Tag: My Fiction

Parties and Stories

photog 0 Comment Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner , , ,

Tomorrow Camera Girl and I are double booked for parties.  We have a graduation party and a friend’s family party.  And they’re both at about the same time.  So, I suggested that we go to the graduation party for an hour or so and then head to the second one.  Camera Girl spent a couple of days telling me why that was a stupid idea.  And then she told me that we would split up and each go to only one party.

So, then I suggested we start off going to separate parties but then I would come back and pick her up and both of us would go to the friend’s party.  I think she wanted to hit me.  She shook her head and walked away.  I don’t think she understands optimization.

You see if I show up at a party by myself everyone is going to want to know where she is and why I showed up without her.  I’m not the draw.  She’s much more interesting because she’s telling stories about all the stupid things I do.  And when she tells them they’re funny.  Now I can’t tell stories about myself.  It would sound stupid.  I need a straight man to tell the story and then let me weave my defense.  It would be like Costello asking “who’s on first” without Abbott.  It’s just not the same without the cross-talking.

So today I checked my stats on Amazon.  So far, “The Sniper” has sold a total of 303 books (65 paperback copies and 238 e-books) and 3,657 pages on Kindle Unlimited.  On Kindle Unlimited my book is about 210 pages long so 3,657 pages is about 17 copies.  Not bad for about a month on Kindle Unlimited.  But I may have to cancel the yacht.

But the lack of fabulous wealth from my book sales has not dampened my enthusiasm for writing.  In fact, I’ve become much more excited about the sequel.  And what has me most intrigued is not so much the plot or even the new and old characters.  What I’m interested in is injecting more dialog.  Specifically, I want to get some of the characters to tell their stories.  And I know that this is backward.  The author is supposed to show the reader the story and not tell it. But storytelling within a story is an interesting technique that I’d like to try.  And I’d like to introduce dialog between characters about politics, economic policy, religion, traditional family, artificial intelligence, the war between the sexes, energy policy, the future of the human race, space exploration and a million other things.

Of course, I’ll have to be careful I don’t drown out the action under such a heavy soaking of blather but I think it’s time for my world to start exhibiting brains and not just marksmanship.  One thing I haven’t worked out yet is whether I get Connors and Grace to go out on a date.  I’ve been bouncing some stuff off of Camera Girl but I still don’t know whether any of it makes sense.  Oh well, the only way to find out is to start writing and see where it goes.

Antifa and the Hidden Hand

photog 5 Comments Current Events, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Trump , , ,

So, I saw this article:

Bessent says IRS and FBI investigation into antifa has made ‘substantial progress’

“What to know

  • Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed progress in the IRS-FBI antifa investigation.
  • New IRS guidance will hold grant-making organizations responsible for violent recipients.
  • Antifa is labeled a militant anarchist organization by the Trump administration.
  • The executive order cites antifa’s violent activities and attempts to overthrow the government.

The memo and the antifa executive order targeted the tax-exempt status of foundations funding civil society groups. The memo instructed the IRS commissioner to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism.”

So, the gist of this investigation is identifying NGOs that are providing funds and other aid to antifa and use it as a reason to strip them of their tax-exempt status and then prosecute them for the aid they’re providing antifa in its illegal activities.

It sounds like a good strategy.  Of course, the various antifa legal fronts will challenge all this in every commie-sympathizing jurisdiction (NY, CA, D.C., OR, etc.) but the Supreme Court has been very supportive of the administration’s attempts to go after rogue elements of the Left so there’s a good chance all this will move forward.

Based on the assassination attempts against Trump, Charlie Kirk and that healthcare CEO, these antifa psychos are extremely dangerous and need to be defunded, rounded up and put away for a very long time.

On an unrelated and much more positive development my Kindle Unlimited page views have continued to increase:

Tonight, has been the highest page count to date (407 pages) and that curve looks pretty encouraging (so far).  I won’t try to make too much soup with such a little bit of meat but we authors have to take our solace where we find it.  Now, I’d prefer that it was 407 million pages but we all have to start somewhere.

Now based on my years of experience extrapolating curves based on limited data it’s obvious to me that the next data point will be 800 pages followed shortly by 1,600 pages and by obvious curve fitting this will turn into an asymptote by June 7th at which point the number of pages will reach infinity and Amazon will have to proclaim me the new James Patterson.  Of course I shouldn’t say this quite yet.  You never know.  I could be wrong.  It might take all the way until June 15th for all of this to reach its crescendo.  So, I’ll just bide my time and maintain a humble façade.  I’ll practice my gracious acceptance speech, “Oh no, I’m not worthy!  I’m not worthy!  I’d like to thank all the little people.  If I’ve seen farther, it’s not because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants but rather, because I am a super-giant.  And I want to cast aspersions on those who tried to hold back my reputation.  All those who claimed I wasn’t greater than their favorites; all those fanboys of Shakespeare or Tolstoy or Tolkien or whomever!  Bah!  Tired hacks and amateurs.  Their memories will be swept away like chaff from the wheat in the glorious sunshine of my new day.”

Or something like that.

Relevant Science Fiction – Part 1

photog 1 Comment Book Reviews, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , , , , ,

In the 1960’s and ‘70’s the science fiction that seemed to be the most interesting was as much about inner space as outer space.  And even space stories like “Dune” were as much about human social interaction as they were about technology.  Altered consciousness and new social norms in stories like “Stranger in a Strange Land” were what was in the air.  As a kid and young man, I was more interested in science (meaning star ships and time travel!) but now that I’m old and disillusioned by how messed up our government has become, I think the kind of speculative fiction I’m interested in now is social science.

I’ve always made fun of Plato’s Republic because listening to him construct straw men and then knock them over with arguments that don’t hold water seemed beyond ludicrous.  But I think we’re somewhat back to where the Greeks were sometime around the time of the Peloponnesian War.  We’ve managed to lose social cohesion and the institutions and methods we use for choosing leaders and making laws have completely failed us.  It’s not hard to see that we’re not far away from a crack-up that could do horrendous damage to our economy and the lives of everyday people.

I think it’s probably time for speculative fiction writers to start taking a few swipes at either predicting the future or at least providing cautionary tales about it.  And that’s what I’m thinking of concentrating on in some of the stories I’m outlining right now.  I’m interested in imagining what kinds of new arrangements people can organize to make their lives better.  For instance, when local, state or federal governments start failing to secure the basic requirements of safety from theft and bodily injury for the citizens they supposedly serve, private entities could step in to secure these services.  And once these non-governmental corporations start branching out the current arrangements we’re used to could cease to exist in ad hoc areas of the country without any formal acknowledgement of the change.  This is not that different from what happened in the later Roman Empire.  When Gaul started slipping away to the Franks the authority of the “Caesar” over the “Legions” who were mostly Franks became almost farcical.

So, I need to think a little bit about what kinds of new social and economic arrangements might be interesting and novel in the “world” I’m imagining.  I’ve poked some holes in the American Empire and now I want to see what kinds of new things might grow up inside these holes.  So, I have a locus of power (Connors’ network of enterprises and human assets) and someone running it who thinks on a larger basis than just building up tech monopolies to monetize what’s left of the American people’s legacy capital.  What I want to see is if I can come up with some believable innovations that would lead people to rearrange their allegiances and social and commercial actions in ways that build something new and better than what we’ve been stuck with for the last fifty years.

What I’m trying to decide is whether Connors will try to control several states under his umbrella without outwardly absorbing these political jurisdictions.  After all, voting for the interests of the company you work for is nothing new.  Remember “What’s good for GM is good for America.”  So that’s what I’m working on.  The problem is I’m making it up as I go along.

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall from Here – Practice, Practice.

photog 0 Comment Book Reviews, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , , ,

Dystopias seem to be the dominant science fiction type in the last decade or two.  And the dopiness of the ones ending up on the large and small screens doesn’t encourage much hope in the genera.  We have the ever popular “Handmaid’s Tale” that bangs away at the female victim of the evil patriarchy trope.  And then there’s the “Hunger Games” which I suppose reflects the idea that somehow resources on Earth are about to collapse and a zero-sum game will emerge where we all will be fighting for our lives to get a loaf of bread.  Wow!  Who knew science fiction could be so much fun?

I’ve recently heard that horror is becoming a big genre with young men (apparently written stories and video and also video games).  But that doesn’t alarm me.  I think this is wrapped up with the popularity of video games and I think that is more a matter of the desire to work through puzzles and shoot monsters with guns (which is always a good thing!).

I have a theory that the current science fiction publishing model will not endure much longer.  I don’t think they can make enough money from selling romantasy porn and feminist dystopia much longer.  Of course, it’s possible that AI writing will completely destabilize all fiction writing.  In that case the whole thing becomes academic.  That would leave us just downloading AI slop at virtually no cost.  But either way the world will be changing to resemble nothing like what we old-timers remember from the before time when books were an industry and grammatical sentences actually existed.

Of course, this is a hell of a time for me to become an author.  But in a sense, it may be the best time for me to write.  The barrier to getting published doesn’t exist.  The only barrier is figuring out a way to let the reading public know my book exists and what it’s about.  But that’s far from a trivial problem.  Key words and algorithmic search engines and Amazon ad management are complicated and confusing topics and I’ll confess that I know next to nothing about any of that.  But I’m slowly picking up some practical and painful experience.

For instance, so far today my Amazon ads have 23,417 impressions.  I believe that means, that number of people had the chance to see my ad on the search pages they viewed on Amazon.  Out of those thousands, only 16 people clicked on my ad.  Out of those 16 people only two bought my book (e-book version).  And that was with the e-book discounted to $0.99.  So, there was $1.98 worth of sales.  Of which I only get 30% (~$0.59).  Now currently the cost per click is $1.71.  Which means so far today I’ve been charged 16 X $1.71 = $27.36!

Obviously, this isn’t the way to become rich through writing.  But it is a very educational exercise to understand how the current self-publishing model leaves quite a bit to be desired.  But I still have few more ideas to try before giving up on my dream of becoming the next great science fiction author.  Excelsior!

A Good Day to be a Writer

photog Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner , , ,

Today I went to my tax accountant to discuss my “royalties.”  I waited until now because tax season is much too hectic to talk about 2026 issues to people in that profession.  I have had a few unhappy incidents with the tax man and I go way out of my way to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

Now this is my new accountant.  In fact, he’s the grandson of my old accountant.  His grandfather is retiring soon so I’m sort of an inheritance.  When I arrived, I saw a kid walking in the front door and after waiting in the waiting room for a few minutes that same kid turned out to be my accountant.  But despite his youthful appearance he proved up to the job of assuaging my fears about ending up in an IRS gulag for high crimes and misdemeanors against the tax code.  Specifically, I was worried that maybe there was some kind of monthly reporting and payment I needed to perform for both the state and federal systems.  I remember when I was dealing with a state agency that required businesses to collect and pay sales tax monthly.

He explained to me that unless I was profiting to the tune of several thousand dollars a month, I wouldn’t need to send any money to the feds but even if I did, I’d be getting it back if I had enough “expenses” (like Amazon Ads and marketing fees) to cover the royalties I received.

At the mention of expenses, I barked a bitter laugh.  I told him the idea that I was profiting from my sales was laughable in the extreme.  Basically, a first book (barring some miraculous viral publicity) was a loss leader for the rest of the sequels.  He agreed that his other author clients had told him about what it took to grow a book business but he also warned me that the feds only give you three years to turn a profit before they stop considering it a business and declare it a hobby for which expenses are not credited.  Well, we’ll have to see about that.

So, we agreed I’d check back with him in June to see if I was any closer to needing to send some cash to the feds.  And he didn’t want to take a fee for his services today but I insisted.  The information I got had so eased my mind that I felt I would be robbing him of a well-earned reward if I didn’t give him fifty bucks.  I mean people who go to therapy to ease their minds pay their psychiatrists many hundreds of dollars and get less peace of mind than I did today.  I would have felt like a thief if I walked out for nothing.

And looking at my book’s Amazon page, I had two new very complimentary reviews.  One was from a friend of mine.  He disclosed our relationship but it was still a very good review.  And another one was from someone who was an Iraq War vet who enjoyed the scenes in the desert.  That kind of made my day.  So today is a good day to be a writer.

Book Writing and Blogging

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

Writing “The Sniper” was a massive learning experience for me.  Not only does it take up a lot of time but it also makes it much harder to do other things at the same time.  And vice versa!  Working, blogging and taking care of my other responsibilities really slowed down my book writing performance drastically.  And the time has come to begin writing the sequel.

So, something is going to have to give.  My decision is to cut back on the blogging.  Believe it or not even knocking out five hundred words has been taking a couple of hours.  And when I’m doing it at ten or eleven at night the quality has been way down.  The old brain just doesn’t click like it used to at that hour.

So, what I see happening is the posts will be hit and miss.  I’ll be able to keep the photos and quotes going without much strain.  But if I find myself scrambling for a theme, I’ll let it slide until I’ve got one that makes sense.  Quality over quantity.  It makes sense.

So, my apologies for my laziness but I am a man with definite limits.

Keeping My Options Open

photog Book Reviews, Movie Reviews, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews, SF&F Movie Reviews , , ,

One of my oldest friends has been advising me on the possibility of making a film treatment out of my book and sending it to Hollywood to become the next “Project Hail Mary.”  What immediately came to my mind was Hollywood taking the story and making the evil president, Donald Trump and making Bogey a leftist trans-woman.  Yikes!

But what was surprising is that there is actually an AI capable of taking my story and converting it directly into a film treatment.  And it has an enormous capability to annotate the details necessary for actually filming the thing.  There are notes on casting each of the characters (appearance, age, personality, voice), locations, special effects, visual effects, weapons, special personnel (e.g., armorer), special equipment, weapons, etc.

And then it used the dialog from the book and adapted it for the screen; shortened and elided from it to bring the screen time into a realistic movie length.

Now I haven’t finished going through this document but so far what I’ve seen seems very interesting.  It’s basically my book.  And that’s exciting.  I was assuming the story would be too long for a movie without very serious pruning of scenes that I’m attached to.  But we’ll see.

Now, I’m aware that Hollywood doesn’t make movies from books that don’t sell millions of copies.  They’re looking for a built-in fan base for their product.  So, no studio in their right minds would take a chance on spending potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on an unknown story.  But it’s always fun to dream about these things.

And that brings me to Andy Weir’s story.  He self-published “The Martian” on Amazon and only eventually got a book deal when he had already built up an audience for it on his own.  And now he has two hit movies made from his books.  Think about that.  Someone who couldn’t get a publishing contract ends up with a smash hit movie that everyone in Hollywood probably hates because it has a white guy as its hero and he doesn’t have the usual diversity cast to allow the movie to be an Oscar contender.  They broke all of Hollywood’s rules to make this movie by not having a girl-boss as the hero surrounded by the usual multi-cultural struggle session ensemble.  It just brings tears to my eyes.

Chances are I won’t be duplicating Weir’s experience.  My book is not an uplifting tale of human endeavor.  Mine is a tale of revenge and destruction.  I openly attack the Left and my heroes are identifiable people on the Right.  So, no.  I won’t be getting a Hollywood deal.  Ever!

But despite all that I’m excited about what is now happening in Hollywood.  The Ellisons bought Paramount and have now shut down the travesty that was Star Trek – Star Fleet Academy.  They’re buying Warner Brothers and they’ll probably shut down the people making terrible stuff like “Supergirl” that’s coming out soon.  And now we see Amazon/MGM making stuff like “Project Hail Mary (PHM).”  That’s a pretty good chunk of Hollywood already.  And with PHM looking like it’s going to break the $600 million mark and become a big moneymaker, even places like Netflix and Disney will say to themselves, “Hey, why can’t we get into some of that “normal film-making” that those other guys are doing and make money for a change?  Let’s call that photog guy and get an option on, “The Sniper” before the Ellisons scoop it up.”

Or something like that!

Thinking of Humor

photog Humor, Literature, My Fiction, photog's Corner , ,

If you go through my entire book looking for moments of humor, I think there are fewer than ten.  And that is counting sarcasm as humor.  I’m guessing that in an adventure story that’s probably not unusual.  With a team of men that know each other pretty well, there will be a certain amount of banter which can be defined as humor.  But, I don’t feel like I’ve fallen below some critical thresh-hold of comedic content.

But, at the same time, I have to confess that comedy is one of the things I greatly enjoy in stories.  To my mind stories that do not have a certain amount of humor seem flat and lacking in interest.  And for that reason, I was recently wondering if I could introduce a character in my next book that is a “wise guy.”  And by wise guy I’m not thinking of the Good Fellas definition of an Italian American mobster as a wise guy.  I’m harking back to my childhood when every block had at least one guy who was the clown.  In my neighborhood we had a kid who today would equate most closely to an insult comic.  He was a mimic and he could find a way to mock anyone and everyone.  This often earned him at least a mild beating if the victims of his mockery pooled their strength to grapple him to the ground and pummel him until he shut up.  But it was almost as if he couldn’t help himself.  He was a slave to his craft.

Now I don’t intend to try and recreate that type of juvenile humor but I think I could make a character who doesn’t know when to shut up.  I’m guessing I’d have to do a lot of work editing the dialog from this character because obviously that’s the kind of thing that pretty easily can be taken too far.  As an example, look at the movie Dead Pool.  This character shoots an almost endless series of insulting jokes at every other character in range regardless of whether they’re friends or enemies.  For the most part it’s entertaining but at some points it can become wearisome.  So, I understand that doing comedy “right” is a matter of balance and skill.  And the other part of it is providing the “comic” with a foil; a straight man.  So Dead Pool needs the haplessly earnest Colossus as the butt of a lot of his jokes.  Building up a duo like that must be handled carefully so that these two characters can be more than caricatures.  And all of this mustn’t take away from the main action of the story but merely come off as the personalities of the characters involved.  It needs to seem organic to the relationship of the people involved.

Now after talking all that through, it seems like this would be a lot of work for not much gain to the story.  But for whatever reason, I’m excited by the idea.  Making the characters real seems to be as important to the writer as making the action exciting.  I’ve found myself actually caring for my make-believe people as if they were real.  Well, anyway, tonight I was thinking of humor.

The Psychology of the Individual and What Not

photog My Fiction, photog's Corner , , , ,

So now I have to start writing book two of my series.  And boy, that’s a wide-open operation.  You see I wrote the book based on the idea of a father’s revenge.  And all the stuff that grew out of that was seat of the pants writing that came to me as things that would make the story more fun.  I invented Connors to give Bogey a powerful friend who owed him.  I invented Cutter to facilitate the impossible task of Bogey being invisible to the surveillance state.  I invented Chastain to have a conflicted antagonist to provide resistance to the protagonist but also acknowledge the justice of his cause.  All of these major characters and the plot elements they involve just grew out of the desire to tell Bogey’s story in an interesting and dramatic way.  But Bogey’s crusade is over.  He won.  He steps out of the center stage.  Now what?

It’s not an easy question to answer because I need a direction to go.  Certain things are now baked in.  The United States government nuked some of its own citizens.  A shadowy tech giant took down Washington DC with a technology nobody (including me!) truly understands.  This weakened United States is struggling to hold onto the allegiance of many states that have seen its unjust criminal actions exposed and want to free themselves from its tyrannical control.  That’s a lot of stuff going on.  It’s like the cue ball hitting the racked balls on the nose and scattering them across the table.  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put things back together again.  So, we have to dodge around the flying wreckage and wait for the ricochets to subside before planning the next move.  Of course, I could cheat and place the next story five, ten or even twenty years into the future and announce some faits accomplis as ancient history.  And I know that is the lazy way out but, after all, I am an extremely lazy man.

But all of that is still only the window dressing of the story.  Hanging together a future history is relatively easy.  What I really need is another character with as compelling a problem as Bogey had with his son.  But really the two elements are linked.  Bogey’s problem grew out of the injustice of the society he lived in and his war against this injustice gives the story its trigger but the larger effect also has to be an interesting story too.  So, I need another personal story wrapped up in the tumult I have set loose on my imaginary world.  So, what I’m looking for is a personal story that is tied up in the larger actions that I’ve unleashed and that takes the world in a direction I think will be interesting and lead to further stories and actions beyond.  The only problem is where to start.  Hmmm.

“I fear I have nothing to suggest at the moment, sir.”

“Come, come, Jeeves!” 

“I fear not, sir. Possibly after I have seen the lady—-“

“You mean, you want to study the psychology of the individual and what

not?”

“Precisely, sir.”