Live at Amazon! THE EMISSARY!

I delayed the release of THE EMISSARY for pre-orders. Today, the book went live in ebook format and is now available for immediate purchase.

Perhaps the best novel I've written to date, it was certainly the most difficult to write.

THE EMISSARY by James Robert Smith.

DEADLOCKED

My zombie apocalypse novel DEADLOCKED is now out. This is the rewritten and heavily revised version of  my novel previously released as THE LIVING END. I was never happy with the cover of that book and had left out a few things in the orginal version that I always wanted to change. And so, now that almost all of my previously published book rights have reverted to me, I have it out in my preferred text and with a much more effective cover and title.

I have several choices facing me on which of my older books to release. I'm leaning toward getting WORKING CLASS HERO up next, especially since it was always intended to be a continuing series of episodic fiction, reflecting the Silver Age comics of my youth. And since I have BILLY B VERSUS THE TROUBLE BOYS almost ready for publication, I think it's the obvious choice of getting my next book back into print.

But right now DEADLOCKED is available in both ebook and paperback formats! So grab your zombie apocalypse adventure! Cheap at only $2.99 for ebook, or $10.99 as a paperback! YOW!

DEADLOCKED available in ebook!

DEADLOCKED available in paperback format!

Writing and Publishing.

THE EMISSARY sales will begin on Saturday, November 30th. Also going up at around the same time will be my novel of the zombie apocalypse, DEADLOCKED.

DEADLOCKED is the rewritten, re-edited, expanded version of my novel THE LIVING END that I wrote for another publisher some time back. I've rewritten and added sections to the book and cleaned up the manuscript somewhat. Also with a new, much more effective cover that better represents the book.

Coming in the next few weeks several more of my older books will come back into print under the Last Hemlock Press. All of these will be rewritten and re-edited to one extent or another. Some of them will have major revisions, while others will be only moderately changed. Also coming out will be my sequels to WORKING CLASS HERO, the series that was stopped in its tracks by my previous publisher. Expect BILLY B VERSUS THE TROUBLE BOYS in the next few weeks.

In addition to getting my back-list books back to the light of print, I'll also get my original projects scheduled as time allows.

At any rate, come what may, I'm stuck to this path for the time being.

The cover for my preferred author's state of DEADLOCKED, A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse. Starring Roland Thompson and a large cast of supporting characters.

And, of course, THE EMISSARY is available for purchase on Saturday, November 30, 2019.

Reviews Needed!

In my history as a professional writer the toughest thing for me has been to get written reviews posted on Amazon and other online booksellers. These are important for the sales of a novel. Some of my past books did okay and I didn't have to push too much to get reviews.

But lately it has been exceptionally difficult finding people who have the time and inclination to create reviews for my work.

Thus, I am offering a free autographed paperback copy of my new novel THE EMISSARY to ten people who would like the book and would agree to post a review at Amazon if you enjoy the book. (If you don't enjoy the book, don't wreck my carrer and just keep the copy or sell it---Heck, I don't care!)

At any rate, review copies will be in hand here at the Smith House tomorrow and I can send them out as requests come in. Just email me at jamesrobertsmith at yahoo.com with your mailing address and I'll send you a copy (with autograph). Please be sure to put REVIEW COPY in the subject heading of the email so I'll know it's not spam.

Thanks!

THE EMISSARY, from James Robert Smith, author of THE FLOCK.

THE EMISSARY Goes Live!

The Kindle version of the new book is up and available for pre-order. The paperback should pop up in a day, maybe two. It's good to see a new book come to print, since it has been a couple of years since my last novel.

From the author of THE FLOCK comes THE EMISSARY, a novel of modern fantasy and horror.

In the North Carolina mountains the town of Jasperton has lost a fading enchantment that has protected it for almost one hundred years from an ancient curse. Martin and Amy Braun, separated, and their marriage almost at an end over the death of their young son, suddenly find themselves reunited to care for a lost child who bears a striking resemblance to their deceased boy. As the town begins to fall victim to the rising influence of an aged evil, they must decide if the child is an emissary for salvation, or for the malignant forces gathering within the town.

THE EMISSARY by James Robert Smith. I was very, very happy with the cover art!

Eating Crow.

In the past there has likely not been a bigger opponent to self-publishing than I have been. It wasn't merely the act of self-publishing that got on my last nerve, but the absence of quality in the material that is constantly being self-published. In those early days I would read book after book that was self-published, and never once did I read anything that rose above the level of the worst of a massive slush pile on a suffering editor's desk.

Thus, I hated the concept of self-publishing and not only wanted nothing to do with it, I wanted it to go away.

In the end the concept seems to have weakened an already emaciated traditional publishing marketplace. The number of publishers willing and able to dig through submissions has dwindled to the point that it's sad to watch because what one is seeing is the death of a very old industry.

And so, as I hinted some time back in an earlier blog post, it is time for me to eat crow (as they say) and do what I had not wished to do. And that is to join the ranks of the self-published.

Since those early days I have managed to find well-written novels whose authors have gone what is called the "indie" route. All right, then, I'll have to go down that road also. Over the past year I've tried a few short story efforts almost as advertising promotions.

Currently I need to get my older novels back into print. I recently got the rights back to all of my traditionally published novels with the exception of THE FLOCK from Tor-Forge Books. The rest are mine again and so I'll tackle publishing and promoting them on my own.

We'll see how it goes. At this point in my writing career, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Worst case, I'm at the same point I'm at right now.

And so it goes.

First up will be THE EMISSARY. It's a novel I had sold a couple of years ago, but the small press publisher who accepted it has apparently folded. THE EMISSARY is an important book to me. The ideas and themes for it occurred to me many years back and I kept struggling with the concepts for a very long time before I put it all together in a story that made me happy. I think I put more sweat and toil and thought into this novel than anything I have ever written.

In the North Carolina mountains the town of Jasperton has lost a fading enchantment that has protected it for almost one hundred years from an ancient curse. Martin and Amy Braun, separated, and their marriage almost at an end over the death of their young son, suddenly find themselves reunited to care for a lost child who bears a striking resemblance to their deceased boy. As the town begins to fall victim to the rising influence of an aged evil, they must decide if the child is an emissary for salvation, or for the malignant forces gathering within the town.

Appearing very soon in both ebook and print formats.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was not the first National Park I ever visited, but it has been the National Park that has had the biggest influence on me. I've visited it more often than any of our nation's Parks, and I have journeyed more deeply into it than any other of them.

Over the years I have been able to travel more widely across the USA and visit many of our big Parks; but the Smokies remains the one with which I am most intimate. I've hiked hundreds of miles of its back-country trails, and I have camped deep in the wilderness areas within it. I have also driven most of its (too many) roads and shared views with obnoxious crowds of idiot tourists who rarely fail to annoy me in their numbers and vile attitudes.

But, I keep going back. My wife and son get a kick out of the Park for reasons different from my own. While I dig plunging as deep into the almost supernaturally diverse forests and climbing the lung-bursting slopes, they like the gentler aspects of the Smokies and the easy access of tourist traps we call Gatlinburg and Pigeon's Forge. Generally, while I'm hiking they will take the 75-cent tram from the campground into Gatlinburg to nosh on comfort food and search for tchotchke.

I'll be there for just shy of a week. Heading out very soon. I'm still considering my options for hiking. It has been a very long time since I've seen the views from Charlie's Bunion, so I may do that hike. I just don't know. Or maybe I'll pick out some trails I've never experienced and see what they have to offer.

I'll let you know.

A field in Cataloochee Valley where we likely won't go this trip.

Years ago when I was running around trying to see all of the hemlock groves before they died. I saw most of the old ones, and now they're all dead.

A 2005 view of the massive wall of LeConte before this plot of land was covered in hotels and shops.

Bull elk and cow (also in Cataloochee) in October 2018.

YouTube.

I use YouTube as a tool and a pastime. A few years ago I began to create videos to promote my novels. Later, I decided to play around with making travelogs of my many hiking, backpacking, kayaking, and camping trips. This eventually expanded to the point where I branched out and started to make some money selling (and leasing) photos of the great outdoors.

And this, of course, got me into browsing through the many thousands of YouTube channels. So many channels. I wonder how many there are, but have never been curious enough to research it. Over the past few years I often stumble upon little independently produced channels that I find interesting or charming or informative and subscribe to them. A few of the channels I subscribed to early on I continue to follow.

But not many of them.

One thing that I find happens with a lot of these little shows is that they eventually become bogged down with soap opera style drama centering on the creators' lives. And, frankly, I don't need that freaking drama. I'm not interested in it. It's not the personal details of their lives that got me following them in the first place, beyond their desire to show how they create things or explore the great world. As soon as they start to whine about their health or their dead dog or how they are being stalked by mean people I lose interest and cancel my subscription.

And other things can happen.

One channel I used to view was created by a married 30-something couple who had once been physically active but who had become lazy and complacent and really, really fat. To help themselves get rid of the vast accumulations of lard on their asses they began to hike. You could tell that at some point the husband had been fit, and that sometime in the last few years the wife had been quite the looker (she still had a pretty face trying to peek out from behind a sheath of pink-skinned blubber). And over the course of their videos they did, indeed, lose the lard. It at first came off slowly, and then more rapidly fell from both. Over the course of a couple of years or so the husband became the muscular athlete he'd once been, and his wife transformed back into what I can only describe as "a ten". She was hot.

But then, the videos slowly became less and less about the adventures of the interesting and beautiful places they discovered where they challenged their rediscovered athletic abilities, and more about posing and preening in front of the camera wearing tank tops and yoga pants. I got sick of it and erased them from my subscription list and haven't been back to look at what they've been creating in about three years. Maybe they stopped with the channel, or came down with terminal cancer and died, or were hit by a Mack truck, perhaps eaten by a pack of rabid raccoons. I wouldn't know.

Because of this tendency to fade into personal subjectivity I end up getting rid of about three-fourths of the channels I follow. They become tedious and maudlin. I suppose it works for them, though, because by the time I end up ignoring these productions I generally find that they have accumulated tens of thousands of subscribers and have become semi-famous and are actually making money from their little videos.

Just without me in their audience.

No, thanks, on the drama. Just give me the views.

On Sitting Bear Mountain.

Well, I bagged Sitting Bear Mountain in Linville Gorge. It was the only major peak in the Gorge that I had not hiked. I think it's also the highest summit in the wilderness. I timed the hike well, being first at the trailhead and managed to have the footpath completely to myself for several hours. I did encounter a hiker and his dog near the summit cliffs--nice guy. Then, later, on the way down, I bumped into a tight-lipped shitheel who wouldn't even return a polite "hello". I'm all for solitude and such, but there's a point where misanthropy reaches the level of pathology.

At any rate, it was a good hike. The trail is very, very steep as you approach the summit. It hits the mountain head-on with no switchbacks. It's roughly as steep as the Woody Ridge Trail in the Black Mountains, but doesn't hold that steepness for as long as the Woody Ridge path manages. Still, I had to very carefully pick my way down as I headed back. A fall there would be dangerous.

Oddly, the rims of the Gorge held onto huge cloud formations with some tenacity, making for difficulty in grabbing good photos. I did manage a few decent shots, but it wasn't easy.

After the hike I went over to the Linville Falls picnic area on the Parkway and had lunch. Then I drove over to Beacon Rock and took a few shots there, but again Grandfather Mountain (aka Tanawha) was socked in by clouds lingering over the summits.

After that I headed home. It was a good day.

 I tried an experiment with time lapse photography with the GoPro camera. I'd played around with it before, but while I was walking or kayaking to show sped up motion progress. In this one I kept the camera static and let the landscape do the moving. I want to do more of these.

I was the only one at the trailhead. Parking is at a premium at this trailhead. Maybe four spots.

View from the first set of cliffs.

From closer to the Sitting Bear summit looking back on the spot where I took the time lapse video.

Now and again the clouds would break. Right after this it got really dark and misty and made photography difficult.

The Linville Falls Picnic Area is amazing. Right by the Linville River.

Then I drove over to Beacon Rock below Grandfather Mountain. Most people don't know there's a GrandMOTHER Mountain. This is it, as seen from the exposed surface of Beacon Rock. It has a horrible radio tower, which is hear mainly hidden by clouds.

Tanawha was a tease. She played with the clouds and refused to reveal all of her beauty. At 5,964 feet she is technically the highest summit in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Less than 40 feet shy of 6,000 feet.

Heading Back.

Well, since I was frustrated in my attempt to bag Sitting Bear Mountain a few days ago, I'm heading back to Linville Gorge in the morning to try again. It's the only major peak in the wilderness that I haven't hiked, so I want to strike it off my list before it becomes a frustrated obsession. In the coming years I'll be hiking and camping and backpacking so much that I doubt it would rank very high on my list, so best to do it now while I still think about it.

I've heard the views from the top are pretty good. I'm always curious if I'll find a grandstand in the Gorge as good as the Hawksbill summit. So far, I have not found a view to surpass with that one.

From a recent visit to the Gorge. Not far from Table Rock.

Taken at The Amphitheater. A grand location.

I took this selfie on Hawksbill. So far, it's my favorite view in and of the Gorge. I doubt it can be topped, but you never know.

Retirement Hiking Trips.

Now that I'm retired I work my part-time job anywhere from zero days to four days per week. It is weird not having to go and punch a clock every day, (sometimes six days a week when I was a letter carrier, and seven days a week when I was self-employed). I sit there and realize that I don't have to rise before the sun to go to a drudge labor job. Yes, I sometimes still get up before the dawn, but that's only because sometimes I want to hit the road early to go hiking or kayaking. Big difference.

I'm still having a hard time dealing with that.

Saturday I drove up to the mountains and did a little bit of hiking before the rainstorms scoured the peaks. I had two hikes planned but only did one, down into Linville Gorge to see the base of Linville Falls which I had not visited in many, many years. The hike was a whole lot easier than I recalled. But after I climbed out of the gorge the rains hit.

At any rate, here are some photos and a video of the hike.

The Little Creatures.

Sometimes when I go hiking I don't find the wildlife that I hope to see and photograph. I've noticed that even the birds I used to depend upon as subjects are fewer in number. These are things that I have noted, so it's not a huge surprise to me to have recently learned that the base populations of birds have died off in North America over the last thirty years, to the tune of three billion less. I used to be able to go to various places to see birds that have vanished; and this has been over just the last ten years.

Mother Nature is dying. There is no doubt of that.

At any rate, I love photographing wildlife. And so what I find I sometimes have to do is look down at my feet or at the vegetation around me to search for insects, arachnids, terrestrial molluscs, and other such little critters if I want to get any photographs of animals at all.

And, once again, I am reminded that I really do need a couple of new lenses for my camera. I can do okay with the lenses I have, but they don't have the qualities I need to record the finer details as I labor to grab some memorable shots. To that end I will be purchasing (I hope) two more lenses next month. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've been reading journals warning that even the planet's insect populations are plummeting.

Yellowjacket, taken on Roan Mountain, Tennessee.

Butterly, Rock Creek Recreation Area. Erwin, TN.

Butterfly. Cataloochee Valley, North Carolina.

New Shoes, Air Pollution.

Carole and I drove up to Asheville on Sunday so that I could find a pair of new hiking shoes. My old reliable Merrell shoes finally gave up the ghost. The treads were worn down to the point where I had begun to feel the stab of rock edges as I hiked. They were a great pair of shoes, but they had to go.

I had done a bit of shopping online to find a new pair of boots and did a lot of reading for some good shoes that would give me what I need in that type of footwear. I ended up settling--at least in theory--on the Oboz Firebrand2. I could have ordered them online, but I opted to go shopping and find a place where I could try them on to see what the fit was like and get the feel of them before committing to a purchase. The only place I know of that carries that brand is the Mast General Store.

Since we generally enjoy trips to Asheville we decided on the Mast store there rather than going to one of the other branches. As usual, we arrived in Asheville to massive crowds. There is always one sort of festival or march or demonstration going on there, and Sunday was no exception. I think the heavy burst of population was due to some kind of gay rights push, but we weren't sure. It made parking a tad more difficult (but not by much) and didn't have any effect at all on our shopping, nor any kind of wait at our favorite pizza restaurant there.

After we made some purchases, got lunch, and returned to Carole's car, we decided to head over to the Black Mountain Campground (National Forest facility) by way of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The views from the Parkway and nearby peaks were hampered considerably by resurgent air pollution--courtesy of our current Mother Nature-raping administration. The weather was warm, but not nearly as hellish as in Huntersville. Still, the high country was a good 10-15 degrees above normal for this time of year.

My intention was to catch the South Toe River Road (Forest Service) down to the campground. But it is still closed due to flooding damage from well over a year ago. Our government can find money to piss down the Pentagon rathole, but not for repairing our parks and National Forests. Instead I went over to the intersection of the Blue Ridge Parkway and NC 80 and took that down to the campground. After checking it out we then headed over to Old Fort NC and to the Curtis Creek Campground which is also a National Forest facility, but which is not blocked by gates due to road damage. We want to plan camping trips to both of these places so we needed to look at them to decide roughly where we'd want to park our Casita travel trailer when we go.

After that we called it a day and went back to the Interstate to drive home. All in all, we accomplished most of what we wanted to do, but the diminishing air quality that we witnessed was yet another reminder that global warming and mass extinction loom over everything. If you like our wild places, my suggestion is to do as we do and see as much of it as possible before it's all dead.

At the hiking shoe department in the big Mast General Store in Asheville.

What I bought there. Not the most attractive hiking shoe, but functionally what I need.

 

The Mellow Mushroom. Our favorite pizza joint in Asheville.

The Blue Ridge Parkway at a point where I pulled off to get a few photos.

Colors starting to change for Autumn. I was able to mitigate the hazy air pollution via editing software.

A small tributary of Curtis Creek.

This little one was in the creek at my feet. Very tiny.

 

Mo' Better Plans.

Now that retirement has fully kicked in I have begun to get my ducks in a row as far as planning trips is concerned. So far, we're staying relatively close to home, but are forming up our plots for trips farther afield. There's Colorado coming up when Carole takes her own retirement. But that's almost two years away. The trip to Italy will precede that (I hope). Until then we're looking at jaunts to Pennsylvania to visit both historic and wilderness sites; and to the Adirondacks in New York so that I can do some trekking in the High Peaks region while I'm still able to do that kind of thing. Also, Carole has mentioned that she wants to see Maine again, so we'll likely fly up for that and rent a car out of Boston. We'll see.

We just got back from Myrtle Beach, a trip I took reluctantly. I have to say that I cannot stand what they call "the Grand Strand". While it may be a strand, it is in no way grand. It is an overbuilt monstrosity of beachfront towers and vile amusement parks and residential areas packed cheek by jowl in front of eroding beaches where all of it is at the mercy of Atlantic storms and unceasing winds and tides. The place has become so urbanized over the years that it suffers full-on traffic jams every morning and afternoon just as things are in places like Charlotte and Atlanta. Screw that. I've never understood the appeal of that horrible blot on the map. While down there for four days I had about as miserable a time as I had feared, and I can here and now promise that my shadow will never again darken the pathetic dirt of the Myrtle Beach area. Sometimes you really can say "never".

As soon as we got back home yesterday I reserved our campsite for a week in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for the last week of October and the first couple of days of November. The Fall colors will be at about their peak, I would think. But so was demand for camping space inside the Park. So by yesterday afternoon when we unloaded from the beach trip there were only about six spots remaining in the campground we wanted to use (Elkmont). Fortunately, I was able to grab one of them before it was gone.

I'm looking forward to this trip, since we haven't been to the Smoky Mountains in quite a while. I want to hike some familiar trails (I'll probably climb Mount LeConte for the tenth or eleventh time), and explore some trails where I've never hiked. We do have a hay-ride to take in Cades Cove, a place that I tend to avoid because of the crowds. But this will be a different kind of experience with no driving to do in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We'll be on the back of a wagon as it's pulled leisurely along by, I assume, a tractor of some sort. Sometimes I dream that all automobile access to Cades Cove will be banned. A dream, yes, but it would be so nice to see it happen.

For November into January I'll likely be doing a lot of hiking and will squeeze some solo backpacking trips in as we figure out just exactly when we want to see places in Pennsylvania that are on our bag-list. These trips, too, will likely be in the NC/TN/VA mountains, but I have had a bit of an urge to retrace some of the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, which I have not backpacked in decades. So maybe I'll go backpacking down in Georgia when the weather cools off.

I have begun wondering, and have even read, that we are among the last generation of US working class citizens who can honestly look forward to retirement and spending leisure time traveling and enjoying our twilight years. It does seem so, and it's sad to contemplate, but we're going to enjoy what we have while we have it.

A brief moment of beauty near the horrid "Grand Strand". Specifically in Calabash (just across the SC border in NC). We ate supper at this location in a restaurant on the waterfront. While the food was decent, I am pretty damned sure it is the last time I will ever see that place. No more Myrtle Beach environs for this southerner. The rest of you are welcome to it.