Progress Report: The New Site

Hey, you guys!

It’s another bi-weekly progress report!

I’ve completed two short stories this month: Red Light Confessional and Father Figures.  The first has an escort dealing with her strangest client: a priest on his deathbed.  The second is a sort-of sequel to my first novel, The Fab 5.  Red Light Confessional will be available to read on my website in February along with two other stories, and Father Figures will be up in March.

Wait, whaaaaat?

Yes, I’m relaunching my website.  I’ve taken the advice about trying to build an author platform, and one of those bits of advice is a one-stop shop for hawking my wares and showing off my stories.  I made a promise that this year would be the year I made more of an effort to make the business end of writing work.  The new site will be up on February 1 and will include writing samples, character profiles, release updates and a new home for my blog.

Which means, yes, I’m in the process of packing the boxes for Under The Sun.  It’s almost moving day.  I will say this, I’m not going to strictly post about writing, or more specifically, what I’m writing.  There will be progress updates, sure, and talks about the craft, but life also happens and I’ll talk about that too.

At any rate, I hope you’ll join me at the new site when it’s up and running.  Cheers!

New Year's Resolutions 2017

For me, 2016 was ugly.

There’s the stuff that happened that affect all of us, such as the Brexit and our election.  There’s the rash of celebrity death.  But then there’s the personal stuff, the things we could have done better, the opportunities we wish we’d capitalized on. The stubborn last 10 (or 15, or 20) pounds we couldn’t quite erase.

So, like every year, this year we make a list of all the things we’d like to make different.  And this year, like every year, I’ll do that.   In 2017, I want to…

Write more.  I have a few projects I’d like to finish in 2017, but it’s damn hard sometimes to pull up the desire to write.  Fatigue and life tend to get in the way.  This year I joined a 365-day writing challenge, where I’m pledged to get out at least 300 words a day through either my personal journal, blogs, or my projects.  Accountability is the best motivator.

Lose weight.  I’ve had a hell of a time trying to lose some weight.  It’s rough; I work overnights, I like bad food, and I really like to sleep more than not.  But as I get older, it gets harder, and I can’t use the difficulty as an excuse.  Ideally, I’d like to get myself back into basketball shape, into softball shape, and into a shape other than round.

Speak up.  I have a terrible problem; I want to be liked way too much.  Part of it is about not wanting to offend people, especially fans and potential fans.  However, that restraint has found its way into my personal life, and I am far too accommodating when it comes to other people’s comfort, and I’ve sugar-coated, watered down, and reduced the volume on my own opinions.  It’s become a terrible habit.  It stops now.

Be healthy.  I’ve spent the last year in grind mode.  I’ve worked as often as I can, to the point of it being unhealthy.  It’s a lot of 12-hour night shifts, packed into short spans of time; on several occasions, I’ve worked 26 of 30 nights in a month. It started to affect my overall health negatively.  I was having dizzy spells and issues with energy.  I’m going to relax more this year.

Grow the “business.”  I’m a good writer, I think, but a terrible author.  What I mean is I’m not so good at the part of the job that involves selling.  I’m using 2017 as an impromptu course in Book Marketing in the Digital Age.  Let’s see what can be done.

I may not accomplish everything I set out to this year, or I may not have set my bar high enough.  I can’t answer that on January 2^nd.  But I will work my butt off to make 2017 a better year.

Stuff I Read in 2015

For the last couple of years, I joined Goodreads.com's reading challenge, where you set out to read a certain amount of books in a year and then try to get through them all.  In 2015, I tried to do 12, but managed to finish 11 (the last one, Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon, I just was too tired in December to get through).  I picked a few books by favorite authors, some by people that I've never read.  Some were surprisingly bad, others were better than I expected, and one was The Martian.

So today, let's give you the rundown of what I read last year, listed alphabetically.

52-Pickup by Elmore Leonard:  I read Get Shorty and Be Cool when I was in my early 20's and decided I was a fan of Elmore Leonard.  I named one of my characters in my most recent novel in his honor (Dutch).  I started this book expecting it to be an awesomely gritty crime story.  Instead, I found it to be horribly dated, what with the free-flowing racial slurs and very outdated sensibilities.  It was written in the 70's though, so I won't say he had lost touch, but the book definitely did not age well.  2 stars.

Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk: Palahniuk is another favorite of mine, having read six or seven of his books, including Fight Club and Choke.  Beautiful You is the story of a woman who is made to be the guinea pig for a new generation of sex toy designed by a powerful businessman that has disastrous side effects up to and including death.  These sex toys have turned women all over the world into masturbation addicts, and only the guinea pic, through mastery of her own sexuality, has a chance of stopping his plan for world domination.  It's a well-written, off the wall story that I had a ton of fun with.  4 stars.

The Dead Run by Adam Mansbach:  Yes, the Go The Fuck To Sleep guy.  I liked another book of his (Rage is Back) and gave The Dead Run a look.  I'm glad I did.  In it, Mansbach weaves together a noir/supernatural tale that weaves together a smuggling story with a cult worshiping an immortal Incan priest.  What really impressed me more than anything is that it seems Mansbach has a deep respect for ancient myths and legends regarding older cultures, and sprinkles that stuff liberally in the last two books of his I read (Rage is Back also had a mystic aspect to it, along with deep roots in B-boy culture.  Another day though...).  It was a great thrill ride and quite a compelling page-turner.  Adam Mansbach is more than a gimmick children's writer.  4 stars.

Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore by Walter Mosley:  I have a Walter Mosley book that I haven't gotten around to reading, but when I saw the premise to this one, I had to pick it up.  Porn mega-star Debbie Dare retires after the death of her cheating, abusive, porn-producer husband dies and finds herself burdened with the enormous debt her husband incurred to various LA lowlifes.  In addition to figuring that out, she must reconcile with her family, his family, and the son she had when she was a teenager.  It's a great setup, but it never quite got past "simmer" for me.  I found myself engrossed enough to read it in a day and a half, but never quite got the payoff I was looking for.  Not bad, but not great either.  3 stars.

The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Maberry:  Book Two in his Joe Ledger series, of which I had read one and three and loved.  The Dragon Factory features Joe Ledger and his DMS team pursuing a group of geneticists descended from Josef Mengele, who have created genetically engineered mythological creatures (dragons, unicorns, etc) for hunters sport... and to create an unstoppable army of fearsome potential to rule the world after a virus clears out all who do not fit the Nazi ideal of the Master Race.  Yeah, I know, completely off the walls, batshit crazy.  But wow, was this a fun action movie of a read.  4 stars.

Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard:  My second Elmore Leonard book of 2015 led me to realize that I'm not as big a fan of his as I thought.  Which is a shame.  He follows two ex-hippie bombers as they try to extort a million dollars from someone they ran with back in the day, and the detective trying to stop them.  Fairly bland, very dated.  But I got through it in a day.  3 stars.

Ghosts of Manhattan by Douglas Brunt:  Well-written story about a guy working at Bear Stearns at the the onset of the 2008 financial crisis... well-written in the sense that the story was well told.  The protagonist, however, a very wealthy trader who is suddenly having a crisis of conscience with his lifestyle (oh, no, the hooker and blow life has too many hookers and too much blow... woe is me) rang completely hollow with me.  I found him to be completely unlikable and his "struggle" didn't seem to be much of one at all.  Liked the story, hated the storyteller.  3 stars.

The Martian by Andy Weir:  The first manned mission to Mars leaves a man stranded on the surface after a freak dust storm, and he has to "science the shit out of this" to survive the estimated 600+ days it will take to wait for rescue.  Brilliant and compelling, science-fiction close enough to realistic with an ease of access akin to Bill Nye The Science Guy.  Thoroughly engrossing, we see the hero, Mark Watney, use science and humor to keep himself alive, hopeful and sane, alone on a barren planet, presumed dead, and billions of miles from home.  Can't say enough good things about this.  Read it.  Now.  5 stars.

Monster by A. Lee Martinez:  I underestimated this one going in, thinking it was kind of kiddie-fluff.  Mistake.  This turned out to be a solid supernatural read about a color-changing monster hunter and his paper-man sidekick, protecting a normal human from the magical forces trying to get to her.  I'm not usually into fantasy stuff, but this was pretty fun to read.  4 stars.

Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore: The latest by my current favorite author, Secondhand Souls is the sequel to A Dirty Job. The sequel finds a resurrected Charlie Asher and his friends Lily, Audrey,  retired detective Alphonse Rivera and Minty Fresh, once again battle the mythical Morrigan for the souls of the recently departed in San Francisco while their new master, Minty's cousin Lemon Fresh seeks to ascend (or descend) and become a new god of Death.  I'm a massive fan of Christopher Moore, and A Dirty Job was the first book of his that I read, so naturally Secondhand Souls was incredibly fun for me.  If you haven't read the earlier book, then very little of it will makes sense to you at first.  But I think you'll still enjoy it as Moore's engaging and riotously funny style gets you over that hump.  4 stars.

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore:  This sequel to Fool puts Pocket the Jester in Italy as he finds himself in the middle of Shakespeare's Othello, and with old friends and a new pet sea serpent, seeks to stop a coup.  I wasn't as big a fan of Fool as I was of Christopher Moore's other stuff, but it wasn't bad.  It was original and funny.  This is kind of like the joke you love and makes you smile, but you've heard it before so you don't enjoy it quite so much.  3 stars.

There you go.  11 books, one year.  Not bad, but this year, let's see if I can do more...

Words and Music

I write to a soundtrack.

I'm sure that doesn't make me unique or ground breaking.  I'm sure quite a lot of writers have at least some background music going when they create.  Music helps clear the mind in some instances and can be very beneficial to just about any activity that requires focus.  But part of my process is that I score my own work.  For instance, my last published novel, The Favorite, had a soundtrack that was one part driving hip-hop (down and dirty to power the fight scenes), one part 90's East Coast Gangsta Rap (for the more criminal scenes), and one part Emo Rock (for the reflective moments).

Some of the music I used to write The Favorite

That mix of music helped me direct scenes and make more sense emotionally of the movie that played out in my head.  The music helped me express what was going on beneath the narrative, and even if that stuff never makes it onto a page, anything I can do to better understand my characters as they navigate the world and problems I placed them in is a worthwhile enterprise.

But that was a general soundtrack, toying with the idea of writing to music.  Since then I've settled on using certain songs on repeat to write certain scenes.  In my current work-in-progress, titled Open (for the time being), a man and his wife have an ugly confrontation after they catch each other cheating.  That confrontation explodes in dish-shattering, fridge shaking sex in their kitchen, where they lose themselves in the heat of the moment.  The song that played (on loop) while I wrote it?

Yep, that's right.  Come Together by the Beatles.  Besides the pun, it seemed to fit the mood perfectly, given their circumstances.  No shortage of irony, I guess.

I've taken the approach one step further for my next project, a vigilante crime story called Urban Legend.  I've crafted individual soundtracks for the protagonist, antagonist and "sidekick" characters. I'm using the individual character songs to form a mood when I'm scene building and these characters have to interact.  I'm using songs like "I Am," by Eminem, "Animal I Have Become," by Three Days Grace, and "(Rock) Superstar" by Cypress Hill. This is an experiment that may cause more trouble than not but the easy way is not the way to grow.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Anyway, where do my fellow writers stand on using music to set the tone on their writing?  How do you use it?  Comment here or on Facebook.

Cheers!

Anxiety and the Lucky Bounce

My brother is a sleep tech, just like I am in my normal life.

In the sleep lab we get all sorts of people from all walks of life.  My brother, fifteen states away, stumbled onto an editor.  Not just any editor, though, one who has worked on NYT bestsellers.  And he convinced this person to take a look at my writing.

Happiness ensued, followed immediately by nervousness.  All I have to show is the first few chapters of the rough draft of my novel.  It's a first draft and therefore is supposed to suck, but what if it sucks sucks?  I've been working on this for the last four years, and as any writer knows, that first moment showing it to someone outside your circle, well, it makes your sphincter pucker.

This person is busy, and the feedback won't be coming for quite some time, but she has already been invaluable.  First she gave me some advice -- don't publish your first three novels.  Write them, shelve them, return to them after you've written some more and polished your craft.  It was great advice, I just wish I'd heard it ten years ago.  My first two attempts at novel writing are already published.  Might as well steer into the skid.

The Fab 5, available on Amazon

Second, she asked me to critically think about what went wrong on my first two efforts.  That was hard, admitting my own mistakes.  The Fab 5 was a good concept undone by a touch of arrogance.  I didn't listen to anybody who said anything negative about it.  I didn't hire an editor and thought I could do it myself.  I used the f-word A LOT. I didn't understand what it took to self-publish and was shocked about how much I had to do myself.  It was a rude awakening.

The Favorite, also available on Amazon

The Favorite took some of the lessons I learned and applied the knowledge.  I started with writing a stronger story, hired an editor, and tried my best to shamelessly self-promote.  The problem is I wasn't very good at the last part.  Also, sports novels are a tough sell to people who aren't sports fans.  But hey, there were less f's given.  (bad pun, sorry.)

 I'm nervous as to what this person will say about my current work.  It's like sending your four year-old to preschool for the first time.  But hey, the kid may prove to be a genius.

Or at least, worth selling.

Retrospective on The Fab 5

I have a confession to make.

Over the last three or four years I've been distancing myself from my first novel, The Fab 5.  I had what I thought was a good reason.  My grandmother, 84 years old at the time, read it.

The Fab 5.  Available on Amazon and B&N.

I never intended for her to read it.  I didn't write it for her.  And it never occurred to me for even a half a second that she would.  It's a street-flavored basketball story following five lifelong friends from Flatbush.  So when I wrote about some of the realities of living in a neighborhood not too dissimilar from the one in which I grew up, there was a heavy dose of, shall we say, colorful language.

                         Castillo’s face went purple, and I swear I saw steam come out of his ears. “Yo,

                   f*** you, you b****-a** monkey n****!”

                          Shiver stood up straight, shocked by the comment. He got right in between

                   Jay and Castillo, getting nearly nose-to-nose with him. “What did you say?”

                   Shiver said, as angry as I had ever seen him.

                          Jay forced his way back in between Shiver and Castillo, and forced them both

                    back. He held Shiver back, and turned to face the Puerto Rican kid. “F*** it,” he

                    said with a heavy sigh. “Get your squad together, Miguel.” Shiver stopped resisting,

                    and joined the four of us in a shocked look at Jay. “If it’s gonna shut his little

                    punk a** up, then fine, let’s beat him again.”

                         Castillo smiled as he walked past Jay. “Don’t go nowhere,” he said as he

                   walked toward the other side of the park. As he walked past Shiver, he said under

                   his breath, “B**** n****.”

And so on.  That is from page 18.  While some people were able to relate to and even appreciate the authenticity of the language -- if you grew up in a rougher neighborhood in New York, I suppose you would too -- I had some friends tell me they created the first literary drinking game in history for every time I swore in that book.  

Up until that point, the only book my grandmother had ever read was the Bible.  Sure, she read newspapers and magazines and such, but The Bible was all she read that came in a hardcover or paperback.  For the record, she still has both.  She had never read a novel.  

Until her youngest grandson gave her a signed copy of The Fab 5.

So several weeks later, when I did my good grandson thing and visited her after work, she looked at me sternly through her glasses like she always did and said in a thick Jamaican accent, "I read your book, Franklyn."  And suddenly every cuss word I wrote, every questionable situation I conceived flooded my head.  I mean, I referred to a certain female character in the five most unflattering ways you could in one line.  (I guess the fact that no word in that line was more than five letters can be considered impressive, if you squint one eye.)

My mouth hit the ground.   "You read it?!  Jeez, Mama, you weren't actually supposed to read the thing!"  I composed myself and cleared my throat.  "So what'd you think?"

She turned her attention to the word search puzzle she was doing and let the question hang for a while.  "I liked it," she said, I'm sure to be polite.  "Too many bad words though."

And just like that, my enthusiasm for promoting my first novel kind of tanked.  I was embarrassed that my grandmother read it.  There's no way there's a market for this thing, I thought.  And that was that.

Fast-forward to 2014.  I'm scrolling through Netflix and stumble across a documentary by Bobbito Garcia called Doin' It In the Park, which followed the streetball scene in the five boroughs, and suddenly I realize exactly how wrong I was.  Bobbito's respect for the sport that I played and loved was oozing from the film, and I saw elements of my book -- the gamesmanship, the competition, the trash-talking, the court culture and such-- played out in reality and motion.

I realized then that The Fab 5 did have value, and did have a market.  Was it perfect?  Not by any means. It's not even my best work; my second novel is leaps and bounds better, and all writers criticize their previous projects.  But it was an accurate depiction of what my world was like at 16, 17, and 18.  You had the park.  You had your crew.  You had a ball.

I may be more actively promoting my current novel, The Favorite, but my earlier work is (in my very humble and obviously biased opinion) very much worth the read.

And keep a bottle of Jack nearby in case you want to play the drinking game.

Summer Resolutions

The one thing about living where I live is that the summers are gorgeous.  The sun doesn't go down until unfathomably late and while I sometimes get sentimental about the stultifying heat and humidity in New York City, a mild summer day isn't so bad.  Being outside in the summer in the Pacific Northwest is natural and encouraged.  I've developed an affection for Disc Golf.

The problem with that however is that the time I'm spending outside is time I'm not spending writing.  It's time I'm not spending on skill development or research or world building.  And while that's awesome in small doses, I worry about too much of a good thing.  I still carry with me a bit of the person that was on the Public School calendar, where I did a whole lot of not much between mid-June and Labor Day.  Old habits are hard to break.

But here's where I try: I've got a commitment in my head to not only finish the first draft of the new novel I'm working on, but to also post two short stories -- at least -- on this blog, all by the end of the summer.  Lofty goals, I know.  I've been working on the first draft for three years already, and I'm only a little better than halfway done.  That's why I'm stating it here, on the blog.

I joined a couple of like-minded individuals in a writing group that was based on a simple concept: accountability.  Our stories are our assignments.  Not unlike school, where a teacher handed out homework (Every.  Damn.  Day.), only here there's no algebra.  We are accountable to the group, lest we provide the coffee.

I'm also going to use the summer to make my weight loss goals, once again made public for the sake of accountability.  I'm going to restart the "Chubby Me" posting I did a couple of years ago and work myself into being less "fluffy."

And, of course, I'm going to blog more.

Including The Sun/The Dream and The Reality

First of all, yes, this is the same blog.

I decided on a little facelift, within the confines of my web design ability.  Meaning I looked at the Settings tab to see what Google would let a novice like me do.  So the color palette has been brightened, and it looks kind of like a sunny day.  Because, you know, Under The Sun.

It was either that or change the name to "Through The Black."  Which some people might think to be racist.

***

When I decided that writing was what I was going to eventually do with my life, I had this vision in my head of it being not unlike the creative writing and journalism classes I took throughout high school and college.  Publishers, intellectuals, professors and high school English teachers alike would laud and praise my work, it would be consumed by the masses in quantities unheard of, and I would not only achieve fame and fortune but I would usher in a new era of world peace.  And I'd have groupies at coffee shop readings, because Sean Connery in Finding Forrester said so.

As an adult, the reality was a bit different.  My first novel was rejected out of hand by two dozen publishers, big and small, often without any word that they'd even opened the proposal.  The nerve of them, I thought, impeding my path to wealth and glory with their small-mindedness.  I chose to self-publish.

In the early 2000's, just before Kindle existed, conversations about publishing went like this:

"Oh, I published my novel?"

"Oh, really? Congratulations!"

"Yeah.  I self-published."

"Oh, really.  Congratulations?"

There were a lot of things that an arrogant 25 year-old tried to do.  First off, I decided that the traditional publishing model was broken.  After doing several hundred hours of very focused searching (the Internet is wonderful for giving you an unbiased base for your bias), I came to the conclusion that the only people making money anymore from publishing were the publishers and the very big name authors, the Dan Browns and Tom Clancys, and unknown writers like myself had little to no shot of breaking in.  The big publishers wouldn't look at you unless you had an agent, and an agent very likely avoided you unless and until you had a deal (I kept one of my agency rejection letters that actually said I should think of them when I secure a deal with a publisher).  I looked at self-publishing -- through iUniverse (as shady as they are, they are useful for what they're useful for)-- as the only way to unleash my genius upon the world.  And The Fab 5 was born.  I completed my book, had my name in print, and all I had to do was sit back and wait for my money to roll in.  My landlord at the time wasn't as fond of the idea and recommended I keep my day job.

With time and distance I realized The Fab 5 wasn't going to make me money.  I was an unknown who hadn't promoted my work at all and had no clue how to do so.  There are life reasons for that I won't get into right now, but anyway.  It was a slap in the face; how could all of those English teachers been wrong?

Fast forward some years, and I've adjusted my expectations.  The Favorite is enjoying a modicum of success, which for me now means more people dig it than not.  And one of the things I've realized is that I have to constantly promote, constantly remind, constantly pitch and sell.  And the truth is, as much of a hassle as it can be, I kind of enjoy it.

I was right about a few things.  The traditional publishing model is broken.  It is reliant on the idea that the big  publishers are the gatekeepers of inclusion into some sort of artsy-fartsy literary club, and the only way to have any sort of legitimacy is by begging for their approval  (I had an iUniverse employee refer to self-publishing as the "minor leagues").  Technology has made them the keyholders to a vacant, dilapidated and overpriced apartment building in a really crappy neighborhood.  Yeah, you could live there, but for the same amount of hassle you could live somewhere else and have more money. 

Vilage Books Event (4/19/2014)

A couple of weekends ago I had my first speaking event at Village Books in Fairhaven.

I gotta say, that was a cool experience.  For a guy that doesn't enjoy public speaking -- I go out of my way to avoid them, mostly -- it was a lot of fun!  Best part?  The Favorite was sold out! 

If you live in or near Bellingham, visit Village Books and pick up a copy.  If not, you can order it here. 

Also, take a look at the reading from the event!

Part 1
Part 2

Dreams Do Come True!

This past weekend I had the wonderful pleasure of doing a book signing at Page 2 Books in Burien, WA, an event that coincided with their official grand opening.

First off, let me say the store is gorgeous.  Well laid out, tons of natural light, hardwood floors (a deep seated and well programmed favorite from my days in NYC), it had a combination of new book smell and pine.  The owners, Jenny Cole and Bill Virgin, were both friendly and easy to talk to, and their love of books and of their store simply flowed off them.  Bill chatted me up several times over the three hours I was there, about writing, about boxing, about New York, and I enjoyed the conversation.  The saleswoman on the floor, Cathy, also took time out of her break to chat me up, and plied the conversation with homemade cookies (yeah, I gained three pounds).

I chatted up several of the adventurous and curious customers Bill and Jenny directed my way (sidebar: thanks for that.  I have a hard time standing up and saying "over here!").  A woman named Elizabeth talked to me for at least half an hour, about boxing, about her friends from Mexico, about some of her own adventures.  I found myself quite enjoying it!

I spoke with a couple who lived in Queens for a year.  I spoke with a young man who wanted to train to box.  And I spoke to a guy who worked at a nearby model train shop (which, sadly, I was unable to find after the event was over.  Pity. That would have been interesting...).  All in all I had a blast!

Back to the title of this post, that signing was the culmination of years and years of dreaming and hard work.  When I was in my early 20's and living in New York (and for quite some time after) I would wander into the nearest bookstore, head over to the part of the fiction rack where my book would be and stare at that spot for most of my lunch break.  Three years ago, with the help of a good friend, I bought a button-down shirt, specifically for the purpose of wearing it to my first book signing (Okay, yeah, I'm a little nuts.  So sue me.) Similarly, I get the impression that Bill and Jenny's love of books, of language and literature, drove them to purchase their store.

To them I just want to say, thank you for being part of my dream, and for allowing me into yours.

Discipline

It kind of came to me as I stepped out of the shower and stepped onto my bathroom scale.

That used to be a ritual I had before I went anywhere. My day would begin (or end, considering I work nights) with me getting home from the gym, showering, and taking a step on the scale, being proud that a workout ended in a slowly but surely shrinking number.  This ghost of my routine kicked in at the end of its cycle and I stepped on the scale without doing all the previous stuff, and the number I saw reminded me of it.

I haven't been to the gym -- not consistently, anyway -- in quite a while.

People are slaves to routine, followers of habit.  They do what they do with repetition, as the repetition is comfortable.  It's why bad habits are so hard to break; they become hardwired into our daily lives until our bodies and minds crave it.  Creative types -- artists and writers for instance -- are even more susceptible to habits, both good and bad, as they drive how and what we create.  I thought about that as well as I dried off and sucked in my gut as I looked in the mirror.  I've lost all my good habits.

I haven't written -- not consistently, anyway -- in quite a while.

We all have our reasons for this, of course, and some of them are even valid.  Good habits, for instance, are invariably the ones that are more difficult and more of an investment in time, and sometimes changing life situations -- good and/or bad -- make it tough to keep good habits.  Or sometimes we get lazy, as bad habits are easier, more instantly gratifying, and creep in when we least expect it.  Either way, whatever the reasons or excuses, the problem comes down to one thing: discipline.

My life situation has changed a bit.  I find myself less willing to engage in the high-energy, cardio-intensive routine of early-morning basketball two to three days a week, and more willing to spend that time in bed.  I end up talking myself out of my workouts as I drag my feet to get to the gym.  I'm completely unwilling to go for a run in the midst of the recent (and absolutely, insanely bitter) cold snap.  I find myself writing less, and I give myself reasons like "Gotta promote the novel," or "Don't have time right now.". Or, if I'm being truthful, the reasons are "I don't feel like it," or "I'm not in the headspace to produce anything good."

Damn that.  No more excuses.  Life is passing us by as we fill the days with stuff we should have done and reasons why we didn't do them.  Our bad habits are killing us.  My bad habits are killing me.  Not with any disease or anything, but with malaise and missed opportunity.  The game is not called because of cold.  We -- I -- just have to find the find the discipline, to create the good habits, that restores the natural order of things.

And with that, I reveal the number I saw. 271.

I say this a lot, but now I'm saying it publicly over the internet, which will hold me accountable.  I will reduce that number by 30 in the coming months.  It's going to take planning, hard work, and discipline.

The other thing, the writing?  Well, something must be done about that too.  At the beginning of the year, I set forth an unreachable goal: to write a million words of fiction.  I know the goal is insanely difficult, but I set it with the idea that if I try and don't make it, I'll stilt have done an unbelievable amount of work.  So far, my word count isn't all that impressive.  I'm going to take a NaNoWriMo-style approach and try to generate 1200 words a day of fiction.  Yeah, I'll be well short of my million-word mandate, but the point wasn't a million words, the point was forging the discipline to transition into a writing career.

And I trust the internet to hold me accountable.

Laughably shameless

First of all, I'd like to very belatedly wish you all a happy new year.  I've been so busy the last couple of weeks that I haven't had a spare moment to write in this blog.  For those of you who don't know, my new novel, The Favorite recently became available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and I've been shamelessly plugging it for all who can see and hear.  Seriously.  Shamelessly.  It's embarrassing.

I mean, really, how many of my friends didn't know this was coming?  I've only been talking about my novel, The Favorite, self-published with the help of iUniverse, Inc. for six, seven months now?  You had to believe that at some point, I would release my novel, The Favorite, available wherever books are sold online so I could finally stop talking about it. 

Anyway, the thing I've learned about this whole experience: I'm really bad at advertising.

The Favorite... Cover Reveal and Sneak Peek

Okay, I don't have a hard release date yet, but this is the cover to my upcoming novel, The Favorite, which will be available online wherever books are sold.

This is the cropped version of the front.  Classy, huh?

And this is the full-on hardcover dust jacket.

And... here's a sneak peek of the prologue.  Enjoy!!

Prologue

Last night…

The tapping of the smooth silver ballpoint pen against the notepad sounded like a metronome gone out of control.Crumpled balls of paper littered the handsome wooden desk, a graveyard of bad ideas growing larger as the pad of paper in front of him grew thinner. The paper’s watermark – a green-tinged lion’s head

logo – stared at him, mocking him, daring him to try again to write something poignant. Or even just intelligent. In fact, at this point, the lion would even have settled for something merely coherent.

He reached for the tiny bottle of vodka from the mini-bar and emptied the last of the clear, caustic liquid down his throat. He felt his face flush as the liquor burned a path into his stomach. He closed his eyes and enjoyed drifting off to drunkenness. When his mouth and throat cooled he reopened his eyes. The

lion still looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to begin this manifesto, this great work that would make her understand why. He tentatively put the pen to paper and scribbled out the letter’s opening line.

To whom it may concern…

He had barely formed the final “n” when he tore the page from its pad. To whom it may concern, he thought. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

He tossed the balled up sheet of paper to the side and started again, dating the top of the page. He went over in his mind how letters were supposed to start, with Dear Someone, or Dearest Whomever. He wrote: I don’t even know your name.

He smiled as he finished writing that one line. He cracked open another tiny bottle and sucked it down. He was drunker than he had been in a long time, but at least the words were flowing.

My name is Michael Dane. I’m your father. A little Darth Vader-esque, he thought, but it worked. If you’re reading this then I’m dead. 

He paused a moment after he wrote that; the finality of those words made his stomach gurgle. Doubt, nervousness and fear crept into his mind for the first time since this crazy thing started. He wondered if this whole deal was such a good idea after all.

Drunkenness helped him rediscover his resolve. He had no choice after all. He wrote: And of course you’re reading this, because I know I’m going to die.

"Urban Legend" Research Blog, Part 2:

In my last post about my progress for my "Urban Legend" project, I delved into what it took to look like a hero, the protective gear a real-world hero would need to tame the streets of a mid-major American city.  Now we leave defense and go straight to the offense.  How do we beat the snot out of evildoers?  The way my masked hero deals out violent retribution says a lot about his personality, his state of mind.

I spoke at length with Renshi Desmond L. Diaz about the subject for two reasons -- one, he's my go-to martial arts expert (5th dan Goju-Ryu), and two, he's my nephew.  To fight crime on the streets of my unnamed city, he suggested Krav Maga.

Krav Maga is unique in that it's designed to be taught and learned quickly.  It's blunt strikes and counter-heavy nature was intended to make ordinary citizens into effective fighters for the conscripted war effort.  The Israelis train their soldiers in Krav Maga, and when you consider that 2 years military service is required of every citizen, you don't want to meet too many Israelis in dark alleys.



In the recent "Batman" movies, Krav Maga is the style Bruce Wayne uses to dole out brutal justice on the streets of Gotham.  These days, Krav Maga is more widely used, taught to military and law enforcement alike, which is perfect for my "could-be-anybody" vigilante.

I also asked my nephew what weapons my hero would need to carry and he broke it down in three words: blades, staves, and guns.  Personally, I don't want to have my hero carrying guns as it doesn't fit the personality I want for this guy, but as for blades, I like the karambit.

The karambit is a Filipino weapon that was originally used for raking roots and threshing plants.  In proper hands it is possibly the deadliest knife available.  The curved blade was inspired by the claws of big cats (tigers, panthers, lions and such).  It's lightweight, easy to conceal, and as shown by the video possesses a certain degree of up close and personal bad-assery.  Batman would be proud.

As staves go, I like escrima sticks.  A friend of mine trains with them and his giddy approval is contagious.  Again, they go with the easy to conceal, easy to carry, and in the proper hands, can be a gleeful tool of attitude adjustment.

So the personality I'm seeking to craft for my hero is one of an up-close killer of killers, one who deals with these people in a manner suggests that they have done something to him personally.  And who knows, maybe they have...

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

So, I spent much of the summer radio silent on this blog, poking my head out only once or twice to call for men to better to the women in our lives and so on.  It's not like I stopped writing, or stopped caring, I just got busy.  This has been a very interesting summer on a lot of levels, and while I usually don't talk too much about personal life details all that often, I'll get nice and personal right about now.

My summer began with the grand adventure of dating.  Those of you who know me best know how much I hate the dance of getting to know someone, and pretending to be the sexy version of myself so that I can have the privilege of buying dinner and paying for a movie so that maybe, sometime down the road, we can possibly have sex at some point (Yes, that IS sarcasm, but it's bleak out there).  I was reminded that things tend to work out better when I don't try to be the sexy version of me, or the smart version of me, or whatever version I think someone will like.  I tried being myself, a move I haven't done in a few years.  The result? I get to hang out with an amazing girl on a regular basis.  We're sappy and cute and disgusting -- in public, no less -- and it's kind of cool.  Don't get me wrong, if I were to watch a couple like that from a distance I would probably projectile vomit all over the place (I'm a hypocrite.  I'm also probably bigger than you.) but it IS nice to be so comfortable with someone you don't really worry about what the rest of the world thinks about it.

Midway through the summer, my brother and his wife announced that they are expecting a baby (everyone after me... awwwww).  And then then world got like, hormonally crazy.  People I knew are dropping babies like crazy.  I haven't seen an epidemic like this since my days in the Diamond District! (Seriously, don't drink the water.)  In a few days, a wonderful couple I met through my brother are expecting their own bundle of joy, and after the story I heard about the kid's sonogram pose, I acquired the nickname rights and hereby dub the soon-to-arrive person "L'il Baby Cool Breeze."  I also expect to not hear from those parents until the kid is 6 with that nickname.

Of course, no story worth living is completely happy, and toward the end of the summer I said goodbye to my father.  Without airing business, I will say that while we weren't as close as I would have liked to be (and I take a portion of the responsibility for that), I loved him, respected him, and will miss him dearly.  I hope he was proud of his children, because we all turned out pretty damn good.

The positive to that story is in several parts; number one, it reunited my family under one roof for the first time in a while.  Six boys, two girls, with spouses and children and baby bumps all over the place.  It was chaos.  I was in heaven.  Secondly, my brother took my dad's SUV in order to have a vehicle to drive their kid around in (sidebar: newborns live the life.  They get valet service, chauffeur service, room service, free rent, AND they get adored for it.  It's their world, we're just living in it.).  He's living in Louisville, Kentucky now, one of those places that no one ever thought any of us would move to on purpose, and he's happy there.  Go figure.  Anyway, getting the car there meant one thing: Road Trip!  I logged my first ever road trip, getting to see Pittsburgh and pass through some very pretty country on the East Coast.  Definitely one of my better memories.  Lastly, my father's death made it necessary to do something I was looking at doing anyway.  Last minute flights are expensive, so in order to do the flight back to New York, I had to take a loan.  But since I was going to take a loan out to publish anyway, I did that.  My next novel, The Favorite, should be out by the end of the year!

This summer has been a big one for me.  I can't think of one that's had this many stories in it worth telling, and summer don't end until the Yankees are done playing, so who knows what more can happen?  If the Yankees make the playoffs though, I'm going to be hard to deal with.

Review: Coyote Blue

Over the last seven years, Christopher Moore has become one of my favorite authors.  To
date, he has published 13 novels and counting.  I own every one, and it's his second,
Coyote Blue, that ranks among my favorites.  Equal parts love story and supernatural
comedy, Moore shows off his unique talent for putting the ordinary guy through an
extraordinary paranormal wringer.

Coyote Blue follows Sam Hunter, a California insurance salesman who has all the
trappings of the good life as well as a closely guarded secret: he's really Samson
Hunts Alone, a member of the Crow tribe who ran away from home after accidentally
killing a cop.  his life is turned completely inside out when he meets the stunning
flower-child, Calliope Kincaid and -- immediately after -- the Native-American
trickster god Coyote.  The chance encounter with Calliope leads Sam on an unlikely road
trip across the American West with the trickster at his side as he chases his newfound
love back toward his childhood home and the past he ran away from.

Right away, you see that Moore has a much tighter grasp on his characters than he did
in his debut.  Whereas Practical Demonkeeping's Augustus Brine (who is mentioned in a
cameo) acted as a lens through which we observed the inhabitants of Pine Cove, Sam
Hunter is undoubtedly the star of the show.  This is his journey and it makes for a
much more intimate story as we watch him grow as a person over the course of his
adventure.  We watch his priorities shift and we watch him accept a part of himself
long thought buried.  The secondary characters, Coyote -- an immature immortal god --
and Calliope -- who starts out as the free-loving counterpart to Sam's very grounded
life -- both go through journeys of their own, but neither one is as compelling as that
of the lead character.  His growth is fantastic and quite relateable.

Coyote Blue is Christopher Moore refining the very distinct voice we saw flashes of in
Practical Demonkeeping.  It's alternatively funny and heartwarming and always fun.
Highly recommended.

Rating: 9 of 10.

Review: Rage Is Back

Take one part teen angst, one part drugged-out mysticism, and one part ode to old-school B-Boy culture, mix well, and you have "Rage Is Back," the latest from Adam Mansbach.  If the name sounds familiar, it's because he created a surge of controversy with a children's book for adults called "Go The Fuck To Sleep."

"Rage Is Back" follows 18 year-old Kilroy Dondi Vance, son of 80's graffiti icon Billy Rage.  Dondi is a relbellious, disillusioned smart-ass from the outset as he whines about the events that led him to couch-surf with several friends, and change is set in motion when a member of Billy Rage's old crew informs Dondi that his father has returned to New York.  It seems that on the night that Dondi was born, Billy witnessed a delusional police officer, which sends a grief-stricken Rage on a one-man graffiti campaign against the officer.  And when the city responds by threatening jail time and a $2 million fine, Billy skips town, heading to Mexico without his wife or his infant son.  Rage's return coincides  with the mayoral campaign of the same cop that murdered his friend, so Dondi, Rage, and every graffiti artist they can find devise a plan to bring this cop down.

I found the narrative a bit stunted, filtered mainly through Dondi's eyes, leaving a healthy dose of annoying teen smugness to much of the first act.  This is cleaned up by the middle of the book as Dondi deals with his daddy issues and starts to grow up, aided by a vision quest brought about by a mystical, South American hallucinogen.  This does make the early parts of the story drag as Dondi is the self-righteous snot we all want to slap across the face.  He's initially not a very likable narrator, and is self aware enough to mention as  much.

Thematically, Mansbach touches on quite a few things that we can all relate to, such as the realization that once upon a time, our parents were "cool," or that once we focus our -- well, rage -- we can accomplish great things.  He did his homework here as he frequently references mid-to-late 80's hip-hop culture as well as the graffiti phenomenon from the time.  I personally found the mystic, hippie-ish, drugged out portions to be a bit unnecessary, but overall the story works.

By no means is Rage Is Back perfect.  The lack of a likable narrator nearly torpedoes the story in the first 50 pages.  The story, if you stick with it, is thoroughly enjoyable, and easily recommended as a way to pass a summer day.

Rating: 6 of 10.

Declarations of Independence

It's the American Dream, really.

It's the story we all are told as kids, how in this country, we have the opportunity to take our talents and make something of ourselves, create a better life, and get wealthy doing exactly what we want to do.  We hear about it from the top a lot, from the people who have already made it.  What about the rest of us?

As an independent author, I know that between the starting from nothing and the becoming something, there's a lot of grinding in the middle.  A lot of paid dues.  A lot of separation from the pack.  A lot of figuring out which way is your way.  To be honest, the stories of the people trying to make it is a lot more interesting than the ones of those that already did.  You never hear the stories from the middle, but maybe we should.

I will be taking it upon myself to find these stories and tell them, partly as shameless self-promotion and partly as a way to get the word out on people who are doing it themselves and meeting varying levels of success.  That's the inspiration for us all, isn't it?

So, look for "Declarations of Independence," profiles of independent artist, authors, designers, businessmen and women.  People who started with a passion and a good idea and turning a dream into reality.  And if any of you are out there and wanting to have your story told, contact me on Facebook or at frankcthomas@hotmail.com.

Cheers!

Review: Practical Demonkeeping

Christopher Moore is far and away my favorite author.  I own every novel he's written,
read most of them multiple times, and no longer require any information other than the
fact a new one is coming out to pre-order.  Admittedly, I read his often hilarious
works out of order, and it's a good thing.  Had I started with his first published
novel, Practical Demonkeeping, I'd either be incredibly impressed by his evolution over
the last 20 years or I would have been shocked his career lasted this long.  That's not
to say it's a bad book, just not one to hinge the two decades of success he's had.

Set in the fictional small town of Pine Cove, California, Practical Demonkeeping
introduces us to an entire town of slightly-off, small-town characters, all of whom
have slightly-off, small town issues.  From the owner of the local bait shop/general
store, to the workers in the local diner, to the local bar where everyone knows your
name, Pine Cove is an "everyone-knows-everyone" setting.  So when Travis O'Hearn shows
up with his sometimes-invisible demon, Catch, all hell breaks loose.  You see, Catch
eats people, and has been eating people for a very long time, and the sudden
disappearance and death of people in tiny Pine Cove sets the town on its ear.  A djinn
tasked with defeating Catch has also traveled to Pine Cove and aligns itself with the
local bait shop owner, Augustus Brine, and they search for a way to stem Catch's
appetite for destruction.

Moore does a really good job of taking stock characters and making them into a
believable small town. These are characters he re-uses in several of his later works,
which extends the payoff in investing in these characters.  Having read his entire
bibliography, it is difficult to separate this from the larger universe he's created in
Pine Cove, but when you do you find that this story is the weakest of them all.  Again,
not to say it's bad, just to say I'm spoiled by his later work.  I wouldn't recommend
someone new to this author read this novel first.  It is however, worth reading.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Review: No Flesh Shall Be Spared

I wasn't sure about writing this review for two reasons: I don't usually dig zombie books, and the author, Thom Carnell, is a friend of mine.  I read this book a little more than a year ago, however, and loved it despite those very same reasons.  There's no reason, then, to not defy convention.

Carnell's debut novel, "No Flesh Shall Be Spared," places the reader in an interesting situation.  The Zombie Apocalypse happened. It's over and done with.  What happens next?  In this world, there's only one answer: Zombie Pit Fighting!  Contestants are placed in an arena with hordes of the dead, using the weapons at hand, their fighting skills, and their wits to survive.  Winning grants you money and fame.  Losing makes you hungry for flesh.

The story follows the rise of Cleese, the new face of zombie pit fighting, as he is recruited into this lucrative sport and trained in the fine arts of Zombie-killin' for sport.  Cleese is trained by Monk, who essentially plays Mickey to Cleese's Rocky, and sticks to his side as he kills his way to the top.  Along the way Cleese runs afoul of the league's corporate sponsorship and falls in love with a sexy she-slayer.  As the story progresses, we find out background on almost every character with a speaking part through the liberal use of well-placed and well-paced "Before..." chapters, which serve as a look into what it was like at the beginning of the Zombie uprising, a profile on certain characters, and a peek at the origins of America's newest pastime.

No Flesh Shall Be Spared is brash and ballsy, and a fresh take on the Walking Dead scenario we've seen time and time again since the remake of Dawn of the Dead in the last decade.  Take one part Gladiator, one part Night of the Living Dead, and one part Escape from New York, and you have this fun zombie action tale. The only complaints I have are a very slow start and an overuse of f-bombs, but these do nothing to detract from the overall enjoyment of the story.  I started out reading it because the author is a friend.  By the third chapter I was reading because my friend wrote a damn good book.

Noteworthy: Two words:  Zombie Mass.  That is all.

Rating: 9 of 10