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...

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five and many other great novels died Wednesday apparently as a result of head injuries suffered in a fall a few weeks ago.

His writing has played a huge role in my development as an author. I've always been a fan of satire, and in my opinion, no one did it better than him. He was once quoted as saying, "I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations," and for anyone who knows me...they can see why this man's writing would appeal to my sick and twisted view of the world.

Vonnegut, along with about a dozen authors, are probably the reason why I became a writer...but now you have one less person to blame personally.

Vonnegut will be sorely missed...

Just because I'm a cycling geek

I decided to go with something a little different this time. Some of you might know that I'm a huge cycling fan. I'm into European Road Racing like most Americans are into football. I used to race as a junior...in fact, one of the guys who now rides in Europe (once finished 3rd in the Tour de France), Bobby Julich, is a guy who used to kick my butt all over the Rocky Mountains.

Anyway, I decided to post a cool video I found about cycling...



...and since this weekend is the biggest one day race of the year, Paris-Roubaix, I decided to post a little video about the most notorious section of cobblestones in that race. The riders have to go through the Arenberg Forest...in fact, the road they're riding on was first laid down by the army of Napoleon...

The wait is over!!!

That's right, folks...we finally know who the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby is!!

Now, my next question, who really cares? This is the top news story? It's entirely possible that the US is planning on attacking Iran soon, global warming might be destroying the planet, there's genocide in Darfur, natural disasters all over the world, and this is what people are talking about?

What happened to people caring about real things?

I'm quickly going into bitter mode when it comes to the human race...must be time to crank out another satirical short story...

For now I leave you...just to keep all of you from feeling my wrath...

Amazon Reviews

I've noticed a trend lately where some writers try to plug their novels by pointing out all of the great reviews they're getting on Amazon. Inevitably, most of the writers doing this have had their books published by a vanity publisher...one of those groups that charges you a ton of money so they can publish your book, and rarely do you make that money back.

It's ridiculous to use Amazon reviews as a way of promoting your book. The main reason is that anybody can post a review on their site. So, all an author has to do is go out and get all of their friends to say nice things, and all of a sudden the book is rated five out of five stars, but that doesn't really tell you anything. On the flip side of this, if you piss someone off, they can go to your book's page and pan it, and then they can get all of their friends to do that as well...and yes, this really does happen.

I'll admit that I'm glad to see that one person has reviewed The Opium of the People, and given it five stars, but that doesn't really mean anything to me. For all I know, this might have been a friend of mine who was just trying to be nice. Has it helped me sell anymore copies? Probably not.

If you have a book, and you want real reviews, then you have to try a lot harder. In order to be taken seriously, you have to have reviews from major sources. This is very hard to do for a small press novel, and almost impossible to do for a vanity published book. But it is the only way you'll be taken seriously, and it's one of the best ways to sell more copies...

Characters

Since this is the celebration of Spring, and a Pagan holiday, I decided to get a little lighter today than I have been. Spring? It's snowing and the temperature is below freezing...and we've had quite a bit of freezing drizzle, which is almost unheard of in this area...

Today I thought I'd talk about something that I get asked about a lot. Where do my characters come from?

My protagonists are generally victims of the world they live in. Strangely, as anti-military as I tend to be, a lot of my characters are soldiers...but they're usually soldiers with a conscience. They view the nasty world of war from inside, and don't like what they see. Often that consumes them...yes, I have a bad habit of killing off my characters.

I view oppression in the world as one of the greatest evils, and thus my characters are often oppressed...by religion, society, the corporate world, whatever happens to be bugging me on the day I write.

I also use scientists a lot...and they usually realize that whatever they're doing is being perverted by the government they work for. Are you starting to see a theme here?

As for antagonists, I often try to use people that I can't really understand. Again the military is a big one for me. I know this will piss my friend Vik off, but if you join the military as infantry, fighter pilot, marine, and such, then it means that you are willing to kill. Somewhere in your psyche is the ability to take another human being's life, and that is something I can't comprehend, so I often use those characters. Same could be said for using CEOs of major corporations. I've never understood the goal of raping and pillaging the planet and its inhabitants just to make a buck...so they're often my antagonists. I suppose it's an attempt on my part to better understand these people.

More than anything, my antagonists tend to be amorphous concepts (oppression, environmental damage, war, hatred). There may be people filling those roles, but they're part of a bigger whole, and at times even my antagonists are victims more than participants.

Basically, I guess you could say that my characters tend to be caught up in a world that they have no chance of truly understanding, and they have no chance of being able to control it. Still, it's their struggle that makes them who they are, and even if they fail, they usually give a good fight.

The World is Grey

Yes, I realize that I'm not using the American spelling of grey, but I like the way this one looks so much more.

When did the world become so polarized? These days it seems you're either a liberal or a conservative...you either support the troops or you're against them...you think illegal immigrants should either be deported or given complete amnesty...etc. etc.

There are no right and wrong answers in the world, there are just varying shades of grey. A while back we were discussing global warming here, and it seems like you have to either agree that humans caused it, or they have no effect on it. The answer actually lies somewhere in the middle. I think most of the people who visit this blog probably agree with that, but the people who come here aren't like most of the people in the rest of the world...if you are, why are you reading?

Here in America, nothing can even get done politically anymore because people are so polarized in their ways. Bush or the Congress are either completely right or completely wrong...it doesn't make any sense to me. I'll be the first to admit that I think Bush is one of the worst presidents we've ever had. Just because I believe that doesn't mean that I'll dismiss everything he says, but that seems to be what's called for in America these days. No single political party has the answers to everything, and believing that to be true is ridiculous...but until we stop all the pointless bickering over party politics, we're not going to be able to accomplish much.

On the idea of troops it seems that if you don't want them in Iraq, then that means that you don't support them. This is an idea that is certainly being propagated by the current administration, but it's absurd. My personal feeling is that we never should have gone there in the first place, and I don't want to see anymore of our guys getting killed over something that has been going on for centuries, and is going to be solved by making them become democratic.

I have never been a big supporter of the military. Our military budget has taken away from programs that could have actually helped humanity. Yes, true, we do need a defense, but if we improved out international relations with others, we would have fewer problems.

Once again, I'm not saying anything that is big news to anyone here. In fact, I would imagine that most of you agree that we need to stop seeing the world in black & white.

The War on Terror

Global Climate Change seems to have cooled down here on the blogs, so I'll bring up another hot political topic...the war on terror.

First of all, let me say that most of what you're going to read in this entry and in my other entries are just opinions. There are certainly data to back up my opinions, as I don't usually mouth off about things unless I know a little something about them, but I don't feel like documenting where I'm getting info from...I'm just telling you what I think and feel.

Now, having said that, let me say that the war on terror is a stupid concept!!! You can't wage a war on terror and hope to win. Terror is something that's always going to be with us. As long as there is a group that feels they're being oppressed (and there always will be) terror will be a viable way of striking back at a target that can't be defeated face to face. Believe me, if terrorist backed countries had powerful armies, they'd come after us that way...but they don't, so they resort to terror.

What was one of the first well known terrorist attacks on American soil? Most people would say Oklahoma City, but you have to go back a little further than that. Let's say back to the Boston Tea Party. That's right, America, your country was formed by a bunch of terrorists. Granted, that's an extreme oversimplification of the facts, but there certainly was an element of terror to our revolution against the crown of England.

As a writer, terrorism has always fascinated me. It shows up in a lot of my work, much of it dating to before 9/11. The Opium of the People, which was written before the terrorist attacks has America being governed by a theocracy, and the heroes...the common everyday people like you and me...have to resort to terrorism in order to get their point across. A lot of people don't think that's possible in this country, but look at the civil rights movement and the activities of AIM, the Black Panthers, and others. Or, look at the eco-terrorism we're starting to see here in America from Earth First! and ELF. Believe me, if white Republican America suddenly found itself oppressed, or ignored, terrorism would certainly be an option...although the Neo-Cons are already waging their own form of terrorism on us...but that's a topic for another blog.

Another thing that bothers me about the War on Terror is that this is a religious war against Muslims. If you were to listen to Bush and his cronies, you'd think that only Muslims committed terrorist acts...but what about ETA in Spain, the Colombian cartels, the Chechen rebels, the Russian and Asian mobs? Granted, none of those organizations has every directly attacked the US, but they don't seem to be a priority in any way shape of form for our government. For years I've been reading reports that there are now possible links between the Russian mob, the Asian mobs, and the Colombian cartels. If those organizations really were to link up, they would probably be a lot more dangerous than Al-Qaeda. No, this war on terror that we find ourselves in is completely based on religion and a thirst for oil.

Until the US chooses to deal fairly with the Arab nations, they will continue to hate us and the threat of terror will continue to be there. The US policy is that we only support nations with elected governments that the people are ok with (yes, that is once again a gross oversimplification, but bare with me for a moment.) One of our main allies in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, a nation with a monarchy that is unpopular with the people of Saudi Arabia, and yet we still deal with them. When we demanded that the Palestinians vote in a government, they agreed. Then when they voted in Hamas, we refused to recognize the government. What kind of signal does that send to the other nations we're trying to "liberate?"

I don't advocate terrorism...I'm basically a pacifist by nature, but my point in all of this ranting is that the US is basically responsible for creating the situation we now find ourselves in. Until the US begins to acknowledge that there is more to the world than the white Judeo/Christian viewpoint, people will continue to want to bring us down...and invading countries to "liberate" them only makes the situation worse!

Silly writers

I was just reading on someone's LiveJournal where they and several other writers were offended by the fact that they got a form rejection from Asimov's. What did they really expect? They get several hundred submissions a month, and I'm sure most of it is crap...they're not going to take the time to actually respond to every submission.

I pretty much expect a form rejection everywhere I go, and I'm genuinely surprised when I get a personal rejection. I myself almost always use something like a form rejection as an editor. The main reason I do that is because many writers take it as a personal attack if you don't like their story, and if you try to tell them what's actually wrong with it, they throw it back at you as if there's something wrong with the editor. Who needs that?

Any writer who is going to be offended by form rejection letters should just get out of the business right now...

Ancestry

On Saturday, after the photo shoot, several of us decided to go to dinner at a great Italian restaurant in south Denver...The Saucy Noodle. I think Spencer will know what I'm talking about.

During dinner, we got to talking about ancestry...one because we were trying to figure out where our waitress was from (Brazil), and also because my friend who was with me is from Russia. Anyway, I mentioned that I'm 1/8 Chickasaw, and of course someone then asked me if I was registered. You see, with the Chickasaw tribe, you just have to be able to prove that you had someone on the Dawes Rolls of 1890, which my Great-Great Grandfather was on. That means that if I wanted to go through the paperwork, I could have myself declared Native American.

And of course, everyone thinks that's a great idea because then you can get money from the casinos. Of course, not every tribe has a casino, and the majority of native peoples living on reservations actually live below the poverty line...but you wouldn't think so with the propaganda spit out by the government.

However, I am yet again digressing. There are a couple of reasons why it can be a good idea to register. For one thing, if there are casino, oil, uranium residuals and such, I could get a portion. Also, if the tribe receives any kind of aid from the government, I would also be eligible. In addition, I would be able to check the little box that says Native American rather than white, and there could be all kinds of benefits to that.

Why don't I? It's actually pretty simple. I don't feel I deserve any of that. I am very proud of my heritage, and would certainly like to help in any way that I could, but I've never lived on a reservation. In fact, I basically grew up in white suburbia, so I don't really know what it means to be an Indian. Therefore, I've never felt that I deserve any of those benefits. Not only that, but anything that I could get would have to be taken from someone else...and there are a lot of people living on the reservations who need a lot more help than I do. I'm basically poor because I choose to be poor...it's called wanting to be a writer.

Not really sure what prompted this post, but there it is...

Love that feeling

One of the best feelings in the world is putting the finishing touches on a new story. You type the last correction, format it, print it out, put it in an envelope, and then walk to the mailbox. That feeling is amazing. The only thing better in the world is selling a story!

Tonight I put the finishing touches on my new story "The Magenta Equations," and when I finished it, I just had that feeling that this was something special. Most writers know that you write story after story, and then one day you write something that's beyond anything you've done before. That's the feeling I get from this story. I really feel like I've just taken a major step in my evolution as a writer. Now I'm just hopeful that some editor will agree with me...

Well, I guess now I have to try and top that story...

This one is priceless

Keith Richards has admited that he snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine. Click on the title to read the entire article.

How is it that this man is still alive?

Skeleton of the Onondaga

My first ever horror story has been published by AlienSkin Magazine. This isn't one of my strongest stories, but you're certainly welcome to read it. Simply click on the title of this entry, and it will take you to the story...

Get to know J

I have a couple of political posts that I'm thinking about writing, but every time I start on them, I get too lathered up...so maybe those will be for the future.

For now, I thought I'd open up the forum for you to ask me questions...nothing too personal...but feel free to ask me whatever you'd like.

It's your chance to find out who the guy is behind all of those disturbing stories...

It helps to pay attention

Earlier today I was updating the Sam's Dot website a bit. Tyree had sent me the cover and table of contents for the new issue of Beyond Centauri. So, I'm renaming the file to make it easier to work with when I notice my name on the cover...

Apparently my childrens' fantasy story that I thought was going to be in an unnamed anthology, was acutally published in this issue of Beyond Centauri...and I had no idea. It's not really a problem because BC is a great zine, and I've never had my name in their before, so it works. It just kind of took me by surprise.

Anyway, if you'd like to read the story, you'll have to buy a copy of the issue. You can order it from The Genre Mall by clicking on the title of this post, and looking for this...