| A Lovecraftian Tribute To Mars |
[Sep. 25th, 2009|09:59 am] |
At the beginning I thought this video was strictly an animated homage to Lovecraft's Deep Ones. However as the scene progressed, I could see the incidental nods toward the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Gustav Holst.
This is delightful:
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| Contagion's Shadow Contracted |
[Sep. 10th, 2009|02:46 pm] |
Aspen Mountain Press has contracted my new horror novella Contagion’s Shadow.
If our bacteria killed the “Martians,” what did their contagion microbes leave behind for us?
One hundred and fifteen years after H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds a deadly contagion, the walking sickness, [from Wells' Shapes of Things To Come] has returned to infect the countryside with a terrible blight.
This also comes at a time when the September Fast Draft goes into effect. Soon we'll be off and running. |
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| Special Sale From Our Publisher. |
[Aug. 26th, 2009|01:36 am] |
Summer is quickly drawing to a close. The kids are headed back to school, college football games are about to start, cooler nights are on the way and it won't be long before the leaves change from green to their stunning reds, oranges and yellows.
Now that life is returning, more or less to routine, we want you to take a few moments for yourself and enjoy the less hectic pace you've been keeping by offering you 5% off your next purchase at Aspen Mountain Press.
Just enter: Summer09 at checkout to receive your savings on your purchase of $2.00 or more.
Go on. Take a little time...for yourself. You deserve it. Visit Aspen Mountain Press today and take advantage of our offer. The coupon expires after Labor Day, so don't hesitate.
Here's what the publisher says:
If you could barely stand waiting for a release of Lord of the Rings on the big screen, if you enjoy fantasy conventions and have a certain fondness for dragons, then you'll definitely want to pick up a copy of Phlogiston by Jefferson Dane.
After twenty years of an uneasy treaty between dragons and mankind, a noblewoman is found burned and mutilated in an apparent dragon attack. Have the dragons broken their own treaty? Can an apprentice scholar and a merchant savant hiding a dark secret, uncover the mystery in time to stop a war? There is more to contend with in this action filled tale than just the might of the dragons, especially when there is no way humans can survive a dragon attack.
http://www.aspenmountainpress.com/new-releases/phlogiston/prod_260.html |
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| Checking In With You |
[Aug. 12th, 2009|12:30 am] |
So my son and collaborator informed me last night that he wasn't going to do word one on the manuscript for our "War of the Worlds" one hundred and fifteen years later novel [that's sixty-two point seven years in Martian time] until I finished Fast Draft this upcoming weekend.
Good night last night...over 2000 words total. Didn't do so well today.
The difference between father and son was never so obvious as it was last night: he played video games while I wrote. But he says his last band gig trumps any complaint I might make anyway. He played muzak covers of 50s, 60s, and 70s instrumentals to an audience of somber mourners on one side and the casket and corpse on the other. Fairly good money in funeral music, I guess. Turns out the minister was thrilled with the whole idea.
Well, I was rather hoping for a boost in the manuscript word count so I infected a number of characters with the "walking sickness" last night. Stephen King suggested that everybody needs to try to end the world occasionally for the sheer joy of it (all right, I suppose he meant that every misanthrope like me should do that), turned out to be a great catharsis infecting and dooming a small percentage of the population of my book.
Today I brought my female lead's ex-husband back into town--a nasty piece of work if you've ever met one. I've been debating on how to handle him. Taking a break to write this post and get food for myself. |
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| Fast Draft... |
[Aug. 8th, 2009|07:12 pm] |
In the immortal words of Larry the Cable Guy, "Get 'er done!"
I joined in the Fast Draft competition at Dungeon Lena Yahoo Group. The group is by invitation only, although they don’t really check your pedigree. Writers are a rather mongrel lot.
The first thing you learn about fast draft is NOT to Edit which of course goes against the grain of any would be writer and even remotely successful authors as well. Participants must also banish the evil inner editor demon within as well. The impish entity who pokes and prods and tells you that what you’ve written is not good enough for toilet paper let alone publication.
I’ve pushed about 13,000 words forward on a new novel through today. My goal has been to maintain two thousand words per day and I've had a decent week. Lost a day or so to my computer being down, but other than that pretty good stuff.
Of course, it’s time I went back to work. |
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| Wisdom From My Publisher |
[Jul. 27th, 2009|01:04 pm] |
What you represent here is a genre that is unfortunately behind romance and tied or slightly behind mysteries in what you write/sell.
In order to garner some publicity try to do the following:
1) Think about the core message/theme of your work
2) Find a way to relate a core component of your work to the everyday life of people.
3) Work on becoming an "expert" in that component.
Here is a general example:
Jefferson Dane wrote a marvelous story called Flyover about, for lack of a better description, "night terrors" a soldier saw in Afghanistan. He wrote the story as a series of psychological evaluation notations once the soldier was back in the military hospital in Germany. He could become an "expert" in a number of areas for this story...
1. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
2. Afghan mythology
3. Psychological trauma
4. American / Afghan politics
5. Military weaponry
6. The Grief Process
7. Survivor's Guilt
8. Dealing with nightmares
9. What to expect from a psychological evaluation/treatment program
10.Afghan history/historical sites/influential people
I'm sure you could brainstorm others.
Once you've hit upon an area of "expertise" you want to mine it. Write more stories with that as a component or theme. Contact people in your community to deepen your research, heck, contact people on the web who are field experts. Interview them for your blog. Then follow the news...in regards especially to your area of interest. Market yourself as a person of knowledge in your topic area. Send a bio to your local radio programs, especially the drive time programs who always like to get interesting people to talk to...especially authors. If you present yourself as being knowledgeable in say, survivor's guilt, the interviewer will do the part about promoting your work. He will say, "And I've been talking with Jefferson Dane, author of Flyover a paranormal story dealing with survivor's guilt."
I've got a lot more information on what to do with a radio interview (which btw is perfect for author's since most tend to be shy and a radio is the best way to ease into the limelight), so if you are interested in more pointers, I can work something up for you.
Sandra
Aspen Mountain Press |
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| Gorillaz Safety Dance |
[Jun. 9th, 2009|04:14 am] |
There are some break ups in one spot, but otherwise this video is enjoyable (almost hypnotic) if you've been up way too late and your brain is sort of...fried. |
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| So My Birthday's Coming Up |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|03:59 pm] |
So my birthday's coming up and instead of giving my children a list of what I'd love "Oh that's all right you don't need to bother..." I decided to check the list of people who had the same birthday as me June 29.
Only to discover that every "famous person" born on June 29 is someone I haven't heard of...
June 29 people I know (heard of): Nelson Eddy 1901, Slim Pickens 1919, Ray Harryhausen 1920, Soon-Tek Oh 1943, Gary Busey 1944, Richard Lewis 1947, Amanda Donahoe 1962, and Sharon Lawrence 1962.
Celebrity names I didn't recognize: Nascar star Jeff Burton, actress Melora Hardin, cyclist George Hincapie, actor Sam Ball, Wil Kemp, singer Nicole Scherzinger, Katherine Jenkins, Christopher Egan, and Addison Timlin.
Historical figures: Pretty much nobody you'd recognize...
Oh, kids, I'd pretty much like to see you and be taken out to dinner. Or bookstore gift cards. |
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| Which Star Trek Character Are You? |
[May. 19th, 2009|01:36 pm] |
Your results:
You are Beverly Crusher
| Beverly Crusher |
| 60% |
| Chekov |
| 55% |
| Geordi LaForge |
| 55% |
| An Expendable Character (Redshirt) |
| 55% |
| Uhura |
| 50% |
| Jean-Luc Picard |
| 50% |
| Leonard McCoy (Bones) |
| 45% |
| Worf |
Actually as I read the questions, I kind of saw this coming.
| 45% |
| James T. Kirk (Captain) |
| 40% |
| Will Riker |
| 40% |
| Spock |
| 37% |
| Mr. Scott |
| 35% |
| Mr. Sulu |
| 35% |
| Data |
| 34% |
| Deanna Troi |
| 25% |
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A good physician and a caring parent.
You are devoted to your children
and to your occupation.
 |
Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...
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| It's A Robot? Hang Up! |
[May. 15th, 2009|08:11 am] |
The FTC is suing some car warranty telemarketing companies for using robo-call cold calling techniques.
Yes, it's a PITA to have telemarketers at any time, but robo-calls aren't the worst.
Here's a common sense solution. Everyone has caller ID these days except those living antiques with rotary phones. If you see a call coming in from someone you don't know, let the voice mail get it.
If you answer it by mistake, hang up.
I mean, Bender aside, are you going to insult a robot? |
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| Fantasy/Horror Book Contracted |
[May. 5th, 2009|12:39 pm] |
Our orphaned fantasy novel Phlogiston has been contracted approximately a year after the old publisher went "belly up" so to speak.
In an alternate history Wales, around 700 CE, a despicable act of murder appears to break the fragile treaty between humans and dragons. The story details the search for the killer of a Welsh noblewoman found burned and mutilated on the Merchant road between her home city and a port city she’d been visiting.
Phlogiston (Flo-GEE-ston): A hypothetical colorless, odorless, weightless substance believed to be the combustible part of all flammable substances and to be given off as flame during burning. Alternate: The glands of a flame-throwing dragon which secrete fire.
Blurb: In the age of Beowulf, after twenty years of an uneasy treaty between dragons and mankind, a noblewoman is found burned and mutilated in an apparent dragon attack. Have the dragons broken their own treaty? Can apprentice scholar, Gwyneth, and the mysterious Prince Galduric, a merchant savant hiding a dark secret, uncover the mystery in time to stop a war?
Sighing with relief... |
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| Health Insurance CEO Salaries |
[Apr. 22nd, 2009|06:38 am] |
I first intended to jump into this post to discuss the fact that the CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield has had his salary double over the past two years--from Nine hundred-plus thousand dollars per year to one million eight hundred thousand dollars annually this year.
This year my co-pay jumped by 100 dollars to three hundred per year off the top--pay it first come every January...or else. I learned this was so I could help the CEO keep up with his lifestyle. Little did I know that the "Amway style" set up of BC/BS is nothing compared to the powerhouse salaries of the giants in the HMO insurance industries: Oxford Health Plans, Cigna Corp., Aetna Inc., and Humana Inc.
Here we're talking the complete range from 29 million for Oxford top management to a mere five million for Humana's CEO.
I guess my 300 buck deductible is a mere pittance to the needs of those boys.
Besides, if the administration has it's way with CEO caps, they could all end up on a fixed income soon. |
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| The Trials of A Youngster |
[Apr. 22nd, 2009|06:23 am] |
Some people have no choice but to endure the kind of lives the rest of us might shudder about.
Take a look at what my grandson Elliott Davis is going through.
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| There May Be Buggs on Some of You Muggs... |
[Mar. 28th, 2009|12:45 pm] |
Okay, so I'm a full week late. Last week Manolete shared the venue with The Muggs. Guitarist and vocalist Danny Methric, drummer Matt Rost, and bass keyboardist Tony DeNardo. The Muggs have been part of the Detroit scene since 2000 (earlier when you consider previous bands), and they were a strong enjoyable blues presence on stage.
Fox used to run a show called "The Next Great American Band." Here is the opening round with The Muggs.
Things really looked great for Danny, Tony, and Matt until the nonsense rules got in the way. Each competing band had to do an original and then choose a song by a popular songwriter or songwriting team. In this case every competing band had to do a number by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. A mistake in anybody's book.
You had to wonder if "Saturday (Night's Alright For Fightin') was available.
Danny's response to the judges came off as very childish. Still the format of the show was the ultimate downfall. Has anybody ever heard of The Clark Brothers again? They won the competition. |
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| Sunday at the Token Lounge |
[Mar. 16th, 2009|02:16 pm] |
I've had discussions with the Jeef a few times over the strength of Manolete's dynamics in studio recordings and live performances. In fact, he's the one who pointed out the necessity of reworking a piece just to revitalize his own energy. I think you can take the new recording of "Broken" as a perfect example. Several people have been taken aback by the curious production values and additional tonal values that move through what has been a staple Manolete song for quite a while.
Interestingly the live production of "Broken" at the Token Lounge in Westland harkened back to the original flavor of the song.
All in all yesterday's club concert came off very well musically (since he had a cold, Jon-Jon's voice was not at its best). There's just something wonderful about cold and flu season. However, as always Manolete's instrumentation sounded top notch.
The new version of "Dead Is Alive" played out vibrant and exciting, and of course all of their standard material came off highly polished and energized. All in all audience reaction was mixed. After all it was Westland, and since they didn't play any Limp Bizkit, the crowd didn't relate.
But as a live gig, Manolete came off pretty successful. |
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