Alas, I've been neglecting the old blog of late. It was not intentional. For a few years it was my intention to post here as often as I could as a way to spur me to work on my fiction writing every day. It worked in that way for a few years when I needed it as a crutch for that kind of thing. Then, after I left the Postal Service I got out of the habit of posting on the blog very much and went to other online access points to keep in touch with other people. For the past couple of years, especially, I tended to steer clear of my blogging activities. When I was working the low-level management job I was often too busy or too stressed to come to the old desktop and create an announcement or essay to post here. Over the past couple of decades I had seen blogs that I once frequented vanish completely as the creators of them went mainly to Facebook to stay in touch with other creators or their fans. Facebook seems to have taken quite a toll on blogging. At any rate, here I am. Since November of 2019 I have been busy getting my back-list of novels into print. That has been foremost in my creative efforts. Plus I decided to self-publish my latest novel which has been somewhat of a chore. I have never been---to put it mildly---a fan of self-publishing. In fact, I did everything to steer clear of it since Amazon made it oh-so easy for anyone and everyone to go that route. But...I find myself walking that road. Getting my next back-list novel out has been foremost in my efforts. That one is WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of a Super-Hero. I renegotiated the audiobook contract with Beacon Audiobooks, so that has been taken care of. But I haven't landed cover art that satisfies me for getting the novel back into print. Add to this the fact that a traditional publisher has expressed some interest in the project and I find myself in something of a holding pattern. If the situation is right, I may send that book to a new publisher and not do it myself. Handling everything---cover art, editing, layouts, formatting, publishing, advertising, promotions---is frankly a pain in the ass. I'd rather just be a writer. I have never been a salesman and frankly that job does not interest me the way it does some people.
In between working on the books, I have been taking advantage of being
retired to go hiking and to take trips with Carole to go camping and
sightseeing here and there.
So. Life in retirement is proving to
be a lot of fun, but also almost as busy as my life as a working stiff
punching clocks five days a week.
I'm sitting in my office now
trying to decide which of my back-list novels to release next. Should I
go forward with WORKING CLASS HERO? Get THE CRAG back to the light of
day? Will WITHERING make the cut first? Or maybe THE NEW ECOLOGY OF
DEATH? Or something else?
It's a conundrum. In the meantime, here are pretty pictures of places I've been and things I've seen in the past few weeks.
Oh, yeah! Before I forget! Buy my new audiobook of FOUR FROM MANGROVE! Narrated by the extremely talented Bruce Berlow! High fantasy as good as it gets!
FOUR FROM MANGROVE.
Amicalola Falls.
The shoe tree outside of Wasali-Yi Inn where Appalachian Trail backpackers toss their worn-out boots.
Yours truly with a huge poplar tree at Amicalola Falls.
Lower portion of Helton Creek Falls.
View from the top of Blood Mountain.
The Blood Mountain Shelter.
Upper Helton Creek Falls.
Carole at our campsite at Vogel State Park.
We two at Helton Creek Falls.
I had the summit all to myself at Blood Mountain! Unheard of!
Lottery contraption. They used these when they stole the Cherokee Nation lands from the indigenous people and gave it all away to white folk.
The real deal. Not a fake.
Gold coins minted at the old Dahlonega Mint (closed at the start of the War Between the States).
When I'm not hiking and kayaking and camping and backpacking and generally enjoying the outdoors, you can find me working on my short stories and novels. Here, then, are my current published works of fiction. First up, WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of Billy B., A Hyper Human. First chapter in what is slated to be a trilogy all nicely bound and wrapped up by the end of the third novel. Hopefully, I'd like to even continue writing WORKING CLASS HERO novels for years. I could, quite actually, keep the series going for a long time. What are you waiting for? Read it now! Pure fun for cool people! Available in paperback, ebook, and audio! Woo-HOO!
Next up is FOUR FROM MANGROVE. When Hippocampus Press published my short story collection, A CONFEDERACY OF HORRORS, they excised the four "Mangrove" stories for being too fantasy oriented. These stories are set in the mythical world of the city-state called Mangrove. The stories range over a period of hundreds of years, during which Mangrove might be a might continent-spanning empire, or a busy trading port controlled by outside forces. But it's always Mangrove and its citizens are always busy about the task of commerce and mischief.
Influenced by my love of the works of Karl Edward Wagner and Robert Ervin Howard, here are four fantasy tales of swords and sorcery, of humanity. FOUR FROM MANGROVE.
Next up is LOVECRAFT'S COMIC. This horror novella concerns itself with some extreme Lovecraftian creepiness. Two old comic artist friends, one flush with success in the comics industry, the other left behind to live in poverty and failure, are taken on a ride straight to living Hell by the accidental discovery of something evil. One decides to translate the evil to comics format, and the other is caught between friendship and pure horror. Available in print and ebook. (Warning: this ain't a pleasant fireside ghost yarn.)
And, last, some folk were clamoring for the next chapter of WORKING CLASS HERO (and it's not quite ready), so I offered up this short story of superhumans Billy B. and SHYLOCK HOLMES as they do battle with a particularly creepy outlaw.
Here, then, is TURN OF EVENTS. Available only in ebook format. (Alas.)
After HISSMELINA hits the Internet via trade paperback and ebook versions, my next project is the fantasy collection, FOUR FROM MANGROVE.
For years I have been publishing short stories all based in, or around, an iron-age city-state called Mangrove. So I took what I consider to be the finest four short stories and collected them for publication in a single volume.
The four stories that I selected were: "A Child of the War God", which is set the earliest in the one thousand-year history of Mangrove; "Deadly", another one in an earlier version of the nation; "One Curse, One Blessing", which was the first Mangrove story that I ever sold and which was always my intent to expand into a novel at some future date; and "The Krang", the most recently written of the quartet and which takes place in what I consider to be the height of that state's position as an empire.
Early on in my days as a writer I wanted to compose mainly fantasy fiction. This was, of course, part of an urge to try to achieve something like the emotions I felt upon reading the works of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, and Karl Edward Wagner. But in the days when I wanted to work in that format I always had a literary agent. And each time I would mention the subject to my agent (whomever that might be at the time) I was dissuaded from pursuing the matter because "fantasy is a hard sell". And they'd steer me back toward horror. (Yeah, I know...LOL!)
And so, of course, this has led me to the conclusion that the ebook format could very well be the liberating influence that so many writers have concluded. The verdict is still out on that matter, in my opinion. I won't have my first ebook reader until Santy Claus arrives at my house on Saturnalia. However, it has released me to finally place my fantasy fiction (at least some of it) out there in a format other than a single short story sold here or there over the course of many years.
Along with Howard and the likes of Karl Wagner, Frazetta inspired my love of fantasy fiction.
