Possible habitable planet found

Again, the title of this entry will take you to an article about an extra-solar planet that has been discovered that could be habitable. There's still a lot of research that needs to be done, but this is the first possibly habitable planet ever discovered...so I thought I'd make a big deal out of it...

...now, go back to worrying about the fascists...

10 steps to fascism

The title of this entry links to a great article that goes through step by step what past governments have done to institute a fascist government, and then it shows how the Bush administration is doing the same thing.

Any of the items listed in the article may not seem like anything to worry about when looked at in an isolated manner, but when you look at them as a whole, it's pretty obvious that we're in trouble...as I've been saying for quite some time.

Wait is that a knock at the door? Maybe it's the NSA......................

Opium Reviewed

Quality Book Reviews has just posted a review of my novel, The Opium of the People. Click on the subject of this entry, and it will take you right to the review. It's not a bad review. They genuinely seemed to enjoy the book, other than some typos...but what book doesn't have typos anymore? Sadly, they're even creeping into the major publishers books more and more often...

Yet another sale

After a period of drought, I'm suddenly having a pretty good run on sales of late. My short story "Hunted" will appear in the March 2008 issue of Tales of the Talisman. This will be my second appearance in Tales of the Talisman. My first story, "The Ancient Ones," appeared in the March 2006 issue. Before ToT was born, Dave Summers had a magazine called Hadrosaur Tales, and I had a story in issue 20, which was the last issue. Hadrosaur was a great little digest magazine, but I really love the look of Tales. It's a full-sized glossy zine with amazing artwork from Laura Givens.

Now I'd better get to writing some more short stories because I'm starting to run out...

I'm a pixo-stained technopeasant wretch

For those of you who have been following the controversy at the SFWA, I've decided to contribute as well. You can read my contribution at my LiveJournal...click on the title of this entry, and it will take you right over to it.

My modeling debut...sort of...

Most of you that have been reading here for a while will remember that a few weekends ago, one of my friends and I went on a photo shoot with the phenomenal local artist Laura Givens. She's created some new works using those photos, and you can see them by clicking on the title of this blog.

I'm in "Hair of the Dog" and "By Fire and Steel."

My friend Vik is the ninja-geisha in "Rites of Spring."

The Job Hunt

For those of you keeping track, the job hunt is not going well...so far. Keith pointed out some places to look, so maybe that will help. Here's a basic break down of the problems I've been having...

The jobs that I'd really like to do require a degree in English...mine's in psychology, and they don't seem to be equal...

The jobs that I'd be willing to do are either on the other side of town or they require a "professional" appearance. The problem with jobs on the other side of town is that I don't drive...never have, probably never will...and I'm not really willing to commute two to three hours by bus for a job. The professional appearance is the bigger problem...that usually means short hair for men. For those who have never actually seen what I look like, my hair is about half way down my back, and I have no plans on cutting it...but I will keep applying.

At this point, it looks like I'm going to get stuck with a job in food or retail...I'm hoping for retail...

Search inside Opium

It's taken a lot longer than it was supposed to, but Amazon now has it set up so you can search inside my novel The Opium of the People. Simply click on the title of this entry, and it will take you there. You can get a little taste before you decide to buy it...because you know you want to...

Can we just pretend that this week never happened?

The last week, eight days, whatever it's been, have just sucked. I hate that word, but I really don't feel like trying to come up with something different.

First we lost Kurt Vonnegut, then I find out that one of my old friends is in prison for a horrible crime, then Virginia Tech, then last night was just the topper. One of the twins cats was hit by a car. How are you supposed to explain that to a six year old? Especially when you're not even around...

I just wish I could have stayed under the covers all week and ignored the world.

And don't even get me started on the job search...

Beware of the quiet loner!

The media keeps portraying the V-Tech shooter...he doesn't deserve to have his name mentioned...as a quiet, loner that wrote disturbing works. They seem to think that that is the reason for why he did what he did.

Let me introduce myself, I'm a quiet guy who usually only talks when he really feels he has something to say. I live alone...just me and my cat. Often times I'd be perfectly content to stay home for days on end without talking to people. I don't really have a need for social interaction except on the rarest of occasions. Dark fiction...have you ever read my stuff? People die in my stories all the time; sometimes even the main character...and I also like to use torture in my fiction.

Based on what the media is saying, I must be someone that should be watched out for. Bullshit! I'm a firm believer in Issac Asimov's quote from Foundation: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." I'm one of the least violent people you could ever meet. The fact that there are several Subway customers and employees still alive should attest to that fact! If by some freak of nature I should ever decide that I need to kill myself, believe me, I will only take myself out...after I found a home for my cat...

Now, from the completely morbid side of my brain...and this is pretty tasteless, so you might want to skip it:

I just read that between the two shootings, the gunman went to the post office to mail some stuff to NBC...I guess that explains why it took him two hours to get to the other side of the campus.

DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU!!!!

Hate Mail

I've just received my first official hate mail as an author. I guess this means that people are beginning to take notice of me as an author...but I think I could have done without this kind of notice.

Here is the text of the message...the spelling is his...

"Your book sucks! I can't believe anybody would write this kind of trash. It's obvius that your just an atheist asshole who wants to ignore everything that God teaches us and try to make us think like you.
Why don't you go back to Irak with the rest of your kind.
It should be illegal to write anything that gos against the word of God, and you should be arrested or killed for writing this.
Hope you enjoy your time burning in hell."

Originally, I'd thought about responding, but instead, I decided to pass this on to my webhost and let them take care of it.

I think it would be safe to say that this person has never read my book. My main reason for saying this is because the book is not about atheism. In fact, nobody is labeled as an atheist in the book. The three main protagonists are Jewish, Taoist, and Pantheist. The book was written about fundamentalism...I just chose Christianity because it seemed the most plausible in the United States.

Hopefully this will be the last hate mail I ever get because to be totally honest, this is a bit disconcerting...

And now for something completely different...

I had been considering another post about what happened at VT, especially in light of the fact that science fiction author Michael Bishop's son was among the victims, but instead, I've decided to do something a little lighter. I'll let the darkness inhabiting my soul right now come out in my fiction instead.

I rarely talk about other writer's works on here, but I decided I would make a brief mention of Tyree Campbell's new novel The Dog at the Foot of the Bed. I'm not going to do a review or anything...I rarely read reviews, and it's even more rare that I actually write them. If memory serves, I've only written one during my career.

For a very brief time, I was trying to start a literary agency, which was a very bad idea since I hate marketing my own stuff...why would I want to do it for someone else? Simply put, James Baker had asked me to, and it was always very hard to say no to him. So, Dog was one of the books I was trying to sell. I didn't have any luck, but it wasn't because the book is bad (it's actually great), but more because I was a bad agent...that's why I got out of the business.

From the back cover: Sixteen years ago the Shannen children were attacked and their home was destroyed. The oldest...twins Ovin and Siobhan...barely managed to whisk their siblings away to the safety of a remote planet. Seeking revenge for the attack, Ovin became a hired assassin, while Siobhan entered corporate security service to bring about law and order...and to bring Ovin to justice.

Now someone is trying to kill the Shannens again. And another threat has surface: a terrible new weapon is cracking planets open like nuts and destroying them...a weapon that could be used on the Shannens' new home. Ovin has to find out who is behind these murderous projects and stop them...but in order to find out who, he first has to discover why...and he's going to need Siobhan's help to do it.

But if he succeeds, he could lose his twin forever.



"Campbell's novel is a guessing game that will keep you wrong-footed until the last page."-Edward Cox, UK reviewer.

From me, this is a great book, and you should really read it...sure, it's not profound, but who cares?

If you'd like to order a copy, you can order it from The Genre Mall.

Why it can be hard to be a science fiction writer

If you don't like down and out and depressing entries, skip this one!!!

I'm often asked if it's hard to come up with ideas. The answer to this is, no, it's not hard. What can be hard is coming up with plausible ideas. I like for my SF to have a ring of truth to it, and given what's going on in the world right now, it's hard to come up with plausible ideas because, quite simply, I'm really beginning to doubt that the human race has a future.

More than 30 people were massacred on an American college campus today. People are blowing themselves up in Iraq for political (read that as religious) purposes...meanwhile, our government continues to wage a crusade against Muslim nations. Notice that I didn't say wage a war...I said wage a crusade. Other than the obvious economic reasons (oil) for us to wage war on these countries, the main reason we're over there is for religious reasons. As always, I'm just spouting opinion, but I think there's some truth to these opinions.

Bush and the neo-cons are highly religious individuals...even evangelical, and they are doing whatever they can to wage war against a rival religion. As many of you know, I'm an atheist, and basically have no use for religion. If someone wants to believe in some kind of higher power, that's their choice...just don't force your beliefs on me...and that's what's starting to happen in this country. Various school systems are trying to implement the teaching of "intelligent" design, while trying to ban anything that has to do with evolution. I read today that a school system in Kansas banned Pokemon because of its evolutionary overtones. I don't know enough about Pokemon to know what in the hell they're talking about...but there it is.

I'm more than a little curious to find out what the reasoning for the attacks in Virginia were, but it makes you wonder where people are safe anymore? We had a school shooting here in Colorado last year, and then there was the shooting at the Amish school. What's wrong with people?

A long time ago, a friend told me something that has stuck with me...I'm not really sure if it was his quote...he was a bright guy, but this sounds too profound for him. We had been discussing the fall of the Roman Empire, and we'd basically agreed that there were no longer any barbarians to come over the hills. To which he responded, "When there are no longer barbarians to come over the hills, a society will create its own." That's exactly what has happened. The United States has abandoned so many of the ideals that made us at least somewhat of a great nation, and has instead decided to embrace, religion, Brittney Spears, and American Idol.

This country is in serious decline, and sadly, much of the rest of the world wants to be just like us.

This, my dear readers, is why I find it hard to be a science fiction writer. How are you supposed to write about the future, when there probably won't be one?

More cycling geekdom

There are at least one or two people that read here that are actually interested in cycling, so I thought I'd at least post something more for them.

Yesterday's Paris-Roubaix looked like it was a great race, but the coverage on Versus left a lot to be desired. All totaled, they showed about half an hour of the race, and the race is about six hours long, so you can kind of fill in the pieces as to just how bad the coverage was. They showed about six sections of pave (bad cobbles) and the finish. They would go to commercial breaks and then come back 30 km further into the race. The announcers had recorded their coverage from France live, so the problem was obviously with the editing. Several years ago they showed it live, and that was still the best coverage I've ever seen of the race.

Usually the race is cold, and often times wet, which devastates the field, but yesterday was the hottest Paris-Roubaix on record, and the race has been run since 1898. The week before they had one of the hottest Ronde Van Vlanderaan ever...makes you wonder.

At least Stewart O'Grady won...he's been deserving of this kind of victory for quite some time...

Less depressing news

While out shopping with Vik and Josh today, one of the twins called me to tell me that she'd lost her first tooth! It's a momentous day for her!

People change

I got a MySpace message from my friend Spencer this morning, and I'd have to say that I'm still kind of reeling from it. When we were in high school, we had a friend, who we'll call "D." Now D was a nice kid...shy, kind of quiet...a little weird (but so were most of my friends.) He was one of those people you knew you could always count on, provided his mother would actually let him out of the house.

The message was a link to information about D's criminal record. Apparently he was arrested for attempted sexual assault! It's still hard for me to believe, because he never really seemed like the type, but I guess it shows you that people can and do change over time. It also makes you realize that everyone is capable of violence. No matter how much we've evolved, there's still enough of the wild in us that we can be capable of horrible acts against one another. Most of us are able to control those urges, but they're always right there below the surface.

Maybe that's why as a writer, I like to create characters that are flawed. Many of my protagonists seem to be on the verge of doing something horrible almost all the time.

As I think about D, I wonder how much of this is a result of the way he was brought up. His mother was domineering and tried to control almost every aspect of his life. Maybe if she would have lightened up a bit and let him live, he wouldn't have turned out this way. Still, no matter what his mother did, it was still his choice to commit this crime, and as a result he bares all responsibility for it.

I'm still in shock!

The Locus Poll closes tomorrow

I posted this a while ago, but since tomorrow's the last day to vote, I figured I'd post it again...Click on the title of this blog to vote...

Locus Magazine has opened up its annual readers' poll, and this year, we've decided we're going to try to make a dent in it. The chances of us winning in any category are pretty slim because this is a MAJOR award, and most of the candidates are BIG NAMED writers. Still, Tyree and I have always had a little Don Quixote in us...so we're going to make a run for it, and at least try to get some recognition for Sam's Dot!
Below you will find a ballot that we've put together that we'd like to encourage you to follow. The main difference between this and the P&E poll is 1) It's a lot harder to stuff the ballot box on this one, and 2) The only nominations that appear on the ballot are those that came from the magazine...which means that you have to do a write-in for all of these nominations. It's kind of difficult, and time consuming, but if you love Sam's Dot...it's worth it. The ballot we put together contains mostly people and stories from Sam's Dot, but if we had extra room, we also tried to come up with some names of people we like as well...
One final note, you can vote for up to five in each topic, and the ballot below lists people basically in the order that we came up with them, not necessarily in the order that we think they belong (so no hurt feelings if you think you're better than someone ahead of you.)
SF Novel:
1) Friends in Dark Places by John Bushore
Best First Novel:1) Friends in Dark Places by John Bushore
2) Forbidden Cargo by Rebecca Rowe
Best Novella:
1) The Battle for Newhome by Terry Hickman
2) Urbania by L.A. Story Houry
3) Tower to Heaven by David Wright
Best Short Story:
1) Generation Gap by Tyree Campbell
2) Points of Departure by Jennifer Crow
3) Abstinence by Sarah Kelderman
4) An Asteroid by Any Other Name by David Lee Summers
5) Entropy by J Alan Erwine
Best Magazine:
1) Aoife’s Kiss
2) Beyond Centauri
3) The Martian Wave
4) The Fifth Di…
5) Champagne Shivers
Best Book Publisher:
1) Sam’s Dot Publishing
2) Nomadic Delirium Press
3) LBF Books
4) Apex Publishing
5) Perplexed Puffin Press
Best Anthology:
1) Erwine-Ecotastrophe
2) Campbell-Esperance
3) Erwine-Just Because
4) Campbell-Bondage
5) Erwine-Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 5
Best Single Author Collection:
1) Flashing the Dark by Bruce Boston
2) Long Way Home by R.D. Robbins
Best Editor:
1) Tyree Campbell
2) J Alan Erwine
3) Cathy Buburuz
4) Teri Santitoro
5) Terrie Leigh Relf
Best Artist:
1) Laura Givens
2) Marge Simon
3) 7ARS
4) Jolene Flasher
5) Anselmo Alliegro

Even more on Kurt

Denver sports writer Woody Paige even commented on Vonnegut's death. Click on the title of this blog and you can see what he had to say...there's a nice twist for those of you in Denver...

More on Kurt

People who watch sports are upset when an athlete they like dies. The same is true for people who watch movies when an actor dies. But for those of us who read, I think losing one of our favorite authors might be harder. The reason I say this is because we actually get to know that person a little. No matter how hard an author tries to keep themselves out of their writing, there's always a part of them in there. Their viewpoint, a bit of characterization, something that is them...and the more you read of that author, the more you see the similarities, and the more you're able to piece together a little of who that person is. I don't think people get that same connection with an athlete or an actor...unless of course they actually get to meet them, and get to know the real person.

Maybe I never met Kurt Vonnegut, but he certainly left an impression on me, and who knows maybe he even helped to form a little of who I am...I know he did as a writer.

I've read a few other postings about him that I'd like to direct you to...


David Louis Edelman's blog

Keith Graham's great story

Jim Van Pelt's LiveJournal story

So it goes

This is a video I found on YouTube. It's not put together very well, but I still found it interesting. I'll have more to say later...