Got a couple treats coming up for you from guest poster IINFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO Probably next week, you’ll see the review right here–followed by an interview with the author.
Gio calls this a legendary tale in the tradition of Robert E. Howard.
Sounds like this book is a standout, five star read, so start the New Year off right and come back to check it out!
According to Vox Day, the cultural Marxist Thought Cops are now taking over BIC (Bounding Into Comics) too. News to me, though I should have expected it.
Anyway, a new online entertainment magazine has already stepped in to receive the baton.
First off, BIC was never a right-wing, right-leaning or culturally consoivative site to begin with. As mainstream comics became increasingly feminized and sodomized, BIC always struck me as firmly in the “not that there’s anything wrong with that” camp. So I can’t even say that once they, too, are completely pozzed, it would be 180 degrees off from their founding principles (like I even know what those were). Will they begin gushing over comics that suck? To the extent they even cover comics: yeah, probably. More on that soon.
I went over to Fandom Pulse and looked around. What I found was in sync with online comics media and forums I’m familiar with. I follow the BIC group on MeWe, a more Big Tent comics fan group on Gab (that I haven’t managed to get kicked off of, yet), read the Arkhaven blog regularly, and have BIC and Bleeding Fool bookmarked in a browser. This has been part of my status quo for a couple few years now. In case it is not for you, breaking story:
Visit any of these sites and you will find all kinds of posts about manga, movies and toys, but not much at all about comics. After pondering this over a glass of wine at the country club (not really, but it makes me sound more sophisticated, don’t it?), I concocted a theory. The theory has two major components/exhibits.
Exhibit A: Mainstream comics/the Big Two are in a flaming death spiral, due to abysmal writing and utter depravity. Bloggers could fisk and critique DC/Marvel’s latest abominations on a regular basis, but that’s like asking them to spend their life sniffing turds and reporting on what they smell.
Why not write articles about the indie comics and graphic novels being produced? There’s decent work out there.
Exhibit B: From what I can tell, current SEO doctrine dictates that websites must generate scads and scads of content. (Please note my courageous stand here at VP that defies SEO doctrine.) From my brief perusal of Fandom Pulse, I can tell Supply Side Content Creation is their guiding philosophy, too. Content, content, content! More content! There’s just not enough sequential art being produced they can write articles about to meet this mad demand for 500-word articles.
Where is that demand coming from–the fans or the editors? That’s a question worth asking IMO. As somebody who loved comics as a kid and is stumbling toward creating some original graphic novels of his own, and is still interested in the medium and whatever good sequential art can still be found, I would rather read one or two relevant articles a day about comics/graphic novels than 50 articles a day about Hollywood inside baseball, action figures, videogames, film adaptations, and Bob Iger’s most recent brainfart.
But, as often is the case, my reasoning is much, much different than the prevailing wisdom.
If you like to read, but you’re not on BookBub yet, you really ought to check it out. Their website is just part of it, but there you can search for book titles, authors, and by genre. Even better, you can find book recommendations from authors you already like. If you like what I write, for instance, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll like reading some of the books I’ve enjoyed.
If you subscribe to their newsletter, BookBub will alert you when books are going on sale–sometimes for free.
Goodreads was meant to be a place for booklovers to discover good books, and interact with other avid readers. You may find it more useful than I have, but I find my time better spent at Bookbub. And I plan to spend more time there in the future, follow more authors, get some recommendations on books, and do some recommending of my own. I’ve been on a sort of Sabbatical for the last few years, doing life, tackling various projects, and writing Paradox. For the next several weeks (months?) I’ll be getting books ready for publication, but then I hope to be more active on BookBub.
Why not follow me there? I’ve got a handful of new titles coming out in the near future, and BB can alert you when they’re available. And about price promotions.
I do have an email list, but I don’t have a newsletter and I hate hate hate acting like a spammer and flooding your email inbox with messages. I’ve had so many people (especially authors) do that to me that I dread checking my email sometimes. Sometimes I’ll set aside time to just unsubscribe from all the people burying me under thirsty promotion emails–but it’s kinda’ like cutting heads off the Hydra.
I will send out emails when I have a new book (and I’ll be better about letting folks know when books go on sale), but with the BookBub newsletter, you’ll also learn about other new books you might wanna check out. I’ve got a button now on the right sidebar to follow me, or click right here.
A new video book review series is getting started and I’m flattered that my debut novel is the subject of one of the reviews. Check it out:
Way back when I was first getting started in the author business, Winston Crutchfield of Critical Press Media gave me some early exposure by interviewing me on his Critical Mass podcast. I’m not a thrilling speaker, but had fun doing his show and became a fan of his podcast afterwards. I’m still grateful that he bothered to buy and read a book by an author who was unknown at the time, review it, then give me the privilege of talking about it with his fans.
Even cooler that now he’s making video book reviews, he remembered my Retreads Series and gave it an episode.
Since that podcast interview from years ago, Critical Press Media has become a publisher. You should check into the Starman Saga and Intergalactic League. Like me, Winston has a soft spot for superhero comics (back when they were good) and I am intrigued by the latter for that reason. Starman sounds like the kind of Sc-Fi I am always looking to read.
Meanwhile, I am thrilled that Winston is doing these book reviews on video. Face it: there are a lot of awful books out there and if you’re like me, you’re gunshy because of that, leery of wasting your time, and unsure of what authors to take a chance on. Well, I trust his judgment. Now I can listen to these reviews while driving, eating, working on the car or around the house.
Here are some of the other video book reviews Critical Press Media has posted so far:
Or does it? Who knows–my crystal ball is a lemon.
My Great American Novel (which I have been calling Paradox lately) has 123 chapters and about 1585 pages. The page count may go down a bit as I edit, but that’s still Tolstoy length.
A year or more ago, when the size of the story was obvious, I pondered how I would ever market such a book, who would take a chance on reading it, and what a fair price would be to ask for it. I soberly faced the reality that there really isn’t a market for it. Nobody’s gonna buy a doorstop-sized novel in a male-friendly genre unless the author name is Tom Clancy or W.E.B. Griffin. But even those guys don’t write books this huge.
On the one hand are my motives. I write fiction I would like to read–not what “the market” dictates. In this case, I wrote it because I just had to. It’s been in my mind just too long, bursting to get out. Call it cathartic, theraputic, whatever…but this has been a fulfilling experience. Even fun–that’s one reason I took my time and even still, with my country turning into a dystopian hellhole all around me, I’m in no hurry to publish.
On the other hand, even a well-written, great read (yes, I’m implying that this is) will never get much in the way of sales without visibility. Even if the audience exists, they can’t buy and read the book when they don’t know the book exists, too. And in a market dominated by Amazon…well, with a simple tweak of an algorithm, its easy to ensure that the audience never discovers that well-written great read. I say this as somebody who has written three novels that hit #1 bestseller status in multiple categories. (Pretty sure I enthused about that here on the blog in years past, with screenshots–if you feel up to verifying.)
On another hand (when did I grow a third hand? Did somebody vaccinate me while I wasn’t looking?) the market is a shitshow.
I would puke my guts out, hold my nose, and crank out hackneyed lesbian vampire romances with contrived Marxist messaging if I wanted to “write to the market,” garnering sales and reviews galore.
Ah, but what about the “conservative” fiction market? It’s much like the RINO GOP Establishment–meaning, at its core, not much different from the mainstream drivel. It’s got the same Kickass Womyn Warrior tropes; same LGBT-pandering; same “the radical right is the greatest threat” narratives. But with lower corporate taxes and “Back the Blue” flags. And, much like everything else, it’s all uninspiring, mediocre pap.
Oh yeah: and you have to sell your soul on top of all that, just for the algorithm architects to make your mediocre pap discoverable. The longer I slog through life’s various shitshows, the more convinced I become that nearly every “inspiring success story” in my lifetime has been fake and gay. Especially “exciting new authors” who are unknown one minute, then the next minute their mediocre, formulaic debut novel (Harrumphs of the NPC: Book One in the Narrative Reinforcement Series) has 3,000 glowing, yet non-specific Amazon reviews.
Not gonna sell my soul–that market is flooded with cheap merchandise, too. Buyer’s market. Competition everywhere.
So, why sweat it at all? I wrote this tome for the joy of it. In my mind I know the Marxist Hive Mind that controls every single institution will hate it and condemn it to obscurity. Maybe even virtually incinerate it. But there’s the principle of the matter, sez I. Therefore, I must do what I can to monetize this years-long investment of my life.
Break it up and make it a series, of course. Right? The entire publishing shitshow market is geared toward series fiction. And our functionally illiterate culture has cultivated attention spans that can’t handle much beyond a TikTok video or Facebook post. A 1500+ page BOOK????????? One of those crazy outdated relics with pages, and words? I might as well have written a harpsichord concerto in the Baroque style.
Making Paradox a series is a no-brainer, on the surface.
Trouble with that is, this is a time-traveling sports adventure saga that follows the protagonist from his pre-adolescent years into his late ’20s. So, by fragmenting it, the first one or two books in the series would technically be “young adult” or “coming of age” time-traveling sports adventure (and [gasp! the horror!] without any lesbians, vampires, or Kickass Womyn Warriors). The other series installments would not be. So the unicorns male coming-of-age readers might feel cheated because of where the first book or two leave off. This was not written to be episodic. There is one character arc–not three or four. And the readers…both of them…besides myself, who would buy and read grown-up time-travel sports adventure sagas might never even begin the series because young adult just does not float their boat.
I shoved those concerns aside and kept writing the story I wanted to tell.
But now here I am: editing the rough draft and still clueless about how to market Paradox and how much to charge for it.
There seems to be no good solution to this conundrum. (Is it a conundrum or dilemma? The horns poke me, either way.)
So, I’m gonna bust it up and release it as a series. I think that’s the least self-defeating of the two options. My next move, then, is determining where to sever the plot, and adding scenes/sequels to make the different sections more episodic.
Know what else? Probably gonna move forward with no beta readers.
My bright idea of posting chapters here has resulted in exactly zero comments of any kind on the blog. Destructive criticism is the most common flavor and easiest to get (unsolicited, at that). But I didn’t even get that. The most I’ve received are some likes on Gab and MeWe. It’s nice to assume those like buttons were clicked after reading my posted chapters, but who knows. The only comment I received there was by somebody who read at least part of “Spin the Bottle,” then informed me that my depiction was not the way the game was played in their day. And, uh…they somehow decided that there’s some sort of “same sex” action in the chapter. Your guess is as good as mine. (Assuming you exist and are reading this blog post. Big assumption, at this point.)
I may post a couple more chapters, but am already close to where the first book will probably end, so this experiment will likely conclude, soon. Got some work to do, so I will get to it.
There are numerous reasons I haven’t blogged for a couple years. This post is about one of them.
On-and-off over the course of a few years, with multiple interruptions , I’ve been writing something. I alternate between calling it “my Great American Novel” and “my doorstop.” My misadventures in graphic novels comprised the latest, longest interruptions. More on that in the future, maybe.
But now the rough draft is complete. I can’t remember the page count for War & Peace; but this book probably will rival one of Tolstoy’s works in length.
The scope of the novel includes such topics as manhood, leadership, relationships, football, America, history…with action and adventure spread throughout, of course.
When the saga begins, Pete is a pre-adolescent boy growing up as many men from Generation X did: in a broken home with a party girl mother and absentee father, left to figure stuff out on his own. He’s smart and talented; but also hopelessly ignorant. His fate is to make stupid mistake after stupid mistake, and pay dearly for them the rest of his life.
But Fate gets outflanked when his time-traveling uncle arrives on the scene to teach him about life, love, and full-contact sports. And to rescue him from a cross-continuum hit team of invisible assassins.
To use movie terms, fiction I’ve written up to now could be described as rated PG13, with R-rated action. This is more of a solid R, due to language and “strong sexual content.” So if this were a movie, there would be some nudity and some “love scenes” where there is no question what activity the characters are engaged in–though graphic details are left to the imagination.
As with most of my books, I can guarantee you somebody will be offended–whether it be because it’s from the opposite political perspective most readers are used to, or because of what the uncle teaches Pete about game, frame, and hypergamy. But I don’t plan on changing that.
Unlike the first few books I brought to this stage, I’m not in a hurry to publish (ironic, considering how long it’s taken so far). Former fighter pilot (oh yeah, there’s air-to-air combat, too. Did I fail to mention that?) and stand-up guy John Earle is helping me proof it. I also tend to do a lot of revising/self-editing during and after the rough draft. Typically, I then have some beta readers look at it before I polish and publish. With this book, I think I’ll find my beta readers differently.
Next time, I intend to start posting chapters right here on the blog. That means you can read my doorstop masterpiece for free. You can also share your thoughts in the comments. No commitment; no expectations. But if you have the time and find the story interesting, you can tell me what you think along the way. Or not. IOW, you can be a beta reader.
I don’t know how well this will work. I’ve shared excerpts from other books after-the-fact; but never offered a sneak preview like this. I know others have, so this is not unprecedented.
See ya next time.
Plenty of people are fed up with how the self-righteous leftards at Marvel and DC have ruined pretty much every character they inherited from creators and writers who actually had talent and imagination. The good news is that they now have options–and so do you. If you like the medium but the GloboHomo Narrative isn’t your cup of tea, you can read some decent graphic literature…for free.
New content is added multiple times a week at Arktoons, which now has a substantial amount of content. Arktoons is the online comic reading site built by Arkhaven Comics. We have reviewed Arkhaven titles Alt-Hero, Avalon, and Alt-Hero: Q here before. Those titles have been re-launced through Arktoons, plus a whole lot more.
First of all, there are three “Classics” series, introduced by Chuck Dixon, reproducing some of the comedy, adventure, and war comics from the Silver Age. Chuck Dixon has some of his own, original work (in addition to Avalon and Q) available. Go Monster Go is a horror/Supernatural series about a ghost car that appeals to me because it’s about the teenage rebel hot rod milleu in the era before hot rodding diminished into a subculture (and then disappeared altogether). He’s also got Shade, a superhero series set in Europe.
There are some titles based on the literary work of Vox Day. Midnight’s War is set in a city controlled by vampires, where a small resistance cell is interfering with black market blood plasma trafficking, and saving some would-be victims in the process. A Throne of Bones is a fantasy set in a Tolkienesque (?) world in which Roman legions (?) are at war, not with Huns or Goths, but with armies of goblins. I find the military perspective interesting, as I did with some of Howard’s Conan adventures. Quantum Mortis, so far, looks like military sci-fi set outside our solar system. I’m interested to see where it’s going. Something I saw or read made me think it would be a sci-fi police drama, like American Flagg! (but without Howard Chaykin’s avante gard leftist crap).
There are a few series from Jon del Aroz, including Clockwork Dancer, a steampunk series about an inventor who gets in trouble for building robots; Flying Sparks features an aspiring superheroine who doesn’t know her boyfriend is a crook; and Deus Vult is about a knight on a quest through some sort of underworld populated by cat and frog people, on his way to match wits with the devil himself.
Swan Knight Saga is a fantasy based on John C. Wright’s YA novel, about a young man who can talk to animals, who finds out the world is secretly oppressed by elves. It’s better than it sounds.
Arktoons has several other series; but the one I have the highest expectations for is Hammer of Freedom, about a homeless veteran fighting the power in a GloboHomo police state (Sao Paulo, 2045).
Superheroes only make up a fraction of the lineup at Arktoons. There’s a pretty good chance there will be something for most comic fans (unless the comic fan prefers reading about transgender Norse gods or some such). I’ve found that, rather than read each snippet as they come out, I prefer waiting until those (often quite short) snippets accumulate to the point that I can absorb a significant portion of the plot line at one sitting.
The artwork varies. Some is very slick, while some looks rushed and amateurish. The writing that I’ve seen runs from solid to perhaps brilliant. Time will tell.
Again, it’s free, though you may want to subscribe just to support the creative teams making these comics available.
“Fatgirl Goes to the Fugly Pride Parade” by C. S. Johnson is part of Appalling Stories 4 (an anthology to which I contributed). It’s the sole superhero story in the book. And Fatgirl is one unique superheroine.
Fatgirl has a superhuman menace to face down and stop in the tale, but is that her primary antagonist? Maybe, or maybe not. You see, Fatgirl’s alterego, Kallie Grande-White, is a high school student and so superhuman menaces are far from the only villains and challenges that she has on her mind. Indeed, they’re probably not even her primary ones. Like many a high school student, Kallie’s focus centers on her personal world and the drama that’s going on in it.
So how does a Fugly Pride Parade factor into all this. Well, you’ll have to read the story to find out. Suffice it to say that when the fat hits the fan and Fatgirl springs into action, the reader gets to experience a big fight with a big foe.
Pick up Appalling Stories 4 today and enjoy “Fatgirl Goes to the Fugly Pride Parade” and the rest of the tales.
Top Image: Excerpt of “Fatgirl: Origins: Part 1” by C. S. Johnson.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD
“Hockey Man” (by Virtual Pulp’s Henry Brown) is about a gentleman who attends an Antifa Peaceful Protest. But he doesn’t attend to help the communists. Instead, his plans are much different.
“Hockey Man” appears in Appalling Stories 4, which was published in December of 2019. So it preceded the current events we currently are witnessing. Also, as full disclosure if you don’t already know, I too contributed to AS4.
As the story draws the reader in, one of the things that stands out about the protagonist is that he clearly is not like so many people we see in the real world. Why’s that? Because he isn’t joining Antifa or meekly backing down from the terrorist group. He’s someone who has chosen a starkly different option. And from there the story explodes.
“Hockey Man” is a tale about a hero who’s driven into drastically acting because he no longer can put up with what is going on around him. It’s a story about an American who no longer can sit idly by when no one else will stand up to injustice.
Fans of men’s adventure magazines will enjoy it. And frankly, so should a lot of other people. Like action? “Hockey Man” has it. Like a tactically descriptive war tale? “Hockey Man” is it. Like a tale that unabashedly has good guys and bad guys? “Hockey Man” has that too.
Stories where fact meets fiction (or fiction meets fact) are often interesting. And “Hockey Man” definitely is fast-paced, thrilling fiction that preceded real-world events. Pick up Appalling Stories 4 today. Read it and the other great tales in the anthology.
I’m not sure how intentional Paul Hair was about paying tribute to Indiana Jones with this story, but I couldn’t help making comparisons while reading it (specifically to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Raiders of the Lost Ark). However, it’s more than just a pastiche or fan fiction.
The author uses pulp adventure to thematically concentrate on the old axiom: “Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Which, I guess, would have made it a candidate for a spot in some of the classic adventure magazines in the heyday of pulp fiction. Except that Hair weaves in some more modern elements–like a couple typical Current Year college students assisting on the quest.
Plot-wise, The Chosen One is almost formulaic…until you get to a big twist that I honestly wasn’t expecting. Having communicated with Paul a little bit (he does blog here, occasionally) I wouldn’t figure him as an author who likes moral ambiguity. But I just don’t know for sure which character’s perspective he endorses.
There is some ideology that pops up in the story, but it’s on the subtle side, compared to his flash fiction. When I get political in my prose, I tend to use a sledgehammer. So do some of the other authors who contributed to this anthology. That’s not how Paul tackles it, unless I’m just dense. You might find yourself pondering and questioning long after you finish reading the story…which could be the author’s core purpose in writing it.
Some of the tales in Appalling Stories 4 are super-quick reads. But this one’s got some meat on it. I thought it was a fun read.
