potential readers with stuff that wasn’t necessary to read.

So the book’s opening act was heavily trimmed and, regrettably, I realized the source of the story’s inspiration simply had to go.

I eventually published Haze in 2008 and focused on writing more and more books.  To this day I have 9 works out there: 7 novels, 1 graphic novel, and 1 book of short stories with more to come.

At this point in time I’ve built up a good head of steam with these new works and had no intention of going back to any of my previous books and revising them (Like many others, I too am uncomfortable with what, for example, George Lucas did with the original Star Wars films).

However, unlike Star Wars, Haze was, much to my bank account’s regret, never a wildly successful cultural phenomena.  It was a, in my opinion, cool novel that put a ghostly spin on the murder-mystery genre.  (There’s more to it than that and it remains perhaps the most autobiographical novel I’ve ever written even above and beyond the fact that it was inspired by a real life event, but that’s a story for another day)

Very recently, while working on the latest Corrosive Knights book, I reached a point where I needed to take a little bit of a break.  Writing novels can be creatively exhausting and I worried that with my latest work I might be hitting something of a rut.

Being something of a work-a-holic, however, meant that I had to fill my creative time with something else.  For whatever reason, I decided to give Haze a fresh look.  Enough time, I reasoned, had passed to the point where reading the work might be (almost) like coming at it for the very first time.

So I did just that and found that the story held up but that my writing skills had improved over the course of the seven years since releasing the book.  The only thing that really needed re-working, I found, was a early hallucination/nightmare the protagonist experienced.  As originally written, the whole thing read far more confusing than it should and needed a polish.

As for the rest of the book, what I wound up doing was cleaning up grammatical issues I missed before.  As I said, the story remained roughly the same but now, it was my hope, it would read like a novel I wrote today versus when I was starting out.

For those who previously ordered the Kindle version of the book, you can download the “new” 2015 version free of charge.  Not all that many people actually bought the paperback version, but it too will be available within the next few days (DO NOT buy the version available right now, its still the old one and is priced two dollars more than the new one will be).

Anyway, I hope you give the novel a look.  For those who think I’m all about the Corrosive Knights series, you may be surprised to find I do write other stuff as well! 😉

Books/Literature

Where I’m at…

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on my actual, honest to gosh writing(s), so I’ll do so now:

1) I’m a good way into Corrosive Knights Book #6 (I’ll keep the title under wraps for now).  I really like the book though if you’ve read all five books to this point it might take you for a loop…hopefully in the most pleasant way.  I’ve got the first half of the book pretty much locked down but have work to do in the second half.  I’ve written what amounts to a rough version of that second half but there is still a lot of material to sort through and, likely, add to the whole thing.

2) I don’t know why, but it occurred to me that as into the Corrosive Knights book as I was, I longed to take a bit of a break from that universe -at least temporarily- and look back and revise/revisit Haze, the first novel I ever wrote.  I have done the revisiting part and was pleasantly surprised to find Haze’s plot and story still work out quite well.  Alas, my actually writing required some much needed clean up and revising which is what I’m doing right now.  I know the book has been available for a while (it was first made available through Amazon on September of 2008) and I know there are many who picked it up since that time, but luckily most did so through Kindle (ie, digital download) and very soon you’ll be able to download this new, much improved version of the novel without having to pay for it again.  This may happen as early as later this week (I’ll make the formal announcement then).

Haze is a book that is very much close to my heart, and not just because it was my first attempt to write a novel.  It touches upon many of the things that interested me back then and still interest me now, and the protagonist of the story carries more than a little of me within him (though I hope not the crazy part! 😉 ).

Anyway, stay tuned!

Books/Literature, TV

American Gods to become Cable TV series…

Yesterday, this bit of news came out:

Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” Novel Lands Series Greenlight At Starz

Now, at the risk of sounding incredibly petty (and jealous), I have only one question: Why?

In general, I like Neil Gaiman’s writing.  He first gained notice in the wake of fellow comic-book writer Alan Moore’s ascent in the late 1980’s and specifically for his work on the Sandman comic.  Mr. Gaiman would actually follow Alan Moore’s tenure on MarvelMan (retitled Miracleman later on), a book that featured a British version of Captain Marvel (the Shazam! variety) and which was one of the early works of Mr. Moore to explore the “real world” implications -both good and very bad- of a superpowered being living among us.

When he finished the Sandman series, Mr. Gaiman began writing novels and one of the first ones he did was American Gods.

At the time of its release, I was eager to read more of Mr. Gaiman’s work.  So I picked up American Gods and read it and…

Taste, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.  There are those who absolutely love the novel and I’m not going to rip anyone for what they like/dislike.  After all, I’m one of the very few people out there who actively hated Guardians of the Galaxy while everyone else made it one of the biggest, most beloved hits of last summer.

If that last statement doesn’t clue you into my feelings regarding American Gods, nothing will.  But I’ll say this much: So turned off was I by the novel that I’ve had a very hard time looking in on anything Mr. Gaiman has done since, and this is coming from someone who until that time was really into his work.

As I said, there are those who love the novel and are looking forward to the series.  Perhaps I’ll give it a try and see if maybe I missed out on something when I originally read the book.

We’ll see.

Books/Literature, Computers/Electronics

Rocket Man…

Every generation has its share of fascinating people.  Be they artists, politicians, inventors, or businessmen, they emerge and, sometimes, transform the world around them.

If you were to ask me who is the most fascinating such person around today, I’d have to go with Elon Musk.  Using a fortune built on the internet (he was behind the creation of Paypal), Mr. Musk has devoted himself to three fascinating areas: Space travel, sustainable energy, and electric cars (The last two are somewhat interrelated).  Its no wonder he was partly the basis for Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark/Iron Man.

If you want to learn a little more about him, there is a fascinating article/review of Mr. Musk’s biography by Will Oremus on Slate magazine and it offers some choice bits about the man.  I was particularly amused by the author noting some have compared Mr. Musk to Apple’s Steve Jobs and his (perhaps) sarcastic answer to that comparison.  The fact is that Mr. Musk is involved in technology on a level much higher than just about anything (at least so far) that Apple has done…and believe it or not I don’t say this to denigrate Apple!

Like him or not, Mr. Musk is dabbling into technology that has the potential to change for the better (one hopes!) humanity while Apple’s focus is on building wonderful gadgets that people like to use to communicate and entertain each other.

If you’re interested in reading more about Mr. Musk, check out the link below:

What Fuels The Rocket Man?

Books/Literature

Nobody’s fault but mine…

Ever have one of those days?  You know the type, where absolutely nothing seems to go right?

Well, I’ve had something like three of those type of days in a row.

Saturday was horrific, Sunday at least gave me the opportunity to see Mad Max Fury Road before whalloping me.  And yesterday, the piece de resistance: I lost something like four days worth of really good writing on my latest novel thanks to a faulty wi-fi connection which resulted in me incorrectly saving an older version of my current book over the newer one.

I desperately googled all information I could on finding and saving “old” files (which in this case is actually the latest version) but after several hours of working on it and hunting temp files, it appears I lost it for good.

AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGgggggg!

I suppose I should be thankful I didn’t lose the entire book, but the experience has yet again taught me a valuable lesson I should have learned many times over already: Make other backup copies of your files, you IDIOT!

As I said in the headline, Nobody’s Fault But Mine…

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Movies

Why Superheroes Don’t Kill…

An interesting article by Jacob Brogan for Slate Magazine (you can read it here) briefly goes into the history of violence in comic books and why it is that those comic book Superheroes often have a code against killing.

Specifically he mentions one of the more notorious Batman stories of the past, “The Giants of Hugo Strange” which appeared nearly 75 years ago in Batman #1.

He notes that the grim goings on in the story (Batman has no qualms whatsoever in killing Hugo Strange’s oddball monsters) were received with concerned notes from parents and that the editors behind the scenes of the book ordered writer/co-creator Bill Finger to ease up on the violence following that story.

What is fascinating to me is how this may well have changed -for the better- the whole idea of superheroes, something Mr. Brogan goes into as well.  Even as a very young comic book reader I always admired the fact that heroes fought for good against at times very vicious villains but never descended to their level.

The Joker could and did kill, but Batman would never take him out.  Arrest him, imprison him, even rough him up, but never kill.

So too it was with Superman, though in his very, very early stories he also engaged in some roughhousing and possible murder as well.

So ingrained was the idea that heroes didn’t kill that one of the most startling things I experienced very early on as a child was the very first episode of the Six Million Dollar Man TV series (as opposed to the films released just before) entitled Population Zero.

In that episode, which owed a great deal of (ahem) credit to the book and movie The Andromeda Strain, an entire small rural town appears to have been killed off.  Steve Austin, the Bionic Man, is sent to investigate and he dons a space suit and walks into the town.  Everyone appears to have died simultaneously, their bodies littered all over the place.  But then, they awaken, seemingly all normal.

It turns out a master villain has knocked them all out with a sound wave weapon, one that can be calibrated, like the Star Trek phasers, to kill.

As the episode goes on, Steve Austin is captured and the evil scientist, it turns out, is well aware of the bionic project.  His sound wave project was declined funding by the government in favor of the bionic project.  He is delighted in having captured Steve Austin and imprisons him in a large meat freezer, noting that his bionic parts will freeze and he’ll die there while the villain uses his weapon to kill those who are pursuing him.

Steve Austin gets away, and in one of the most exciting climaxes of any TV show I had seen up to that point, rips a metal post from the ground and hurls it at the bad guy’s van.  It hits the van and the whole thing, including all the villains, blows up.  All the villains die in the explosion.

To say the least, I was shocked by this ending.

Steve Austin had killed instead of apprehended the bad guys!  He knew they were using power from the power lines around the area to fuel their device.  He could have taken them out and rendered their weapon useless.  Instead, he ends the threat there.

Completely.

It seemed the late 60’s/early 70’s were a time when the idea of what made a hero a hero was being tested.  You had Clint Eastwood in the Spaghetti Westerns and, afterwards, as Dirty Harry.  These roles provided a new template of what made a “hero”.  In this case, especially concerning Dirty Harry, our hero pushed the limits in decidedly shocking (at the time) ways.  So too in comic books you had villains who were more vicious and, as the decade of the 70’s moved on, heroes that would kill (Wolverine being a prime example).

In the 1980’s movies took several steps forward and suddenly you had heroes that killed villains by the scores.  Included in this mix were characters like Rambo.

Today, the state of the hero is in transition.  In Batman Begins, a film I happened to like quite a bit, I was more than a little irritated by the ultimate resolution between Batman and Ra’s Al Gul.  When Batman has Gul helpless in the train at the end of the film, he SHOULD have taken him from the train before it crashed and jailed him, instead of using the silly “I don’t kill, I just choose to not save you” idiocity.  By choosing to do nothing, he has very much made a choice and Gul dies in the wreck, a victim of Batman’s chosen inaction.

In the recent Superman and first Avengers film we deal with the destructive effects of a fight between gods yet both films try to sanitize the ultimate results of these destructive fights vis a vis the civilians caught in between.  While the Man of Steel film was rightly called out for showing destruction that should have resulted in scores of casualties, fewer fans called out essentially the same thing shown in Avengers.

The point is that the concept of the superhero is an evolving one.  The first comic book superheroes were influenced by Doc Savage and The Shadow, two of the greatest pulp creations.  These characters, especially The Shadow, who were not at all adverse to killing off their current villain problem.  Superheroes underwent a drastic change to where they did not kill and were always on the side of truth and justice, yet that changed as mentioned above.

Where do we go from here?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Books/Literature, Movies, TV

What Do People Love Today That May Not Hold Up In The Future…?

Fascinating question posed by the folks at i09.com (you can read the article here).

This being essentially an “open ended” question, the meat of the matter lies in the responses following the article itself, which posited that the insanely popular (at least at this point!) TV show The Walking Dead may not age all that well over time.

I found the very first response the most interesting: that the Marvel Cinematic Universe may not age all that well.

Let me go one better: It is often the most popularly watched/read/listened to items when they are originally released  that are in most danger of fading with time.  In part, this is due to oversaturation.  There will come a point, though probably not with the new Avengers film that’s about to be released, when the magic found in those films will suddenly be gone.

There was a time I watched The Simpsons religiously.  In fact, I thought it was the best comedy show on TV, period.  I watched the first five or so seasons, mostly with delight, but then something happened and from that point on I haven’t been willing to see an entire episode of the show at all.  Basically, I had my fill of The Simpsons and didn’t want or care to ever see it again.  And those early episodes that delighted me so?  I have them on DVD.  I have yet to re-watch any of them.

Will the same happen to the Marvel Universe movies?  Frankly, I think it is already happening to some degree.  Already a consensus is emerging on what the “good” Marvel Universe movies and what the “bad” ones are.  I, for one, didn’t find Iron Man 2 as bad as most people felt it was.  And yet, I don’t see myself seeing the film again.  One the other hand, I enjoyed both Thor films when I watched them, yet I don’t see myself revisiting either film in the future, either.

Another reason something very popular today may not be so popular tomorrow: Generational taste.  If there’s one thing I’ve come to realize over time it is that each generation has their own interests and sometimes they have little to no interest in what came before.  In part this could be due to changing attitudes. Perhaps it is also an issue of generational identity.

When I was a child, the novels of Harold Robbins were all the rage with adults.  His books usually featured sweeping generational stories loaded with (at the time) frank, graphic sexuality.  Perhaps it was nothing more than this sexuality (which may be considered tame by today’s standards) that brought the readers in.  Regardless, his books sold in the millions and a mind-boggling ten of them were made into movies and/or TV mini-series.

Yet by the 1980’s, it seemed to me that Mr. Robbins’ red-hot books were suddenly not as popular.  Mr. Robbins died in 1997.  By that time, I suspect very few remembered who he was.  Today, I doubt there are many younger readers out there who have any idea at all who Harold Robbins is.

So we return to the question at hand: What work that people love today will not hold up in the future?

As with everything, time will tell.

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Computers/Electronics, General, Movies, Music, TV

A sign of the times…

Perhaps one of the best known/watched TV shows today is HBO’s Game of Thrones.  This past weekend, as they are wont to do, HBO offered a “free” weekend of viewing for those who don’t have the cable station as a way to give them the premiere of this season’s Game of Thrones (it aired Sunday).  Of course, the free “taste” of the fifth season of this show is intended to get people to, hopefully, subscribe to HBO.

But even before that first episode aired came news that the first FIVE episodes of the fifth season had already leaked and were available to be downloaded at various pirate websites:

http://gizmodo.com/nearly-half-of-game-of-thrones-season-5-just-leaked-1697305966

As I said in the heading, this is unfortunately very much a sign of the times.  If you have anything that is popular and desirable, be it music, movies, books, and, yes, TV shows, chances are good you’ll find pirate copies of them available online.

And that’s too bad.

While shows like Game of Thrones no doubt earn their investment dollars many times over, the fact is that not all works of art and their creators/investors are as fortunate.  Piracy, even in small amounts, hurts the bottom line.  While there may be those who illegally download something and later on legally pay for the same product, there will always be some percentage of these people who get material illegally and for free and do not bother to pursue it any other way.

One of the great concerns I have today is that artistic creations have become dangerously devalued.  There are great and powerful industries out there that create wonderful machines that allow you to see and experience artistic works (smartphones, computers, tablets, etc.) and as consumers we’re willing to pay sometimes big money to have the latest of these items…yet the things the machines allow us to see/hear -from music to movies to books- are for the most part unprotected.

You have the latest iPhone or iPad or Samsung or HP computer, etc. etc. and with them you can go to assorted websites and illegally download a movie/music/book/etc. you want to see.  Sometimes, this movie/song/book hasn’t yet been formally released!

The end result, I fear, is that the ease with which people can get these items creates a sense the act of creating them didn’t involve much actual work.  I’ve noted before the weird (to me) idea that authors “shit out” their books in their free time while and during the rest of the hours in the day pursue a life of fun and leisure.  This concept has been exacerbated by TV shows such as Murder She Wrote and, more recently, Castle.

I fear this idea is permeating other creative fields.  Coming up with a song/album?  Come on, how hard can that be?  Drawing a 22 page comic book?  Shouldn’t take more than a day, right?  Writing a story?  Can’t take much more to create it than it does to read it.

Even worse, there are those who know creating such works takes time and effort and they just don’t care.

If I work somewhere -from a Wall Street office to a McDonalds- eight hours a day for two weeks, at the end of this time I expect to get a check for my work.  With artistic creations, you may do the very same time and work just as hard and for just as long…and your hard work can then be taken from you, posted online, and whatever monies you might have made are now subject to that loss.

I’m not saying anything anyone out there shouldn’t know already.

Piracy is, at least as of now, a sad reality of life.  Perhaps in time there will be a way to more securely protect your artistic works so that they don’t end up pirated online.

Or perhaps there will never be a way of doing this.

Regardless, the irony is that the people who will ultimately be hurt by this are the consumers.  The Beatles took years to practice their trade and be properly paid for their work until they were able to create some truly memorable songs and albums.

Somewhere out there might be a band that, with time, might have become just as good as them, but they make no money from their music because it simply doesn’t sell as much as it is pirated.  Unlike John, Paul, George, and Ringo, the members of this band eventually have to break apart…they simply cannot sustain themselves.

And we, the public, will never get to hear what this band might have made.

Or see what this director could have created.

Or this writer.

Or this artist.

Books/Literature, General

Your daily dose of anxiety…

Today, let’s worry about the rise of Artificial Intelligence machines, and the fact that so many scientists and figures involved in high level technology have expressed concern regarding the imminent appearance of said machines:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-barrat/hawking-gates-artificial-intelligence_b_7008706.html

For those who have read all five (so far) of my Corrosive Knights novels, the concept of Artificial Intelligence, along with a few others, are a central concern.  I have wondered about the possible appearance of a self-sustained AI and, like many in the article, worry what will happen once such a creature appears.  Will it view humans as an obstacle?  I can’t help but think it will.  And depending on how much power it controls, the effects could be devastating.

It is certainly something to think about…yet another worry to ease you into your day.

Books/Literature, General

Biggest Sellout…

Interesting article on Slate.com and by Ben Mathis-Lilley concerning a childhood favorite of mine, The Guinness Book of World Records, and the fact that their ties to -ie payment to attend- Corporate Sponsored Events (in this case “The Largest Champagne Toast”!) may make you question the validity of these supposed “world records”:

Guiness World Records, Business Calls Into Question

Like the author (and as mentioned above), as a child I was fascinated with the Guinness World Records books.  Seeing photographs of the world’s tallest/shortest man/woman, of feats of endurance, of unique landmarks, of sporting events, etc. etc. genuinely held my interest and opened up my world to what lay outside its pre-internet small confines.

But time marches on and, like many other things, the internet has had an effect on the Guinness World Record Business.  The books aren’t selling anywhere near as well as they used to, which isn’t that big a surprise as you can find most of the interesting facts/records online if you were to look around.  In spite of all this, there is still publicity to be had surrounding a “Guinness World Record” your business is involved in and this is what lies at the article’s heart:

If businesses sponsor events and pay the Guinness people to come around to oversee them and report on their “World Record”, then is it not possible the businesses may influence -to a degree unknown- what the Guinness judges observe?  Are the judges more likely to officially sanction a record even if, again in the case of the particular “Largest Champagne Toast”, they do not personally witness everyone involved in the event?

I believe part of the problem lies in the fact that some of these records are, frankly, silly.  And yes, I am referring to the “World’s Largest Champagne Toast” in particular.  If you have the “World’s Tallest Person”, this is an easily measurable thing.  So too are things like the “World’s Longest Nails”, or the “World’s Most Expensive Car”, or the “World’s Tallest Building,” or “World’s Fastest Wo/Man”, etc. etc.

Even as I was still reading the Guinness Books, I noticed some of the records presented veered into the weird, not unlike this “World’s Largest Champagne Toast”.  They were clearly silly creations made specifically for entry into that book.  I suspect all those weirder records sponsored by Corporations are being done to get the word out on their product, whatever it may be.

Ah well, I guess the bottom line is that Guinness did such a good job creating a point of interest for people to focus on that its little wonder others have used it as an advertising platform.