Well, I won't be able to post on my blog for a couple of weeks. Carole and I will be very busy taking a much-needed vacation in Florida. No, we won't visit amusement parks. We'll avoid crowded beaches. You won't find us shopping or driving in a busy city. What we'll do is what we always do when we're in Florida: seeking out forested places with lots of natural beauty and plenty of wildlife. I hope to photograph and take videos of many creatures. Birding in Florida is about as good as it gets. Yes, we'll likely see more than our fair share of alligators, snakes, and turtles--the place is paradise for reptiles. So, Carole and I will be out in the sticks. Our kayaks will get a lot of use. My cameras will record thousands of images. I tend to take two to three thousand photos of a trip of this length. Since Carole is one of the world's best campground cooks, we'll eat well. I rarely lose weight on these vacations. Even if I go off hiking by myself, Carole will stay at camp and prepare some fantastic meal that will be waiting when I get home. We may break free from the forests one day and ride into Panama City to eat at Angelo's Steak Pit. But that will be the only time we do anything of that nature. Look for many photos and some video when we return.
We're getting down close to liftoff. We've spent weeks preparing for our first big camping trip of the year. As anyone who reads my blog knows, Carole and I love hitting the big first and second magnitude springs in Florida. If you've never done it (and few outside of the state of Florida seem to be aware of them), you're really missing out. While all of the rubes are sweating it out in amusement parks and fighting traffic to get sand in the cracks of their asses on some crowded beach, Carole and I will be snorkeling in crystal clear water, or kayaking along a quiet spring run surrounded by wildlife, or maybe exploring a tiny village off the beaten path. We will probably go into Panama City one night to eat at Angelo's Steak Pit which serves--and I am prepared to fist fight over this--the best rib-eye steaks in the USA. Other than that, we'll be in the wilderness or merely out in the boonies. We won't, I assure you, be visiting Disney World or wandering around trying to find a spot to put up a beach umbrella on a crappy beach at some over-hyped tourist trap. Two weeks. Two state parks, and one National Seashore. Huzzah!
Just a reminder that the audio version of WORKING CLASS HERO is out from Beacon Audio. Available from Amazon. com, Audible.com, Beacon Audio, and other sources.
"WORKING CLASS HERO is James Robert Smith's best novel since the Hollywood-optioned THE FLOCK.
James expertly weaves blue collar superhero sensibilities into our modern world. The characterization is outstanding, and the world building is first rate as always.
The concept of regulated super heroes working for the government, and non-regulated super heroes as "outlaws" is a lot of fun. This juxtaposition allows for some fine entertainment and thrilling scenarios.
I was highly entertained by this novel, and the sensitive depiction of Bill B. Billy is an alpha 2.0, with a powerful level of self-awareness, a rare thing in a super hero tale. Mostly we get the brawn or snark in super hero books or films. We get much more in Working Class Hero.
James twists and turns the reader through heroes, villains, and various agencies, resulting in a gripping read and a very satisfying conclusion.
Highly recommended." -- Pine Marten "I went in to Working Class Hero by James Robert Smith with an open mind, not sure what to expect from a writer who I mostly associated with horror novels. I was very surprised to have read a thoughtful, exciting real-world look at super-heroes (hypers) and how their newly acquitted powers changes and disrupts their ordinary lives. Billy B is our hero, a working class laborer, not unlike the writer, who finds himself gifted with new abilities and the responsibilities that they bring. The book was full of exciting, colorful characters who have their own agendas and own problems. Well written, an exciting trip inside the mind of a man who has now become a super man." -- Mark Masztal "Working Class Hero sucked me in right from the beginning, and I couldn't put it down. The author leads us down a rabbit hole into a present day reality, populated by super-powered humans that is both a nostalgic nod to Golden Age comics, and also a tip of the hat to the darker realism of Alan Moore/Frank Miller comics. WCH also offers a unique world all it's own, in which some humans have accidentally developed an assortment of super abilities over the course of the last 20 years, and no one quite understands why or how. In response to this phenomenon, the government created a task force to regulate super powered humans, and people generally fall into two categories: those who register their powers and do service for the government, and those who illegally avoid the required service and become outlaws. The book implies there are others who try to lead normal lives and stay under the radar, and a lot of complex social controls have developed to monitor and try to locate and punish any 'illegal hypers'.
This book follows the superhero Billy B, who was once a blue collar loading dock worker before developing super strength, speed, and toughness (as well as an envy for Hypers who can fly, since he is only capable of high jumping)! He's a refined redneck, self-educated through his love for books, who possesses innate intelligence and sensitivity for people and their struggles. He's also a rough-around-the-edges tough guy.
It would be a disservice to give away a single spoiler for this book, but what struck me most is how I was taken by the hand and drawn immediately into the world of this character, as his own world began spinning out of control. The story world blended so realistically into present society that I was taken seamlessly from my mundane existence and transformed easily into the hero of an alternate reality chock full of depth, excitement, and complexity. The reader slips into Billy B's character like our own private superhero costume, living inside his head and feeling his thoughts, emotions and experiences as he's drawn deeper into the world gone mad around him. It's hard to know which entity is more sinister--the government agency he works for or the villains who've begun working together in an effort to sabotage certain elements of society. The dynamics between the various heroes and villains and agencies come to life and swirl together into a character driven narrative which makes it hard to put the book down. Mounting tension and rich characters carry us onward as the mysteries unfold and the excitement continues, and the author never fails to deliver on the promises of the book. An exciting, thought provoking read which paves the way for a really fun story world which I hope to see many more entries in." -- Matt Damon.
My wife has a lot of Germans in her ancestry. One of her cousins was Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher, Hoyt Wilhelm. I'd always heard the story of how he pitched a no hitter against the mighty Yankees team of 1958 (Mickey Mantle, Bill Skowron, Yogi Berra, Norm Siebern, Hank Bauer, Elston Howard, etc.). But I hadn't read the details, so I did some online research to read how the knuckleballer tossed that no hitter.
I never did get to meet him. Carole's dad was going to take me to meet Hoyt when he was still a minor league pitching coach--I think in Asheville--but something came up and I didn't get to go.
This week I read articles about plummeting sales at Marvel Comics Group (part of Disney). Some people (including some Marvel editors) were blaming the recent attempt to "diversify" the characters by reinterpreting old standbys and new creations as racially, ethnically, gender, and sexually inclusive. Apparently this editorial move coincided with vanishing sales. But the editors and comic reporters got it wrong. They are right in that the comic book--one of the true American art forms--is dying out. But they missed the reason for it. Comics are dying out because the industry abandoned the kind of diversity that matters--comics that cater to all kinds of tastes.
The HUGE problem with "mainstream" comics is that they aren't mainstream. They are dominated by silly superhero comics. Now, don't get me wrong. To paraphrase Paul McCartney, I love silly superhero comics. I love them so much that I even wrote a superhero novel. I would like to write more of them. Superhero comics have their place. They should probably be a part of the comics publishing business. But they shouldn't be 99% of it! Imagine, for instance, you went into a library or bookstore and 99 out of 100 of the books in it were about superheroes.
Comics by their nature tend to tilt toward genre fiction, but there was a time when there was every kind of comic book you could imagine selling in huge numbers. Comic books about policemen, criminals, sports figures, animals, history, military, funny animals, humor, teenagers, romance, horror, science-fiction, fantasy, classic fiction, westerns, movie adaptation, trains, cars, etc. etc. etc.
Superheroes came along and began to overwhelm the industry when first DC, and then Jack Kirby (at Marvel, the company that Kirby built) brought them back. They kicked Donald Duck and Richie Rich and Classics Illustrated and everything else to the gutter and have run roughshod over the comic book publishing business ever since.
Enough.
Either the industry finds a way to start selling all kinds of comics to the public, or they fade away and go extinct. A variety of types of comics that appeals to a huge and varied audience is what will save the industry. Not some whining liberal's version of "diversity".
Jack Kirby, the man who created Marvel Comics (and who could create and write and illustrate any kind of comic) was ironically responsible principally for the dominance of the superhero genre that has overwhelmed comic book publishing since 1961.
And here is but a taste of the kinds of comic books that the superhero genre has overwhelmed and crushed. Gone, now, from the newsstands. Absent from the book shops. Vanished even from the comic book specialty stores. Unless the industry can somehow bring back this kind of variety, the business and art form will soon become extinct. (Scroll down.)
These barely scratch the surface of variety that people used to see when approaching a newsstand where comics were on display. No wonder the market is vanishing.
Several of my friends are writers who are heavily involved in the self-publishing scene. That's cool. We discuss the option from time to time. Some of my pals do okay at it, but none of them make a living from self-publishing. (To be fair, I only know a few authors who make a living from writing.) Last week, one of them explained to me that "ebooks are forever". I asked him what, specifically, he meant. And he told me that once the ebook was on the various Internet sales systems, then it was there for good and for all time and that it could be purchased from the date of its publication until...well...forever. Later, he suggested a couple of books for me to look at. They were superhero novels that had been self-published and since I had just published WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of Billy B., then I might want to take a look. Yeah, you don't have to guess. Both books (same author) were gone. Scrubbed from the Internet. I suppose by the author, but I couldn't say for sure. So much for "forever".
I cobbled together this short video of a day I spent hiking in the Black Mountains of North Carolina. One trail that I had heard about for years for its relentlessly steep gradient was the infamous Woody Ridge Trail. That day in June of 2007 I decided to tackle it to see if it was as mean as its reputation. It was. However, coming down the trail was actually worse than going up. I had to constantly prepare myself for slipping, falling, tripping, or generally losing my balance. It is every bit as tough as I'd heard it was. Here, then, is a brief video I took that day. Skipping, of course, the part where I missed a turn on the trail coming back and ended up about 1,000 vertical feet lower and two miles to the west of where I was supposed to have emerged from the forest. That was all kinds of horrible, since I had run out of water. Alas, it is all part of the hobby of hiking.
I have posted a few times about the title of my blog. No, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the poison known as "hemlock" and famous in history as the concoction Socrates was forced to ingest as his capital punishment. The hemlock of my title refers to our native Eastern and Carolina hemlock species of evergreen tree. As I have explained before, they are in danger of extinction from an introduced Asian insect. Yet another example of the harm created by invasive species. In a nutshell, here is a brief video that shows some good folk treating these two species in a protected property and how they go about it. I have done as they do on my own--both to protect trees in my yard, and to try to save trees that I have found in some of my stomping grounds. Listen and be educated.
My publisher is running a promotional sale on WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of Billy B. right now. Sale price starts at 99 cents for the Kindle version and will go up periodically until it's back at full price. So grab a copy now! And sales need to be good so that the fans can read the continuing adventures of Billy B and the other hyper heroes of Charlotte, NC! Grab a copy now! You'll get a kick out of it!
One of my favorite hiking and camping areas of North Carolina is the area around the Wilson Creek National Wild & Scenic River. Much of it is not wilderness in the classic sense because the Wilson Creek corridor has a lot of private inholdings with houses and cabins and trailers sitting beside the river. And there is the main access road: Brown Mountain Beach Road, which is a wide, very well maintained gravel avenue to allow the large crowds that descend on Wilson Creek on summer and holiday weekends. However, there is actual wilderness beyond the main creek. Wander just a little way off and you find yourself in deep forests, very rugged terrain, and often real solitude. I ventured into the North Harper Creek Wilderness Study Area on Saturday, March 18 to bag two waterfalls I have wanted to see for a while. Neither of them are particularly spectacular falls, but they are pleasing and interesting, being long, sloping cascades rather than single-drop falls. There are currently two wilderness study areas in the vicinity. Both are roadless, the main requirement for wilderness designation. However, wilderness areas are not popular these days with legislators and the corporate bosses who pull their strings. So it's probably a safe bet to assume that neither of these will ever make it into the national Wilderness Area program. However, I did find some actual peace and quiet on this hike. I only encountered two hikers who were heading out as I was going in, and two mountain bikers as I was leaving who were illegally biking the trail, as it was posted only for foot travel. (Such folk should be shot on sight.) I was able to finally mark this pair of waterfalls off my list. The last time I went to hike there for that purpose, I was halted from reaching the trailhead by a large tree that had blocked the Forest Service Road when it fell in the night. That day I ended up hiking to see some waterfalls that I'd already seen, so it wasn't a total loss. But on this day I made it in to see Chestnut Cove Falls and North Harper Creek Falls. It was a very quiet and relaxing hike, and I did enjoy some actual solitude for a few hours.
Man, it was quiet in there!
Chestnut Cove Falls.
Potholes on Chestnut Cove Falls.
Obligatory selfie at North Harper Creek Falls. I was there for over an hour and saw no one.
I went on a hike Saturday in the Wilson Creek area. I'll post some more details and more photos of the hike in a day or two. For now I just want to put up a couple of videos I produced of parts of the trip (not the specific hike). Mainly, I took the hike to see a couple of waterfalls that I had tried to see a couple of years ago. On that trip I arrived right after a front came through, bringing very powerful winds. Those winds took down a very large tree that blocked the Forest Service road leading to the trailhead that I wanted to use. This time the road was clear and I arrived at the trail with no problems. I do want to mention something that has been bothering me for some months. And that is the absence of pretty much all wildlife on my hikes. Now, I know that I can't see a bear or a mink or a bobcat every time I go into the forest. But for over a year I have noted that I am seeing and hearing almost nothing. It has been a while since I've even seen a white-tailed deer or a turkey on a hike. And those are two animals that have been common for me to encounter in recent years. The trees have even been absent bird song. As I said...maybe it's just the luck of the draw. But I have found it disturbing.
I stopped along the road to take some photos and shoot some video of Wilson Creek from a nice vantagepoint.
After my hike I stopped to see the remains of one of the textile mills--all that remains of the town of Mortimer.
After I left the comic book industry (as a retailer, as a back-issue dealer, and as a writer), I didn't look at comics for a very long time. But I still had friends in the industry (mainly comic artists) and I would talk to them from time to time. During some of these conversations with several of these folk, a title kept coming up concerning the kinds of books that were appearing on the scene since my absence. That book was PREACHER. PREACHER was published by DC Comics. Probably their Vertigo line, but I'm not sure and I don't feel like looking it up. At any rate, it was created and written by Garth Ennis, and illustrated by Steve Dillon. It has always been my impression that both of these fellows hailed from Europe, and when I looked into it, sure enough: Ennis from Ireland, and Dillon from UK. The title was set in the USA, specifically the state of Texas. And it dealt mostly with Americans and USA situations and locale. Despite the fact that these two hailed from outside our nation, they pretty much seemed to have a grip on the seamy underbelly of life in this country. The book was well written with clever dialogue from Ennis, and illustrated cleanly but with a fine, twisted line by Dillon. But I didn't care for the book. It should have been at the top of my list of favorite reading material, but I had become so alienated from the comics medium that I just couldn't formulate any enthusiasm for the title. Yes, I picked up a couple of the multi-issue collections to get a feel for the work, but I couldn't stay with it. Part of the problem was that I was getting older and things that had once thrilled me now bored me. Also, I found the nihilism present in almost every page to be bothersome and almost sophomoric in the book's attempt to shock and outrage the reader. PREACHER was ugly, it was disgusting, it was crude, and it was damned near nauseating. I read about seven issues and grew bored with it. Then, AMC announced that they were producing it as a television series. My thought was that there was absolutely no freaking way they could do this. How could you show that much violence and that caliber of nihilism in a TV series? It couldn't be done and be allowed on a television show. I was wrong. There it was, in all of its horrific glory. Arseface. Jesse Custer. Tulip. Cassidy. And the rest of the whole, sorry, worthless lot. Blood. Broken bones. Murder. Torture. And lots and lots and lots of blasphemy. Tons of blasphemy. Blasphemy in almost every line of dialog and every frame of video. And I like it. A lot. For some reason, what did not appeal to me in four color comics suddenly made all the sense in the world on my big flat-screen TV. Why? Fuck if I know! I could not tell you why. The simple fact is that what I found boring and pedestrian in comics format was transformed into humor and attraction on the TV screen. Yeah...I know: it makes zero sense. The lines were similar from the comic to the teleplay. The images were almost spot-on when it came to recreating the characters from two dimensional renderings into human actors. But whatever it was, I found the show to be funny, and sarcastic, and entertaining. Part of it could very well be the cast and how the writers chose to translate the story. It doesn't hurt that Ruth Negga (as Tulip) is achingly pretty. And both Jesse Custer and Cassidy are portrayed with a clever combination of humor and pathos. Whatever it is...I enjoy watching the show. It works. I like it.
I've been published in hardback format, various paperback types, in comic book and graphic novel, magazines, chapbooks, anthology, and in ebook. I've even had some of my work optioned for film, even if none of those options have so far resulted in reaching the screens. Now, my latest book--WORKING CLASS HERO--is headed for audiobook. Beacon Publishing will be producing the audio version. So far, that's about all I know, other than that it will also be available through Audible.com. As near as I've been able to find, release will be "in a couple of months". April? Early May? I'll post any details as they come to me. Until then, you can pick up the novel in two of those already mentioned formats: paperback or ebook. And you can also buy a cool 5400-word WORKING CLASS HERO short story in strictly ebook format for less than a buck!
Back in the day, promotions were easier. I had a much simpler job of promoting my work when--according to modern experts--the system was more disjointed and less well connected than it is now. For instance, promoting my first novel, THE FLOCK, was a simple job for me. I sent out review copies, and I got in contact with various bookstores and libraries and magazines and got the word out. It worked well and I had a decent amount of success. It was more impersonal than things are now, but the results were good. (And, no, for those who ask, not even Tor Books did any advertising for the book. It's up to the writer to walk those miles.) These days there is the Internet. And almost all publishing today is done electronically. Fewer and fewer people buy and read books. Bookstores are vanishing. Libraries seem to be simple hangouts and little more. The traditional publishers who remain don't advertise the books they buy--they expect the authors to spend their advance money publicizing their novels. (Admittedly, this was even the case when I sold my first traditionally published novel.) Publishers have decided to let the writers do the leg work. No publisher I have ever signed with has done any real advertising. Zero. Not one, thin dime. So it's on the writer's head to get the word out and to try to push the sales figures in the right direction. But it is a tedious job. For some, it's just overwhelming. Recently I was reading a blog from a moderately well-known author and he claims to spend up to sixty hours a week promoting his fiction. That's a week and a half of labor for a man with a normal job. I hate to be blunt...but fuck that. I suppose I will continue to write, and I will be forced to promote my own work since publishers have no budgets for that in these times of shrinking book sales. In their case, it's pretty much a self-fulfilling doom prophecy.
And even though I don't spend anywhere near sixty hours a week promoting my fiction (I have to have time to live and, yes, to write) I still feel that I expend far too much time in promotions. To paraphrase Bones McCoy, "I'm a writer, damn it! Not a salesman!"
And, now, having made that point--shameless promotion time. If you enjoyed my novel WORKING CLASS HERO, you will want to buy the short story "A Turn of Events" which is available in ebook format only. And if you haven't yet bought a copy of WORKING CLASS HERO, you can get an idea of what it's all about by reading this low-cost story of 5400 words.
If you ask just about any writer--but especially small press and self-published authors--they will tell you that positive reviews are important for generating sales. Normally I don't pay much attention to reviews, but this one for my latest novel, WORKING CLASS HERO just appeared on Amazon.com and it's probably the most flattering and forthright review I've had on any of my books. So I thought I'd point it out (because the author understood the book and what I wanted to do in writing it). Just follow THIS LINK to the review.
Over the years when I have announced that I have a new book coming out, people I know will ask me for a free copy. I generally spend months writing a novel. And when the book appears in print, people want me to give it to them. For free. Try asking your doctor for free medical care. Go to your mechanic and ask him to fix your car for free. The next time a carpenter arrives to do repairs at your house, ask him if he'll do the work and not expect any money for it. So, to answer all of the people who ask--no. I will not give you my book. I write for many reasons, but one of them is to try to make a living from my prose work. Some years I have done quite well at it, and other years not so good. But the fact remains that I am selling my novels. If you want one, then buy it. If you don't want a copy, then please don't insult me by asking me for a free fucking copy. Part of promotions is sending out some review copies. Some of my publishers generally do this, and most of them tend to send me a box of copies for me to send out to professionals who write review columns. So, yes, there are a tiny handful of people who get "free" copies of my work, but most of those people end up reviewing and promoting my fiction which results in sales. Once again--unless you want to piss me off (and I understand that there are people out there who do want to do that), don't ask me for a free copy of my books. If you want one, buy one.
My latest novel. It's available in two formats: paperback and ebook. You can buy copies HERE!
