What’s up buttercup?

Panoply at Amazon
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THE RED BEAD — So what the hell is this? Well, I watched “The Black Donnellys,” “Hatfields & McCoys” and “The Sopranos” and my little brain started percolating. Then I read the bios of a couple of guys named John Brisker and Jack Johnson, and of course I’m completely in love with “Daron’s Guitar Chronicles.”

All that being said, I was struck by a deluge of awesome and the character of Anselm “Devil Anse” Lotham came into being along with the rest of his crazy ass family.

The free webserial follows the life of Anse, either through his own short introspection pieces, or through his top enforcer Lee Shuman. Starts at the very beginning when they’re not famous, and follows through to all the stuff with Interpol and the bodies chopped up in the bay.

I started a page just for The Red Bead, and it’s here at http://altredes.wordpress.com so you can just follow the story with none of the other shenanigans that go on here 🙂

 

UPCOMING REVISIONS — Because sometimes they need to happen.

Continue Reading Upcoming Revisions and Rundowns
Small Gods at Amazon
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A THIN LINE BETWEEN TOTAL NUT-JOB AND ECCENTRIC QUASI-TRILLIONAIRE:  If I ever become incredibly wealthy, I’m going to be like the guys of Dethklok (Metalocalypse.) Not all violent and crazy, but just some total loon that goes along with anything people say.

Nothing super crazy, but I think it would be cool to just go along with some “I Love Lucy”-esque hijinks and just roll with the situation. To meet all these strange people and be in their lives for a couple of days to just see how it is, but to always have the reassurance of being able to say “Fuck it” and just leave if you hate it. That has got to be one of the awesomest things ever.

Can you imagine going back in time to all the jobs you’ve ever had, doing them, but totally not giving two shits about anything? Would you tell your bosses exactly what you think of them? Would you ask that one chick what exactly that is on her chin? Would you chuck politeness and tell boring-talky-guy that his word vomit annoys you? Or would you go the other route and spend all your time being the crazy friend to different people, the one that always tries to help out and manages it, but only after some highly unlikely events take place?

Basically, how cool would it be to act like Van Wilder and have a ton of money to back you up? I would totally have a Taj of my own, though one that’s not so skeezy.

I think my life would be so much better if I had an assistant and a manager, though my manager would have to be like the guy from Josie and the Pussy Cats (he’s totally the same character in Royal Pains, no lie.) I would be like a real live Jeeves & Wooster if I had the money to pull it off. Plus I’d have a Swim Spa, never ending pool.

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COMIC BOOK CHATTER:  So I read this article at Cracked.com and it really got me to thinking about Mr. Freeze and about the different levels of evil. There are just some lines that people don’t want to cross, and you can pretty much see how hardcore a book really is by how far the villain is willing to go.

For cereal, why didn’t his boss let him keep his frozen wife on ice? If the guy was truly Machiavellian, he would have seen this as the perfect leverage to use against the guy — he could keep Fries as a serf for the rest of forever as long as he had the wife housed at his facility. Fries would have been happy to stay there and would have been loyal to his boss for being cool enough to let him keep his dead wife there. I mean, it wasn’t as though the guy was the one that killed her or anything; she had sucky genes. He could have been Fries’ hero, while still totally doing the bad guy giggle in the backroom. That right there was the stereotypical bad guy cutting his nose off to spite his face tactic.

And this is where it comes around to “Dune” once again. That was a movie that had The Evil Empire make a guy betray his Duke by snatching the guy’s wife and raping the guy’s mind into compliance. The dude was so traumatized, that even knowing his wife is dead, he still serves the bad guy and gets a bunch of people killed. He was so mind-raped that it was like he was Imperius’d or something; he served the bad guy just for the possibility of finding out what had happened to his wife. He could have told the Duke what was going on at any time, and the Duke probably would have helped him go after the bad guy. There had to be someone else that knew what happened to his wife.

But the bad guy had the poor guy so twisted, that he’s not even free to have his own thoughts. That’s pretty evil right there.

David Drake’s military sci-fi series “Northworld” kicks it up a notch with one guy being kept in a cage by The Evil King and forced to keep creating weapons. The Evil King killed the poor guy’s brothers (that or the brothers were killed before then, I’m not sure. I need to re-read the books, and you need to read them for the first time), crippled the guy, then even came around to hassle him and threaten torture on a semi-regular basis. That was a bit too much evil, considering the guy nutted out and broke The Evil King’s wife and kids, just shattered them mentally.

So there’s kind of an evil guy balance that needs to be maintained. Too evil and the victim becomes an unstoppable killing machine, and not evil enough and the guy becomes an unstoppable killing machine that speaks with a thick Austrian accent and wants to kill that pesky spandex wearing boy.

Witch King at Amazon
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Why do I write? Because writing makes me happy and gives me something I desperately crave – an outlet for all of the people and worlds living in my head.

Writers aren’t exactly people…they’re a whole lot of people trying to be one person.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

To be honest, I don’t ever expect to become rich off of my writings. I don’t exactly see myself as being the next J.K. Rowling or Laurell K. Hamilton or Stephen King.

I just like to write.

I do hope to reach the point – soonish rather than later – where I will be able to pay off all of my debts and make a fairly comfortable living. I would like to be able to give the Kid a good education and a nice place to live. Most of all, I never want to worry about him going hungry again.

But even if I was living in a gutter somewhere, I would still write, because it is my passion and my joy.

Even if there was no one to read the words, I would still write them down. On a computer, in a notebook, in the dirt on the floor… the words would still flow out of me and always will.

That being said, I really do appreciate it when someone reads something I’ve written. Whenever I sell a book, I feel a jolt of pleasure at the idea that someone out there is meeting the people I created and traveling the world they live in. And I hope they experience the same richness of feeling that I did as I wrote every word and imagined every action or scene.

Feedback is always appreciated, but to just know that someone is reading something I’ve created… that’s enough.

~Peace, love, joy