Le $.99 / Free Sale (this weekend)

This weekend, I’m offering all of my books at either $.99 or Free @ Amazon!

Angry Sale

Including my latest release “Diabolus”

The Evolution of Custom Art #5

Right. So. It’s been a while since I’ve updated anything. Trevor Smith, the artist for “Diabolus,” just sent me this a while ago:

"Diabolus" 6x9 paperback cover (almost complete!)

“Diabolus” 6×9 paperback cover (almost complete!)

 

The Evolution of Custom Art #4

Yay! Trevor sent me a final ‘rough’ sketch of the scene as we’ve agreed on. It’s making me extremely excited. I can only hope the book itself is even 5% as awesome as the cover.

Final 'rough' scene sketch before painting!

Final ‘rough’ scene sketch before painting!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can’t wait to see this fully painted! There’s still the whole back cover to show you at some point.

The Evolution of Custom Art #3

Right. So. As you might have seen a while back, I was having some custom artwork done for two books: “Extraction” and “Diabolus”

To make a long, rage-filled story short and to the point, I found a new artist:
Trevor Smith
Trevor Smith Art

Here’s the initial concept sketch(es) he sent me:

"Diabolus" initial rough sketches

“Diabolus” initial rough sketches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I picked out a lot of the things I liked from all four panels, let Trevor know, and this is what he’s sent back:

"Diaboulus" secondary rough sketches

“Diaboulus” secondary rough sketches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stay tuned to see what the next stage of evolution is for the cover, as well as the eventual finish product (which will also have a ‘back cover’ for the print paperback version).

The Big Bhang #4: Make Joints, Not War

The Big Bhang #1: The Master & The Streak
The Big Bhang #2: Global Legalization & The Human War Machine
The Big Bhang #3: The Lill & The Backstory of the Backstory

             4. Make Joints, Not War

Forjay sat in the lobby of the GlrgHlkd Hotel and Convention Center on Rialta-9, spreading his attention between watching the numerous strange aliens wander past him, and watching GANJA on his wrist comm. Galactic Al-Jazeera News and Journalism Association anchor Zarg Graxon, a Ji, which is a race of lizard-like bipeds, vaguely humanoid, except for the upper classes, who all have a third eye on a stalk protruding from the top of their heads, was relaying the latest galactic day’s news. The top story, for the four hundredth day in a row, was about how little time the upstart humans had left before being ground into raw elements by the combined might of the Galactic Union.

Humans, other than Forjay, of course, raged at their holo sets and flat screens and wrist comms at the news, with a number of them using the Federation internet to lodge complaints detailing how GANJA was nothing but an alien tool to spout propaganda to the masses about how awful humans were, and how they should be exterminated. Of course, like most humans, the majority of them refused to pay for premium cable or satellite, and watched the clips on the net. The clips, when not pure propaganda from xenophobic types that lived in trailer parks and on bubbles attached to asteroids, were generally badly subtitled from half-assed translations.

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The Big Bhang #3: The Lill & The Backstory of the Backstory

The Big Bhang #1: The Master & The Streak
The Big Bhang #2: Global Legalization & The Human War Machine

3. The Lill and the Backstory of the Backstory

Within two hours of the Hipronians coming across humans wandering about within the Hipronian Outer Colonies, the Galactic Union had been informed that the one hundred and eighty-eighth race of star-faring aliens had been encountered. Within forty-eight hours after humanity’s first contact with an alien race, a massive GU warship entered Earth’s orbit and demanded a meeting with the leaders of the FAP.

Even then, some of the FAP generals wanted to lob a few nuclear warheads at the GU ship, just to see if they had shields, and to see if they were tough. Luckily for humans, the generals weren’t able to actually make military decisions on their own. Once holovid footage of the warship in orbit reached the government, everyone visibly trembled. Some even fainted. According to the satellite laser scans, most of the gun barrels on the alien ship were large enough to fire shells the same size as the rockets humans were using to put those satellites into space with.

The humans agreed, and the GU warship sent down a dropship. Humans across the entire Federation held their breaths as the landing gear settled on the ground outside of the U.N. building in New York City. They were hoping that these aliens were cute and fuzzy like the Hipronians. When a frightening monster with four arms and what seemed like hundreds of claws, fangs, and gun barrels stepped from the dropship, panic riots broke out all over the Federation.

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The Big Bhang #2: Global Legalization & The Human War Machine

The Big Bhang #1: The Master & The Streak

             2. Global Legalization and the Human War Machine

Planet Earth barely survived the 21st century. By 2020, there were forty-three major wars going on across the world. By 2045, water was becoming something worth threatening nuclear war over, oil was more expensive than diamonds, and the feeling on the majority of human minds was that there might only be five more years left before everything went up like a powder keg and madmen made good on their threats of annihilation.

In a last, desperate attempt to keep the clock from counting down the final two minutes to midnight, the world’s leaders sent their best diplomats and statesmen to Geneva and tried to figure out how to turn things around. One brash, young diplomat from Australia showed up with a half-kilo of a strain of marijuana called “Fuck You.” He spent the night before the first day’s meetings rolling over two hundred joints. Not the giant bombers that he regularly enjoyed, but not little pinners either that were mostly paper and might have a quarter of a microgram of actual weed in them. He calculated that most of the other diplomats were noobs, or at least nowhere near as experienced as he was, and rolled the doobies just large enough to blow their minds, but not make them run screaming from the meeting as if they’d been doused in kerosene and set on fire.

The first day’s meetings ran almost fourteen hours over what they’d been scheduled for, and the diplomats had ordered so much pizza that a portable Pizza Heaven restaurant had to be flown in from an American air base in Germany just to meet demand. The owners of the local shops publicly grumbled, but privately laughed and rubbed their mistresses’ legs as they drove their brand new Mercedes down the Eurobahn at more than two hundred kilometers per hour or more.

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It’s Harder This Way – update

Right. So… apparently over the last few days, “It’s Better This Way” shot up from its normal rank of around #3000 in the Amazon free store and peaked at #96 (last I checked, anyway). I suppose a lot of you reading this might be here to find out what the hell I’ve been up to, and why, after an entire year, is there still no more to this story?

Imagine my surprise when someone alerted me to the fact this story started climbing up the rankings. Also imagine my dismay that this story, which has always done very well for almost the entire year it had been out, is suddenly shooting up the charts and I still don’t have a single word typed for a sequel or a prequel.

Yeah, I know, it says at the back of the book that I’ve been working on it. Imagine more of my dismay when I had to fix the Amazon version because I changed covers and forgot to credit the new cover artist, and read the end notes again.

I asked myself why I had yet to write another word in this universe, knowing that I could have written something, ANYTHING, and made a few bucks. Enough to finish painting the interior of our house (long story, don’t ask, fills me with rage to even think about it), or at least buy a new toilet (a scary story, and one that fills The Wife with rage, so let’s not talk about it either).

I realized the answer was that I haven’t written a single word yet because I just didn’t feel it in my heart. I DO love this story, and it will always be special to me because it was the first real story I ever published. And I do love the universe I set up. However, the few times I’ve actually tried to come up with more of this story, it has always felt forced, fake, as if my heart just wasn’t in it.

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Can You Save A Life Over The Internet?

So last night while I was tooling around Tumblr, I happened to come across a post on someone’s blog (she runs a sort of anti-bullying blog and she’s awesome). As you can see below, it was fairly disturbing:

every-one-is-mad-here: Would anyone here be pissed off or Sad if I committed suicide today? Seriously considering it.

If this was ten years ago, I might have not cared much, or worse, thought it was some cry for attention. Keep in mind I haven’t always been the nicest or most caring guy for a big chunk of my life. But over the last decade or so, I’ve had a huge shift in my thinking. Continue reading