Category Archives: Non-Fiction/Documentary

Interview, Marketing

A Chat With Comics Odyssey

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Since I’ve been an author, this is only my third guest appearance on a podcast. It’s my very first video livestream. My first was with Winston Crutchfield (a stand-up guy) back in 2011 or so. My next was circa 2015.  After that, I figured, “There, I’ve done it. Now I can go back into hibernation.”

As my wife and other family will tell you, I don’t really like being in the spotlight. I want people to buy my books and give them nice reviews, allowing me to stay sequestered like a hermit while I work on projects important to me. But those desires are pretty much mutually exclusive in today’s entertainment sphere.

I’m an unknown rookie in comic books, yet I have to start building an audience now so that some readers will come to back my campaign when my graphic novel is ready for the printer. You gotta have a crowd before you can crowdfund, as the saying goes. So I put a profile pic up on my social media accounts showing my face instead of the cool avatars I prefer to use, and I’m reaching out to podcasters/livestreamers for interviews.

Kudos to Ulysses of Comics Odyssey for his laid back approach and his own passion for comics which made the whole experience enjoyable.

Thanks again to Ulysses for giving me a shot and his time to make this happen. This might have been the perfect way for me to get my feet wet.

I hope you all will show him some love with likes and reposts. Also, he’s working on a comic project of his own now you might consider checking out when he finishes.

And hey, did you know the Paradox digital”box set” is published? At an everyday bargain price, too.

Leave a comment if you liked the interview, and/or if you would buy a doorstop-sized paperback or hardcover of Paradox if I make one available.

Fantasy, Marketing, Sci-Fi, Speculative

Based Books Be Best! Buy Boatloads, Brah!

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I know, I know: “are the best.” Don’t undervalue my alliterative Ebonics, ese.

The Based Book Sale is back–this time in conjunction with Based Con. I’ve never been to Based Con. I can only guess that it’s like Comicon or Dragon Con (never been to those, either) only without the woketards.

Anyway, the Based Book Sale is where you can find hundreds of books by dozens of non-woke authors, discounted to 99 cents…or FREE. One of those free books will be American Stasi–you should definitely grab your own copy.

This might be the last time I include all my full-length novels in the sale, so get ’em for cheap while you can.

Those full-length novels include Paradox Book Six: Confronting Fate, which caps off my coming of age time travel conspiracy thriller wrapped around football and high adventure. The BBS will have an Amazon link, but it’s also available at the other online book stores, too.

Almost all the paperbacks in the series are published, too. I’m planning an E-Book boxed set, and possibly a hardback edition.

Intel, Non-Fiction/Documentary, Politics/Current Events

Expose the Surveillance State

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You are being spied on, everywhere you go.

Chances are, you’re aware of the surveillance cameras at urban businesses, traffic lights, on doorbell devices, inside schools, courtrooms, government buildings, parking garages, hotels, prisons, etc. You know–the ones that always conveniently TOTALLY BY COINCIDENCE quit working when a Jeffry Epstein needs Arkanciding, or a federal asset  plants a bomb at a federal building in Oklahoma City, or a glowing wind-up-toy hauls a truckload of weapons and ammo up into a Las Vegas hotel.

Maybe you wonder if the built-in camera on your laptop can be remotely activated by bad actors. Maybe you know the microphone and camera in your smartphone definitely can be activated without your knowledge–even when you have it turned off. Maybe you know about geolocation, which can reveal your whereabouts through your smart device–even when you think you’ve turned off the “location” feature.

Google Earth revealed, in the ‘oughts, that at least one satellite is taking pictures of everybody’s home, yard, garage, driveway, etc. Maybe you know that means the FedGov had something 30-40 years more advanced than that at the time. Maybe you suspect that must mean that now, 20 years later, spy satellites must at least have some unconventional imaging tech which allows somebody to see whatever you’re doing, in high resolution, right through the roof and walls “in the privacy of your own home.”

If you’re savvy, you understand that the feds consider American citizens far more dangerous than any foreign enemy or legitimate threat to your life, liberty and property, and they deploy their assets accordingly.

The truth is, it’s much worse than you imagined.

Anonymous Conservative (author of The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics) has been tirelessly working to expose the domestic surveillance in the USA on his blog, which I consider the very best news aggregator ever, hands-down. And now he has  armed us with a powerful weapon for the Information War going on all around you: The American Stasi.

AC is not afraid to say stuff that may sound crazy. He is an honest, courageous man fighting the good fight and not concerned much about what NPCs or trolls think of him. He wants to expose the surveillance to people who will arm themselves with the information he freely offers and take the Machine down. He believes there can be no saving our republic without exposure and dismantling of this lawless abomination.

While curating his must-read news aggregating blog for the last few years, he has compiled extensive data points on the panopticon we live in–the ruthless Machine watching you and your loved ones even (especially) when you assume you are acting in private.

I can’t do his work much justice here;  you need to read it for yourself. I strongly recommend that you do.

Non-Fiction/Documentary, Sci-Fi

Detour into Graphic Novels Part 3

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If you haven’t been following my sad saga about trying to make graphic novels, you can catch up by reading about how the old comic book bug was first rekindled, then my frustrating experience with one artist.

Not being a masochist, I cut my losses, paid the latter for wasting my time, and regrouped.

Back to the drawing board. Pun intended.

I found another artist with a page rate I could swing; and he seemed to understand English pretty well. He was a Manga artist, but said he could draw American-style comics. Since I wanted a more classic, simplistic style anyway (remember: I thought it would be cool if it was a similar style to Milton Caniff or Alex Raymond), I thought it could work out.

I decided to have him try Page 1, and do it in black & white to see if the style was a good fit before thinking about color.

The same kind of issues haunted me as with the previous artist. I literally had to give him the same directions 5 times before he would follow them. Going through that for every panel on a 90-page graphic novel is something I just don’t have the patience for.

After 14 days. he had this, which is much closer to what I wanted:

The artist’s Manga background helped him come closer to the simple, elegant style I thought would fit the sci-fi adventure.

Some stuff I just had to let go. Two of the characters are supposed to be older; but after telling him this over and over and over and him ignoring it, I figure he’s probably never gonna do it for whatever reason.

I wasn’t going to give up; but I was done with Fiverr and maybe even trying to hire artists.

One reason I had been ready to sink thousand$$ into this project was because time is such a precious commodity and drawing is extremely time consuming. Learning how to draw, then drawing, takes even more time. But that appeared to be the only way this was gonna happen, now.

“I have to draw it myself,” sez I.

Read the whole thing  on Substack.

Non-Fiction/Documentary, Pet Peeves, Sci-Fi

Detour into Graphic Novels Part 2

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Last time I gave you the intro and the first misadventure.  Here’s what happened next:

 

After waiting months to hear back from the publisher, I finally accepted that whatever happened, that deal was dead.

But the old dream was revived and the juices were flowing. I decided to try getting the sci-fi graphic novel produced myself.

(Looking back, if I had to do it over again, I would, but still: I did not understand what frustration would overtake me in the next step of the journey.)

If I could find an artist I could afford, I’d foot the bill myself, run it as a series on Arktoons, then get it bound in paperback and release it that way. Maybe I should finally try crowdfunding, sez I. The story’s based, seasoned with some red pills, but it’s set in a world that is not a metaphorical stand-in for the geopolitics of 2022 Earth, so IndieGoGo or whoever might not cancel it mid-campaign. And there was a new gunfighter in town, I heard, called FundMyComic which specializes in comic book crowdfunding, and respects the First Amendment.

I’m really glad now that I waited on that crowdfunding idea, rather than put backers in the position of waiting years (at least two-and-counting, now) for me to deliver a finished project.

Thank God my financial situation has improved significantly since the period I went through from 2005 to 2017. But I still don’t have money to burn, now or two years ago. This project requires a big sacrifice in precious resources that are needed for other aspects of life. I had to get the best bang-for-the-buck I could scrounge, and even then I would have to do a lot of scraping just to afford the artwork. I’m not a known creator in comics, so it’s not like I could just start a Patreon account and expect backers to appear and start contributing to an artwork fund. I’ve got 11K followers on Amazon, but you’d never know it from the number of reviews my books get. And how many of them read or care about sequential art?

I already had a Fiverr account; so I began searching…I decided to submit Page 3 this time, because it would give me a chance to see how the artist would do with some of the vehicles and other tech.

The artist who I contracted with repeatedly asked for time extensions, and I allowed them. After waiting 9 days, he finally submitted a rough sketch that he had obviously just thrown together in a matter of minutes. Here I was thinking 9 days should be enough time to draw and color 6 spectacular panels. What I initially got was no better than what I could doodle myself.

 

Read the whole article on Substack.

Non-Fiction/Documentary, Sci-Fi, Superhero

One Detour from the Great American Novel

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I’ve mentioned before some of the reasons I took so long to finish the rough draft for Paradox. One interruption was what appeared to be an opportunity to write graphic novels:

 

For those who don’t know, I’m a novelist. I’ve had ideas for some comics & graphic novels for a long time—including many superhero stories which take place in a “world” I built as a boy and has evolved as I sporadically brainstormed about it in subsequent years.

My first creative efforts were pictures of superheroes, and later my own comics, panels drawn on whatever scrap paper I could find, plotting and character development handled on-the-fly, and assembled slapdash with staples, Elmer’s Glue, or whatever binding method I could improvise. My writing experience began as a necessary adjunct of those efforts.

My drawing was pretty good for somebody who was self-taught and seat-of-the-pants. I can honestly say I was a better freehand artist than anyone I ever met, until I went to college. I wasn’t in the same league as any comic artist from the Bronze Age on, but had I developed better habits and techniques, maybe I could have gotten there. I’ll probably elaborate in the future.

In my late teens, I drifted away from “kid stuff” (comic books) and began aspiring to more “serious” creative efforts (text-based fiction). I gradually quit drawing and began concentrating on writing–which, at the time, was a bigger challenge.

My shift to prose solidified over the years and the old sequential art ambitions collected layers of dust on the back shelf. Even so, the seeds of that superhero saga germinated in my mind and never completely faded away.

The old dream languished, increasingly resembling a pipe dream as the years stacked up and life took me further and further away from ever having the time to make a serious effort at that partially-developed idea on the shelf.

And then…

One day on Gab, a publisher who I’d never met or heard of (he was from Europe) DM’d me out of the blue. He said he liked my prose and asked if I’d ever considered writing a graphic novel before.

Little did he know the depth of my appreciation for the medium and my abandoned dream. The dream had never completely died, though my drawing ability had.

This would have been flattering, but at first I didn’t think the dude was serious; or I must have misunderstood him or something. But no: after exchanging messages for a while, it became clear he wanted me to write a graphic novel for him. He had published a couple (illustrated) based children’s books; which I checked out. Amazon banned one of them, which is a badge of honor in my view. I did buy and read one that survived.

Anyway, I dusted off another idea I’d been nursing for years (a sci-fi aviation adventure in another galaxy) and pounded out a rough draft. I had some experience writing screenplays, and comic scripts aren’t too terribly different.

The experience effectively gave me a jump-start. I got the bug to chase that old dream.

 

Read the whole article on Substack.
Feel free to comment here, there, or both.
Non-Fiction/Documentary, Pet Peeves

Arguments About A.I.

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Now that “A.I.” seems to be a part of reality,* it is the source of much controversy. As an independent author who has commissioned artists for book covers, and some burgeoning graphic novel projects, I’m privy and intrigued by one facet of it: A.I. generated art.

Here are some of the arguments I’ve been observing go back and forth in my own social network, such as it is:

Stop, Thief!

Artist: Using A.I. to generate your art is abetting  the theft of intellectual property.

Writer: It’s no more theft than an artist drawing or painting something after looking at other art, photos, or the live subject in the real world. Unless A.I. simply reproduced your art, line-for-line, stroke-for-stroke, your argument doesn’t hold water.

Have You No Decency?

Artist: Shame on you! You’re putting human artists out of work by using A.I. generated art. It is morally reprehensible to make money off work that includes elements not created by a human being.

Writer #1: That’s like saying it’s immoral for you to build a website, make a flier, or advertise your art in any other way unless you or another artist (who you pay) hand-create all the text, rather than using an available font from some computer.

Writer #2: Considering your price-gouging, and your undependability, you deserve to go out of business. If you weren’t so unreasonable and flaky, I might consider paying more for your human touch.

How would YOU like it?

Artist: What if A.I. writes a cheap knock-off of your novel and somebody else cut into your profits by selling it?

Writer: That’s already happening even without A.I. From the hacks selling their junk on the Amazon Slush Pile, to downright piracy on the warrez sites. It’s something we have to live with. Welcome to our world.

Artist: You won’t be so cavalier when people start buying A.I. generated books instead of yours. Then you’ll see.

Writer: We won’t like it, but that’s already happening, too. The lion’s share of the indie market is dominated by cheap, quick, formulaic, uninspired pap generated by mediocre writers who might as well be bots. Welcome to our world.

 

My Thoughts:

I’ve seen some really impressive A.I. generated art, but in my limited experience so far, it takes just as much time and effort to make A.I. give me what I want as it would to just draw or paint it myself. No doubt it will improve, but it might always have that “Uncanny Valley” effect.

I suspect A.I. generated prose will have an even stronger Uncanny Valley factor. Granted, most Amazon shoppers will ravenously consume it anyway. But if my creativity depended on profit margins, return-on-investment, or any financial metric, I would have given up on creative pursuits long ago in lieu of something much more consistently profitable like politics, real estate, or telemarketing.

What are your thoughts on the role of artificial intelligence in creativity? Let us know in the comments.

 

*I’ve heard some tech-savvy folks say what we’re witnessing is not true artificial intelligence, but merely complex computer programming. I tend to agree, based on its performance. I don’t think it will ever truly be intelligent without imagination and probably self-awareness.

Adventure, Marketing, Speculative, Sports, Time Travel

Paradox: Promotions, Surprises, and Reviews

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(Oh My!)

Seems like just yesterday I was agonizing over turning my monstrous doorstop-sized Great American Novel into a series. Now there are four regular-sized novels in the series published out of a probable six.

 

Pardon me while I flex:

Though they haven’t done as well yet as my Retreads Series, the Paradox books have all become bestsellers–and within a month of release, respectively. But wait…there’s more! Book Four: Provoking Fate made bestseller for two weeks without me lowering the price or running a promotion!

I am disappointed that I’m not getting reviews–those mercurial manifestations of “social proof” with an inordinate impact on visibility. But with all the strings Amazon has attached to posting reviews, that’s probably just how the ball bounces. The Paradox Series has been collecting ratings at a…ahem…rate that’s not bad considering how new it is, and that the author is a relatively unknown indie with no Youtube following. Or social media “influencer” status. Or marketing acumen. I dusted off my old Twatter account late last year, but my tweets are de-boosted to the point that out of 700 followers, only two see them on a regular basis.

Whatever. I’ve got plenty to be thankful for.

Pleasant surprises:

I discounted all my novel-length books for the most recent Big Based Book Sale, and scheduled a coincident promotion of Book One: Escaping Fate on Book Barbarian. The Based Book Sale began, and all my titles started selling. But for some reason, Book Two: Rebooting Fate outsold everything else. It had been a #1 Hot New Release back in December, but now shot up into the Bestseller chart again.

What’s more, Book Three: Defying Fate, which made the Bestseller chart back in February, was back on the chart, a few paces behind Book Two. I shared a partial spoiler about Provoking Fate at the top of this post. What I didn’t share was that it hadn’t even been released yet. It wasn’t scheduled to be published until after the Based Book Sale was over, so it climbed up there behind Book Two and Three from pre-orders…and at full price.

Bingo! Get it?

Rebooting and Defying remained in Bestseller territory for about a week.

Most authors who manage to crack the Bestseller list see their books remain toward the top for a while afterwards, propped up by their momentum. The visibility that comes with that attracts more readers. Hence more reviews. And reviews lead to better visibility. It’s a sort of feedback loop which wins the author thousands of reviews and gazillions of sales. My books, on the other hand…Amazon normally hides them immediately after the spike, and sales drop off a cliff. Reviews don’t roll in, and I’m left with little but a memory of the book’s 15 minutes of fame. Word of mouth really ain’t a thing anymore, so when Amazon hides it, it is swallowed by obscurity.

That’s why what happened next with Book Four was remarkable: after it went live, I went to the product page to proof-check the sample and saw that it was on the Bestseller list again–still at full price, with no promotion! If only I had checked for that earlier!

OK, I know: rah-rah me.

Your next chance to pick ’em up cheap:

Well, I have finally scheduled a promotion for Provoking Fate, for Friday 4/19/24. Price will drop to $2.99 (not just on Amazon, but everywhere) through the weekend. I’m interested to see how well it does with a little boost.

Also, I have advance notice of when the next BBBS and I’m gonna try to schedule the publication of Book Five: Resisting Fate to coincide with that. So at that time, both books will be discounted to 99 cents and we’ll see what happens.

About the books themselves:

The biggest challenge with Paradox was making it episodic. Taking one story arc, chopping it into six pieces, then tweaking each piece into its own separate arc with beginning, middle and end. I’ve got enough distance from where I sit now, that it appears the individual arcs are getting stronger as the series rolls along. Provoking Fate may just have the strongest opening act yet. Maybe that is evident in the sample Amazon provides, and accounts for it exceeding expectations.

In my opinion, the opening act in Resisting Fate is even stronger. I have no idea if readers will agree with me.

It would be great to get feedback on stuff like that. If not in a review, then even here in the blog comments.

Non-Fiction/Documentary, Politics/Current Events

Monday Motivation for Creators

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Can you believe there are  influencers out there claiming there’s no alternative to the woke agitprop vomited out on us by Homowood, the Big Diseased Two, and the New York Publishing Cartel? It goes something like this: “Blah blah blah right-wingers complain about woke movies, woke comics, woke novels, instead of producing any work of their own.”

Obviously this comes from ignorance, dishonesty, or some combination of the two–since there are alternatives out there already in comics and in prose books here and here.

And for those of you on the front lines, Gio has a message for you:

Keep creating. Convert the disgust at the Marxist agitprop all around you into energy to pour into your own contribution to the culture!

Marketing

The Spring Big Based Book Sale

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What exactly does “based” mean? From the sale Substack:

based [ beyst ] / beɪst / adjective
1. Well-grounded, resting upon a firm foundation.
2. Principled, devoted to fixed standards, especially in defiance of conventional wisdom.
3. Rejecting politically correct attitudes and celebrating nonconformity with woke opinion.
4. Committed to upholding and advancing the good, the beautiful, and the true.
antonyms: debased, cringe

I guess you could say it’s the opposite of “woke.”  Anyway, author Hans G. Schantz has been putting these sales together for a while, and each time there are more books to shop for.

How many times have wished you had access to a book shopping venue where you would be safe from woke sucker-punches from the author? Well, here is just such a shopping venue. I’ve found some good reads at previous Based Book Sales.

There’s a wide variety of genres to choose from, though it does lean heavily to the science fiction and fantasy side. And best of all, the E-Books are either free or for 99 cents.

There are about 10 Virtual Pulp novels which are part of the sale, including six of mine.

Check out the sale and find yourself some good books!