Ready for Prime Time – Again!

Ready for Prime Time – Again!

RDB coverSo in a fit of excitement about some upcoming readings, and a looming realization that I didn’t have any new material to sell at said readings, not to mention the understanding that Returning the Favor has finally almost sold out the initial print run and thus pretty much broke even or maybe actually made me a little bit of money, I have put together another collection, this time all poetry. This is poetry for people who don’t like poetry. Poems for people who drink too much, live too loud and have too many skeletons in their closet. Basically, people like you and me.

So Red Dirt Boy is now available from Lulu, my print on demand publisher. And Lulu has a deal going right now that if you buy more than $20 worth of stuff from them, you get free shipping, so you should totally combine your purchase of Red Dirt Boy with a copy of Returning the Favor if you don’t already have one. And if you do, toss a couple of copies of Red Dirt Review Vol. 1 into your cart.

If you’re only interested in one poetry collection, but still want to fill out your order to take advantage of the free shipping from Lulu, I highly recommend Lost Vegas, by Paul McGuire. This is a book I’ve been waiting to read for years, and I ordered my copy today. You should too! And if mystery is more your thing, check out Same Difference by Martin Harris. A real hard-boiled detective novel from another Carolina writer. And adding either of these books to your Red Dirt Boy order gets you free shipping, so it’s a great deal on some great summer reading!

I will have copies with me at most readings, so if you want to get a copy signed, that’s your best bet. Also, if you have a literary blog and want to do a review, contact me for a sample. I have very limited review copies, but can swing a few.

Looking for feedback

I think this is the beginning of a new book. Lemme know what you think. Also, I have a new collection of poetry coming out in the next couple of weeks, and I believe The Chosen will be available for iPad, Kindle and other e-readers by late September, with hard copies available from lulu.com. But check this out and let me know what you think, please.

I hate waking up in an unfamiliar place. I’ve slept in pretty much the same bed for the past fifteen years, so when I wake up someplace new, it really throws me off. When that someplace is tied to a metal folding chair in the center of an abandoned warehouse that reeks of stale cigarette smoke, gasoline and harbor water – well, that really started my night off on a sparkling note.

My mood deteriorated even further when I heard a voice behind me say “It’s about time you woke up, bloodsucker.” I mean, seriously, why do people have to be so rude? It’s a condition, like freckles. I’m a vampire. Deal with it. But we can do without the slurs, thank you very much.

“Go easy on the bloodsucker, pal. I haven’t had breakfast.” Was what I tried to say. But since my mouth was duct-taped shut, it came out more like “Mm mmmm mm mmm-mmmmmmm, mmm. Mm mmmmmm mmm mmmmm.” My repartee was gonna need an assist if I was going to talk my way out of this. Of course, if my mysterious captor had wanted me dead, he’d had all day to make that happen, but instead I woke up tied to a chair. I tested my bonds, but I was tied tight, and whatever he had bound me with burned, so it was either blessed, and he was devout, or it was silver. My money was on silver. The true believers are more the stake ‘em in the coffins type than the kidnap them and tie them to chairs type.

“I think, bloodsucker, that since I’m the one with the stake, I get to call you whatever I want. And you, as the one tied to the chair with silver chains, get to sit there and do whatever I say.” My captor moved around in front where I could get a good look at him. I knew him, of course. It’s never the new guy in town who ties you to a chair, it’s always that kinda creepy guy who you’ve seen lurking around the cemetery for a couple weeks. The one that you’re not sure if he was there to mourn or for some other reason. And of course, it was always some other reason.

I’d seen this guy hanging around one of the big oak trees in my cemetery, near the freshest grave in the joint, for a couple of weeks. I never thought much of his wardrobe until now, but in retrospect he was wearing almost stereotypical vampire hunter garb. Black jeans, black boots, long black coat, wide-brimmed black hat. Christ, I bet he owned the Van Helsing Blu-Ray. I swore then that if I ever got the chance, I was eating Hugh Jackman’s liver. No, we don’t usually eat people, but liver’s liver, and I was pissed. I had been caught and trussed up like a Thankgsiving turkey by a skinny twenty-something who watched too many bad vampire movies.

This kid was white, about twenty-three, with mousy brown hair and looked like he played too much Call of Duty instead of getting a job. His skin was paler than mine, for crying out loud, and I’m dead! He was a hair over six foot, weighed maybe one-forty soaking wet, and either had an asthma inhaler in his front pocket or was happy to see me. God, I hoped it was an inhaler.

“Mmmm mmmmm mm mmm mmmm mm mm mm?” I asked, which was supposed to be more of a what do you want me to do type of query, but my mouth was still taped shut. The kid reached forward and ripped the tape off, taking a layer or two of skin with it. “OWWW!” I yelled, straining against my bonds. “You little rat bastard, I swear to God I am going to drink you dry and leave your body on the lawn like an empty bag of flesh!”

I admit, my similes need work.

“I don’t think so, bloodsucker. I think you’re going to do anything I tell you to, or I’ll just leave you tied up there to starve.” He had a point there. It’s not like there were very many people who would miss a vampire, and I hadn’t yet figured out how to get loose from whatever silver-lined bonds he’d created.

“Alright, what do you want?” I asked. Might as well find out right now if he wanted something simple or…

“I want you to turn me,” he replied. The look of hope on his face was a little pathetic, really, but there was a determination there that was disturbing. This was not going to be easy.

“No.” I wanted to get the short and simple part out of the way first, then we could move on to the lengthy explanations.

“Why not?” Wow, from zero to whiny little bitch in .4 seconds. If I’d ever had any thoughts of actually turning this scrawny little zit-farm into a vamp, they would have just evaporated.

“Because I don’t turn people. Because this life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Because I don’t know how to turn people. Because you’d miss all those romantical sunsets you probably write mediocre poetry about. Because it’s not fair to the ecosystem to add another predator. All of the above. None of the above. Pick a reason, kid, any reason you like. I’m not turning you.” I started to look around for another way to get out of this mess, but it didn’t look good for our hero. Or at least my hero, and it’s my story.

For a skinny little gamer-geek, he’d done a good job tying me up. I guess that’s another thing we can thank the internet for – unlimited access to fetish porn has improved the knot-tying ability of men who can’t get dates. I couldn’t exactly see my hands, but by straining around, I could see that my ankles were tied to separate legs of the chair with those plastic zip-ties you get in the electrical aisle. I could see a silver necklace wound around each tie, and by the way my wrists felt, he’d done the same thing there. The chair was the standard metal folding type, the kind that gets sacrificed in countless professional wrestling matches. So I was pretty well neutralized. The silver sapped the strength from my arms just by the contact, and I couldn’t get enough leverage with my legs to do anything useful. I looked up to try and Jedi mind trick my kidnapper, when I noticed two things – one – he was wearing polarized sunglasses, which was a neat idea, although ultimately useless against my mental abilities, and two – he was crying.

“You have to turn me!” He wailed, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I don’t have anything left, and this is the only way I can think to get by.”

I couldn’t believe it, I was actually starting to feel sorry for the guy. “Okay, kid. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong and I’ll see if I can help.”

“No one can help, but if I were one of the Undead I could help myself.” I swear I could actually hear him capitalize undead.

“You know that’s kinda my job, right? Helping people that can’t help themselves. Kinda like the A-Team, without the Mohawk and the van. Reach into my shirt pocket and grab a business card. I promise not to bite you, and as you know we Undead cannot tell a lie.” Total bullshit, but I’ve often found with people dumb enough to romanticize the whole vampire thing that a little mendacity goes a long way. He reached into my pocket and took out a business card. It had my name, James Black, and cell phone number under a logo that said “Black Knight Detectives, shedding light on your darkest problems.” Neither the company name nor the stupid slogan was my idea. And I prefer Jimmy.

“You’re a detective?” I nodded. “And you think you can help me?”

“Well, I can’t really know that until you tell me what your problem is. So why don’t you untie me, and we can talk about this like a pair of reasonable people?” I put a little mojo into my eyes, and he started towards me with a pair of wire cutters in his hand. And that’s when things went to hell.

24 Hours of Booty 2010 – Riding for Cancer Research

MONDAY MAY 17 2010

To Our Friends and Colleagues,

I am writing today to for your donation to Team Barbizon in support of the millions of people whose lives are affected by cancer.  Team Barbizon is participating in an extraordinary event this July by joining 1700 other cyclists to ride for 24 consecutive hours to raise cancer awareness and support for noteworthy charities, including The Lance Armstrong Foundation and the Brain Tumor Fund for the Carolinas.  Such an extraordinary event needs an extraordinary name: The “24 Hours of Booty!” This is the fifth year we have taken part in this worthwhile cause.

WHAT IS THE 24 HOURS OF BOOTY?

24 Hours of Booty is the official 24-hour ride of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which brings cyclists of all abilities together to raise vital funds for cancer research and survivorship. The event unites people who are passionate about fighting cancer. By benefiting both The Lance Armstrong Foundation and local, life-changing beneficiaries, the 24 Hours of Booty experience represents hope, challenge, remembrance and celebration.

ABOUT THE CHARITIES

The 24 Hours of Booty is a non-profit organization that directs fundraising to national and local cancer initiatives.  Recipients include:

The Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF)
The Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) provides the practical information and tools people with cancer need to live life on their own terms. The LAF serves its mission through advocacy, public health and research.

The Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults (UCF)
The Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults (UCF) was established in 1997 by Doug Ulman, a three-time cancer survivor who now serves as President and CEO of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The UCF’s mission is to support, educate and connect young adults affected by cancer.

The Brain Tumor Fund for the Carolinas
An organization dedicated to increasing public awareness of the impact of brain tumors along with providing support for the development of comprehensive treatment strategies and cooperative biomedical research efforts.

The Keep Pounding Fund
Honoring the late Carolina Panthers player and coach Sam Mills and former player Mark Fields, this fund benefits the Blumenthal Center for Cancer Research at Carolinas Medical Center.

Johns Hopkins Medicine
At Johns Hopkins, The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center has active programs in clinical research, laboratory research, education, community outreach, prevention and control. It has been dedicated to better understanding human cancers and finding more effective treatments.

On behalf of all those whose lives are affected by cancer, we thank you for supporting the 24 Hours of Booty, the event’s participants, and ultimately the cancer community.  With your donation, we can make a positive impact on our local cancer community and the cancer community abroad.  Your generosity and support make a tremendous difference.

To make a donation to Team Barbizon please follow this link. Donations made to this link (Esthere’s page) will be distributed amongst all the teammates.

Heroes Con 2010

Had a great time today at the Heroes Convention walking around, talking to different creators about their books, buying way more stuff than I had budgeted (at some point I’ll admit that my “budget” for a con is really what I have in my pocket, as I may refuse to stop before I spend that much), and attended a great panel by some Marvel editors, writers and artists about how to break into the comic business.

I also passed out a bunch of business cards and talked to a bunch of folks about Choices, my novel. If you’re one of them and came here trying to remember what exactly you were supposed to do when you got here, click here to read my novel.

So here’s what I think I’ve decided over the past few days – despite the money issues that we’ve run into over the past couple of weeks (i.e. me putting my foot through the roof and hastening the $4,000 new roof we have to put on the house), I’m going to push a lot harder over the next year to make this writing thing work. I wrote my novel last year and then decided to take a year and try to get some publishing credits before I moved forward with it. Well, I’ve had 13 poems and one short story published since January, and I haven’t submitted anything since the beginning of April, so I’m going to consider that mission accomplished.

So now on to Step 2 – publish Choices. I’m thinking it needs a new title – maybe something like I Made the Devil Do It, or just The Choosing, but it needs a better title. But regardless, I’m actively soliciting an editor from my friends who have done that type of work, and I’m actively soliciting a cover design. I plan to have it published in ebook format hopefully by Labor Day, but certainly by the end of the year. I’ve found a guy who will do the conversion to epub and kindle format for a reasonable price, so I hope that I can get it all ready to go for about $500. I also hope that my editor will work on commission, but I think that won’t be a problem. So I’ll have it out in ebook format this year. I’ll also do some print on demand stuff, so that I can have copies to sign, and people that don’t own a Kindle, Nook or iPad will still be able to buy the book (although you can read ebooks on computers, too). If I set the price at $3, I’ll get a little more than $2 of each ebook sold, and it should be fairly simple to get some folks to take a flyer on a $3 ebook. Especially if I can get some good reviews going. So some of you may be solicited for reviews in the coming months.

I’ve already started my next novel, as well as a pair of short stories that may form the basis of a collection. I also have a script for a comic in the can, which just needs an artist, but that may need to wait until the beginning of ’11 to get much traction, as the rest of this year will be spent focusing on the novel(s) and getting the first one ready for public consumption.

So that’s the plan. For now at least, but as you know these things are subject to change without much notice. I’ve picked up more freelance design gigs to help pay for the roof and replace income from poker writing that has gone away (mostly due to my choice, as it was interfering with the day job). I know it seems counterintuitive that I would add freelance theatrical work to replace freelance writing, especially when my ultimate goal is to be a writer, but the poker writing was more of a scheduling conflict with the day job, and I found that writing for that medium for so long really started to step on my creative writing. I really envy folks like Pauly or Otis, who can still turn out really top-notch material after so many years in the poker biz.

This will also result in more regular posting here, as I focus on keeping the muscles flexed, as it were. So I’m back, for now at least.

If anybody is still around…

So am I. I’m here, kinda. Been an odd couple of months with no real motivation to write here. But after a good weekend of cranking out some 5,000 words on a new novel (which I think might be the first of a series), I’ve rediscovered the need to write here. So I will. More. I promise. But don’t hold your breath for any kind of daily content or anything like that. Let’s not get silly.