Jason Z. Christie's Blog

OG Don Vito, Jimmy Green, and Other Royalty of the Hip-Hop Renaissance

    

        So, damn it, man. First of all, to put paid to my last column of some two years ago or more, Amazon finally caved and published Boogaloo. I have two readers, one of which I’m married to, so it’s sort of a pyrrhic victory. Anyway… I despise every libertarian and ancap that has never read it, which is all of them. 

The few of you who know me and actually read my stuff know I go back pretty far in the indie hip-hop underground (and the metal/hardcore one…). My involvement with hip-hop dates to literal decades before I had my little indie run around 2006-2008. 

At some point, I was done. I hit my first high mark with the amazing DJ Manticore. He can be blamed for anything I’ve done since 2000, honestly. Roman will always be my dog. Later on, I was blessed to work with Kid Charlamaign, who did about six tracks for me with all live instruments. Yet another dream come true. I’m not even sure what crazy period I went through to lose touch with him, honestly. I’ve had a few.

But that nerd rap scene dissipated. In fact, I tore it the fuck down because almost everyone involved was ultimately a shitbag. Y’all know who you are. No regrets. High-C owned your punk asses. 

I had done a few solo tracks, but I’m not super into producing, and I was past my prime. Or so I thought. A key figure from back in the days of the nerdcore-indie-hip-hop-revival scene was a low-key producer and sometimes MC named OG Don Vito. You can go back and check out his work all the way back to the early days of that scene. My man was right up front from the first. 

Unlike a lot of people, though, he kept his head down through the whole rise and fall, and beyond. His love of hip-hop and nerd rap never faded. In fact, he doubled down. His abilities grew to an insane degree, building on his early talents to become a legendary nerdcore producer. All the while remaining humble as hell and just an all-around great person. His skill set, ultimately, made him one of the greatest producers in hip-hop, period, to me. His style was one of utter clarity and boom, devoid of a moment of clutter. A Dre-level producer. 

He so loved nerdcore hip-hop that he eventually revived the Rhyme Torrents board that started the whole thing. But, as I said, the nerdcore artists were largely immature back when we started, and most never seemed to experience any real personal growth. Still, it was an immense gesture, and it even led to rounding out the Rhyme Torrents compilation discs to an even ten. And then friend and associate David Mercer actually released Rhyme Torrents 11. Just wow. It was wild to see.

About two years ago, Don Vito hit me up about doing a track. I’m not even sure why. But it worked for us. So, we did another one. That led to a full-blown concept album the likes of which nerdcore hip-hop had never seen. An utter tribute to old school boom bap, with decidedly super nerdy lyrics and concepts, coupled with an underlying writer theme. I am still very psyched at what we pulled off. It’s catchy, danceable, and has some of the best production in the world, nerdcore or not.

If all this is sounding like a eulogy, it kinda is...

In the midst of some 44 new tracks, OG Don Vito is missing in action. I fear the worst. He’s an utter man of mystery, and no one knows his real name, how to contact him other than via email, etc. I am wildly distraught, to say the least. I’ve put out every feeler I can via a number of methods. It’s about all I can do, at this point, and hope for the best. I’d rather he had just ghosted me than for anything bad to have happened to him, on any level.

All of which lead to me writing this column, which isn’t the one I had initially wanted to publish.

After several months of mourning, so to speak, I have elected to try and move forward with our final two projects together, the Collabs and Covers album, which was a somewhat experimental foray into some more rock-oriented hip-hop, and involved several collaborative efforts. What I fear will be our final effort, an album called Hipcrime, also involved a number of indie artists who deserve to have their work heard, possible tragedy aside.

In an effort to finish these terrific songs we both worked so hard on, I have drawn upon some important human resources available in the thriving online indie hip-hop community that centers primarily around Twitter. Which lead me to this column, because these people and the scene they’ve fostered deserve to be mentioned and documented for posterity.

First of all, I had to enlist the phenomenal Jimmy Green to lay down some serious scratching for a few tracks that simply have to see the light of day. One involves indie darling Backwood Sweetie, an artist that I have previously compared to Jean Grae most favorably. Except Sweetie has much more depth and range, at this point, and has never abandoned hip-hop... The two combined are unstoppable.

Scratch that (pun intended), two versions of that song! It is quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever been involved with. It’s utter worship of the old school that brought us all into existence. A call to arms for MCs to pick up the mic and wage war on the decaying system that has us all bound and fucked up. Trust me, when you hear it, you’ll understand perfectly.

He also laid down scratch parts for an insane rap cover that has me so jazzed, I can’t believe it. Then there’s the matter of an unpublished verse I have from a recently deceased MC who was one of the greatest underground rappers of all time… Stay tuned for that. All I can say is that if you need a producer of any sort, he should be at the top of your list. Impeccable results, fast turnaround, and terrific execution. He’s seriously one of the major players in this little hip-hop revival we have going on in both the UK and US. If you think you can’t afford a producer or scratch DJ, think again. He works on a sliding scale, you might be pleasantly surprised. I can’t endorse this man enough. As further proof, check out his untouchable mixtapes... And more mixtapes and remixes. This man wears the crown, heavy is his head.

I offer two examples of his work that are absolutely standout, top-notch, head and shoulders above anything the commercial hip-hop world has on offer: the remix he did of OG Don Vito’s title track Brute Force Attack, and the song that introduced me to Backwood and an array of killer underground MCs, Let It Burn. If these two songs don’t convince you that he’s an absolute prodigy, what can I say? You’re not hip-hop, and never will be. 

That leads me to another person who I have long since owed some written credit to. Well, a few more people. I’m going somewhere with this. But I have known Aerik Von for, oh, 30 years, more or less? Way, way back in the days of Unsung Heroes Records, one of his early bands/projects, Black Moon Rising did a split tape with my band Gortician, called Triple Penetration. A major underground classic you’ll likely never even be able to find.

Unlike myself, who eventually sold my drums after disbanding the group I was involved with, Aerik has kept on. And kept on. Much like Don Vito, he stayed in the game the whole damn time, never compromised, and became a terribly talented musician and producer. If he hasn’t released a hundred projects in his lifetime, I would be surprised. 

And forget that he’s dabbled in so many different aspects of metal alone, never rehashing his riffs or others’, which alone is an impossible feat. He’s broken out in a big way in synthwave, ambient soundtrack music, and even horrorcore. He’s due a career retrospective, but for now, I can only offer these words of praise, and a link. Not only is Aerik capable of anything you can imagine, production and performing-wise, he heads up a recording studio as a day job, and can literally handle your project from conceptualizing to final master. He’s the Steve Albini of metal, while not being anywhere near a dead asshole like Albini is.

While each of the above listed individuals are notable contributors to an overall indie music revival, there’s one pair that actually merit all of the above praise and then some.

Musically, they are known as Formaldehyde Slums and Lord Slums, of the group Loop City Slums. If I just went off and sang their praises as musicians, I could fill another page or two, easily. As lyricists, and lovers of hip-hop and indie music in general, they have some serious credentials and chops. I don’t know one head in 100 that can freestyle like these two can, playing off of each other like they’d rehearsed something many times beforehand, and it’s always either off the dome or ‘from the tuck’, as they say. Lyrically, they stomp a mudhole in any mainstream chump’s asses, and put to shame the majority of underground heads, as well. On top of that, they are straight-up fools at production and songwriting in general. I’ve been privy to a few new tracks, and various unreleased pieces, and these just provide the punctuation at the end of a long sentence declaring them top-tier hip-hop artists. 

But that’s to be expected. I only fuck with musical geniuses. Always have.

Where these cats also stand out from their peers is in their approach to promotion. In essence, they promote everyone but themselves. That may seem counterintuitive, but it’s the only sane way to do things. Having been through it several times now, I will tell you if you’re reading this: you will only go so far by promoting only yourself. I see so many people who operate that way, and I find it kind of sad. But it’s whateversies.

The Slums are a different breed altogether. Far wiser and more savvy, and they have a much greater love of hip-hop than most indie artists put together. This is all evident in their actions, which are primarily focused on a little show called Spin It Up…

Spin It Up is a live music review show that breaks new artists and tracks on a weekly basis. Each episode showcases several songs and videos that should be in heavy rotation nationally. I am committed to doing whatever I can to raise awareness regarding their show. Because, by supporting the Slums, I am also supporting everyone under the broad shadow of their umbrella. I cannot heap enough praise on ya boys. And KushQueen, their unsung secret weapon, and third wing of their triumvirate. I am in awe of what they’re doing, musically and otherwise. Their “best-of” show Blammerz has replaced MTV, Rap City, Pump It Up, Night Flight, and any old dope music show you can imagine. They have shamed the entire entertainment industry all on their own. 

That’s not to say there aren’t others making the same efforts along those lines. All in all, we seem to have a loose network of indie heads working furiously around the clock to elevate the artform back to its once lofty status. Sit in on a few Spin It Up sessions, and you’ll see the other major players. If you release music, you owe it to yourself to utilize their talents. If you’re a fan of good and great music, stop complaining that music is dead. It clearly isn’t, you’re just not paying attention in the right places. 

The list is long, and by no means inclusive. Clysmic, Doc, D$, Madi all do shows of one sort or another, constantly promoting indie artists. Standout MCs like Pu, Paulo, Patty Honcho and so many others are doing work that so easily surpasses the greatest efforts of mainstream MCs that have millions in backing, and the same goes for producers like WZRD and Insomniac, to name just two. If you are for real about hip-hop, you absolutely have to look into what’s going on in the true indie realm. But to get there, you need to go through the slums. Straight up. They are insanely active on Twitter, which also streams their weekly shows. 

Meh. I have a lot more to say, but the coffee is wearing off. I still have to add some links to this and publish, but I wanted to give these folks a quick shout-out, although I really do owe them all a whole lot more than this. Every little bit counts. Buy some indie art today if you can. Retweet, like, share, subscribe to their things. Sometimes a few kind words are all we get for pouring our lives into our passions.

If anyone knows anything about Don Vito, please get ahold of me. Meanwhile, I am going to plunge on ahead and complete our unfinished works as a tribute. 

Peace,
High-C

Amazon is Trash for Authors, and I Hate Them So Much

Look, 2011 was a crazy time for me, okay? I published something like four books in a heady rush of excitement on Amazon. All at once. Not well edited, with shitty covers. We know that. Well, I do. I don’t know who you are at all.

It was a mistake, I understand that. Own it. Embrace it. I paved the way so the people who followed later didn’t have to. I even get a decent little book out of it. (Note to self: Make this book free now.) I’ve spent a fair amount of time since then not only correcting my mistakes (you can’t, fully, which is why you need to listen and pay attention and not make the same mistakes), but in trying to prevent at least a few others from doing the same.

But now? My problems in Radar Love are down to the stylistic. And, not to be a dickhead, but even the very first published drafts won over a large majority of readers. My covers are pretty damn slick now. My blurbs and author bios still suck, I guess. That’s neither here nor there. While a great many deficiencies in my back catalog are my own, my greatest problems with Amazon lie in their own sordid practices.

The way they screw the dogshit out of me and my narrators, and all writers and narrators, for instance. As far as I know, they are still running a backdoor audiobook subscription service, giving the full cash value back on any audiobook up to 364 days later. At which time, they TAKE BACK THE ROYALTIES FROM THE WRITER AND NARRATOR.

What kind of cunty bullshit is this? I never signed any agreement to this end. Did I? Show me. I am especially incensed, because my poor narrators don’t make shit off of my books anyway. This is a strategy for Amazon, and like many of their strategies, it’s all slanted toward screwing indie authors over.

Now, it probably is my fault that they lock your audiobooks up for seven years, with a rolling reset, unless you shut them down on that. Nevertheless, it’s a very predatory practice. Scummy. But probably detailed somewhere in some terms I didn’t read. And I do know about it.

Forget that you have to know my book’s title AND my name just to be able to find it on Amazon. I mean, hell yes, put some product that has nothing to do with the search string two pages ahead of the book title that matches the search exactly. That’s super ethical. Kind of like those other huge pieces of shit, Google. But anyway. They’ll get their own essay. With screenshots.

Or how they made it insanely easy for anyone to drive-by and one-star a book, with no oversight, no recourse. This primarily happens to indies, of course. It’s something that helps mainstream publishers by hurting their competition.

Shitty, trashy, wildly unethical. Even when I had someone ADMIT that they one-starred my book out of spite, having never read it, and provided proof, the slag job reviews still sit there. Just enough, mind you, that I can’t even advertise on Bookbub until I get some more 5-star reviews to overcome it. This is after I provided literal proof, screenshots of the words of the person who did it. (If you must know, a piece of shit Indian book scammer who was unhappy because I called him out publicly.)

Now we come to why I currently hate these cunts more than I ever have before.

I use Amazon Vella as a writing tool. I mean, I did make something like $1000 when they were throwing money at us last year. I suspect that is all a tax dodge, loss leader strategy. Vella was very poorly implemented, and continues to operate that way. It’s not designed to succeed. And it can’t because it raises the cost of an ebook to $30-$40…

Now, I do credit Vella with enabling me to bring Everything Went Black, my first novel written specifically as a serial, to a wordcount approaching 80,000 words, with about 40,000 more to go. But I could have done that without them. But I do enjoy the immediacy of writing something in the morning, giving it a half-assed editing pass, and then publishing it.

I even had a few people reading daily, until I fell way the hell off with my writing. I’m just now back on the case, and I still don’t write a new chapter every day as I had before. But that’s on me.

I also put Penultimate Hustle L.A. on there, because it’s almost fully complete. No one seems to care about it, for whatever reason, so I haven’t been motivated to finish it yet, especially since it’s a rewrite from scratch of a book I already wrote once. I know how it ends. EWB is extremely satisfying, and is also loads beyond the Ultimate Hustle series (so far) in terms of quality writing and story, I feel.

My narrator and I also have an entire Radar Love audiobook that is days away from completion, but neither of us care too much about it because Amazon is just terrible.

HOWEVER, my main gripe of late is that Amazon has been sitting on a Vella story of mine for 14 months now.

Fourteen fucking months. They will not publish it. They will not tell me why. In fact, they openly lie to me, every two weeks or so, and say they are looking into this deeply technical issue. Apparently, no one at that entire organization has really mastered their own software. Somehow, my book is a special case, composed of alien symbols or something.

Just completely insulting bullshit, piled to the ceiling. Fucking pathetic. But I’m still kind of locked into Amazon for now. Because of inertia.

Now, I don’t think it’s entirely coincidental that the book they won’t publish is called Boogaloo, and is kind of edgy in a political sense. The sort of book some douchebags don’t want published.

In fact, a good author friend of mine revealed a simply truth that I have never considered. Amazon is the force behind a much bigger sort of ‘shadowbanning’ that can occur across platforms, without coordination.

How, you ask, assuming this is crazy talk? Because most social media goes through Amazon Web Services.

It’s that simple. If they decide they don’t want you to have visibility, you will disappear from Amazon searches. From Twitter and Facebook searches. Instagram. Or whatever platforms they host. It’s all black box stuff, and they hold all the cards.

So, fuck my life. If you’ve never published yet, but are considering it, put Amazon at the bottom of your list. Get your stuff everywhere else, first. I could relate some of my friend’s own personal horror story, which goes WAY beyond all this. Their book was making sales that they never got royalties for. Then it was shadowbanned.

Now it’s pulled, and avenues for distribution have been closed. Amazon has rigged the game for her so much that it is no longer financially feasible to publish her book. She invoked lawyers, and in response, she is blocked at the IP level on a regular basis.

A book that is in high demand, in fact. Waiting lists for a used copy extend up to a year. This is so disheartening. I once had optimism as a writer. Now all I see is a gigantic, evil conglomerate working in the shadows to fuck over aspiring new writers.  It makes me shoot blood out of my fucking eyes, I hate them so bad.

I do hope Jeff Bezos gets AIDS. Fuck you Amazon. Fuck you in your stupid ass.

Oh, here are my books, by the way. The prices will go up if I ever feel they are good enough for prime time. https://t.co/wvJqHUaryb

Check out Everything Went Black, what some people who's opinion I respect greatly are calling my best book yet. I've already pulled it from Vella, so you have less than two weeks. https://us.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B09DYYMSBX

Half-Assed Review: Avatar - The Way of Water

Woah. So, I saw this last night, and I have to say, I’m a huge fan of this film, right off. Avatar was cool, but it was a long time ago. I don’t think I saw it in a theater, and it didn’t have nearly the impact on me that this one did.

Let me start off by saying that I hear some people bagging on this movie, in typical fashion. “Ugh, just more of that noble savage bullshit”, in essence. But that is a judgment on you, not the film. If that’s your takeaway, now, 2022, you’re the problem. You are the mechanized killing society the film speaks against. Not in deeds, but in essence.

We should be living closer to the earth. Technology is dehumanizing. If you have so little awareness as to scoff at that entire notion, it’s clear what side you’re on. You’re no better than a machine yourself. You’re a cop, a soldier, a captain of industry. Not in reality. You’re just some dink that works at Home Depot or some shit. But in your heart, you side with the destroyers.

But those groups identified above are obvious garbage. So obvious to some of us that a movie like Avatar is entirely unneeded. At the same time, the military jock police-supporting types are clearly the majority of the world, whether they explicitly say so or not. Even if they claim otherwise. We’re living in the proof of that.

But let’s talk about the visuals before we get into all the socio-political ramifications.

I’m from a privileged time in which I have been able to watch the change in computer graphics as we came from green and amber monochrome monitors to today, where graphics are becoming indistinguishable from reality. Not only have I been witness to it, I’ve been immersed in it the entire time. I can tell you how to remap the character set on a Commodore 8-bit machine into 8 x 8 bitmaps. I have modeled and laid out scenes in 3D that I then deleted a day later, because rendering a single field (two fields to a frame…) took three days. I played Dactyl Nightmare back when virtual reality wasn’t even a buzzword yet. I remember when you had to hand select outlines of images in Photoshop. Better yet, I’ve gotten to know some of the major players in the field of graphics and video, back in the days.

So, I know a tiny bit about all this stuff.

There was not a single moment in this entire (crushingly) long masterpiece that looked unnatural or out of place. None of the jerky, rushed movements of old, which always jumped out at you when watching early CGI. I’m looking at you, stupid Yoda with a lightsaber… The immersion in this film is real and compelling.

There’s an endless richness to the details that you can feel. You can’t take it all in at once, even. But it’s there. Much as was said about the introduction to Amazing Stories, a very long time ago. There’s a richness there that you can feel, even if you don’t consciously take in all the detail. It’s there, and it helps to suspend disbelief.

For that matter, this goes way beyond mere 3D graphics as most people understand them. This isn’t purely rendered animation. It’s very much a blend of real actors and practical effects married to CGI. But the takeaway here is that it is finally seamless.

Graphics guys generally can’t just sit back and enjoy a movie like this. Usually we’re focusing on CGI hair, which was always the barometer of state of the art, or to a lesser degree, water. Even those stumbling blocks aren’t present. That’s a particularly impressive achievement considering the movie is largely an aquatic one. Instead of marveling at the way water is rendered, it’s no longer even noticed, because it looks and behaves exactly as water does. Beautiful, but nothing to really goggle at.

That’s an important achievement, in my mind. A balance was achieved there that finally just made CGI water into water. It’s no longer important, from a technical standpoint, because it now is indistinguishable from the real thing. And that is very important, from a technical standpoint.

But that extends to every element of the film. The Na’vi (or N’avi or Nav’I or N’a’v’I’ or whatever, I don’t know. It’s not like half-assed reviews merit any research) *do* look unnatural… by design. They’re aliens. They have elongated torsos entirely unlike our own, and it stands out like a sore thumb. But that’s intentional. It’s not an artifact of computer graphics. So even there, it works. They’ve managed to make humans seem entirely inhuman, but it’s flawlessly done.

I don’t think many of us know exactly how much work goes into something like this. This movie has to be 50% custom code and processes, because it’s a new paradigm of filmmaking. You know it wasn’t filmed in a primordial forest or in the ocean, but when you’re watching, it’s impossible to feel that way. Whatever techniques they’ve developed to make this happen, it works, and better than anything I’ve ever seen before.

I have no problem with the fact that it cost a billion dollars. With inflation being what it is, that’s probably about right. You’re talking about tens of thousands of people working overtime for five years or something. I’ve worked on industrial projects that had triple that budget, and we didn’t build anything nearly this impressive in the same timeframe.

But, with something like this, once you get past the visuals, it’s the overall message that needs to be examined. A three-hour piece of utter fluff with no redeeming values simply would not do, and could never be made up for by looking pretty. There has to be meaning there.

Ackshually… This movie stands on its own as a very impressive action movie. If you could somehow drain all of the message and meaning from it, and replace it with general mindlessness, it would still be a very watchable, decent film. It’s that good.

Luckily, that’s not the case.

On one hand, it just extends the message of the original movie, and improves upon it. A people out of touch with nature and their environment are a doomed people. Much as we are today. If you live in or near a major metropolitan area, you are on borrowed time. Your entire lifestyle is coming to an end, and it will be a violent, bloody end, at that. Even if you live in the suburbs, you’re almost definitely slated for elimination. Only the handful of people living at the fringes of civilization and beyond, already capable of raising their own food and purifying their own water, have a chance at survival. And even then, it’s just a chance. But a far better chance than the rest of us have.

I realize this statement will have zero impact on the world. The few who do read it will scoff.

Anyway…

There’s a lot of sociological, historical, and anthropological knowledge that goes into writing a film like this. Not the bad sort of pseudo, feels-based science that some of us have come to detest, but the real shit.

Technology is our undoing. This extends to even before the industrial revolution. How’s that? Why? Because advancements in medicine and agriculture are what allowed societal units to grow the population into the numbers needed to do real damage, in the long run.

There are plateaus to technology. Rungs. They are based on sheer numbers of people, for the most part. At, say, one thousand people, there will be contained within those numbers a certain amount of people able to, for instance, understand the importance of water purification, and the skills to bring it to the fore.

At one hundred thousand (I’m pulling every bit of this out of my ass to give you some examples, so don’t go bothering to look up these specifics), you will have the people who can conceptualize harnessing the power of moving water to generate energy.

And so on. At one billion people, let’s say, we begin to have the collective brainpower (the number of brains able to conceive, comprehend, and foster these things. Not everyone in the world.) to develop atomic science and weapons.

Around ten billion, I would estimate, and now you’ve got the heavy lifters who will go on to develop space travel and propulsion systems to take us to other planets.

We’re stuck between those two levels, currently. We have the tech to destroy ourselves, but not the next level that could save us. More to the point, we don’t have the emotional maturity, the ethics and morals, the underlying creeds, that will allow us to survival for long beyond this current stage. Even if and when we do hit the next population plateau, it’s obvious that it will only be perverted and used to our detriment as a whole.

We see this happening now, in real-time. A tiny slice of the world’s population has the tools needed to survive just about any upcoming cataclysm, and they are very near being able to escape off planet, if need be.

But that’s just for them.

In another sense, really, mother nature doesn’t care. If we turn this planet into a smoldering husk, lifeless, reduced to ruins, nature remains. She’ll be back. We won’t, and there won’t be anyone or anything who cares.

So maybe some of this is just worthless human sentiment. An archaic artifact, our humanity. Nature’s just as content fiddling about with single cells and amoeba, or perhaps just crude amino acids, saline, and electricity. Given enough time and events, something will grow out of our destroyed earth again.

That’s the most extreme case imaginable (short of the sun just erasing the entire planet off the celestial map). In reality, some plants and animals will survive us, and that’s plenty. We will probably see the rise of a roach-based culture another few billion years hence.

But, goddamn it, some of us like trees. Birds. Dirt. The sun on our faces. We like being humans. Mammals. We like our ability to laugh, and cry. To feel joy and pain. If nature’s ultimate end is that we are to evolve past feelings and become cold and unemotional aliens with big eyes, no mouth, and zero sentiment, then maybe nature is wrong, too.

But the supply chains that enabled our stratospheric growth will end one day soon. Some of your last meals may be each other. I don’t see that as a loss at all, at this point. We are, collectively, not worth saving, our own foolish, personal pretentions aside.

And frankly, I don’t feel like expanding on this at all. You won’t be swayed, or convinced, or changed. Who feels it knows it, one draw. (Rita Marley. Gotta attribute it so she doesn’t sue me, I guess. One love, my ass…) At this point, nothing anyone can say or do will bring you back closer to nature. It’s either in you or it’s not.

Well, I guess my own pessimism (pessimism is realism…) has taken the wind out of my own sails for this review, now. Because it is at the social-political level, and the personal, that this film truly shines. That’s what I intended to spend most of this review on, and now I don’t really care enough to elaborate very much. It’s all fabulously interesting, though.

The layers and layers of commentary here are amazing. The space colonists are the ‘white people’ in all of this. The Navi are sort of the Indians, in relation to them. But when the Navi meet the aquatic Navi (spoiler, bitches), they are sort of the white people to them. It’s all relative. As the movie says, we focus far too much on our differences at the expense of noticing our similarities and commonalities.

But the aquatic Navi address what I was feeling about the jungle Navi. They gots no ass. No nothing. Androgynous bullshit. By contrast, the aquatic Navi… damn. But they’re not just thick, and the men look like men. It’s apparent in their hair, their attitudes. It’s a subtle treatise on racial differences. Two tribes, alike in stature, but entirely different. There’s no judgment made one way or another, of course. One culture and body type is more suited for one region than another.

One important thing this film shows is that you can be a lesbian and still be a huge piece of shit. You can be an Asian and still be a huge piece of shit.

The biggest pieces of shit, in charge of the whole mess, are white people, though. Though through that vague Avatar science, even that is obscured, which adds to the level of complexity. The piece of shit marine colonel stereotype trope has a native Navi body.

The white deadlock kid, to me, is the worst thing about the whole movie. He kinda sold out the Navi by falling in with the bad guys. He could have escaped. He could have killed at least some of them. He could have committed suicide.

Any of that would have been far more honorable. To make matters worse, he SAVES the fucking villain (fucking spoiler, bitches!). Yay for stupid sequels. I wish that kid had been killed, instead. I prefer the fucking irrational white people villains over his lack of character.

I guess I’m criticizing, at this point, so let me continue. The writing is good. Quite good, structurally. The dialogue is also good, with a mix of formal and Earthisms that works very well. The story overall is well thought-out.

Even when I was rolling my eyes at some deus ex machina stuff, for the first time conscious of what I felt was bad writing, my beliefs were upended less than a minute later. Wow. Now that sort of subverting expectations is GREAT writing. They set me up, then knocked me down.

But the movie is bloodless and sexless.

Or, more to the point, there is precious little realness, at the core of it all. It’s very PG. I want to see BLOOD. I was sitting in my seat with all the rage of my ancestors boiling up within me, and I was crying out for serious blood to be spilled. Instead, it’s very sparingly used. Almost never. Most of the deaths are like in G.I. Joe where a helicopter blows up, and the bad guys just fall to the ground.

Not quite that bad, but along those lines.

For a bunch of people running around almost completely naked, there is almost no sensuality present. Which is odd, for me to not be able to sexualize something. It’s not just in presentation, but there is no passion expressed by anyone toward anyone else along those lines. None. A few potential budding romances are indicated by smiles.

Instead, everyone behaves ‘perfectly’ all the time, however imperfect their actions are.

Also, this is an awkward segway, and let’s keep it more related to nakedness than sexuality, shall we? Can you possibly imagine what reaction this movie would get if everyone wasn’t painted blue? The country just watched three hours of topless ten year old girls, and no one batted an eye. Now, in an ideal society, that’s probably normal and healthy. France, I daresay, is far more comfortable about this stuff than the U.S., and also seems to be a lot more responsible with their attitudes and practices.

But the U.S. isn’t France. It isn’t healthy. Which makes this tiny detail of the film an important one, in some sense that I am unable or unwilling to define in this half-assed review. It’s low-key revolutionary, at a time when these issues are at an all-time high in the public consciousness.

So, getting back to racial analogies, where I am more comfortable being edgy, there are a number of interesting things at play, here. Just one of which involves being of ‘mixed’ heritage.

We’re all ‘mixed’. It’s just a matter of what the mix is composed of. In this case, though, it’s about being half-human and half-Navi. Or being a human in a Navi body. Or being a full human raised with Navi, and accepted as such, for the most part, despite the impossibility of ever fitting in entirely, for real.

All of that is given a lot of focus, and it’s all handed very well. Lots of food for thought there.

One of the subplots in this regard involves a ‘half-breed’ who I will call “Young Winona Ryder Catgirl”, who is pretty much the only cute female Navi, other than the very strong mother figure. She is weighed down by her differentness, even though it seems to have unlocked some power the rest of them don’t possess. It does speak to the value and power of merging our collective genes to create some new expression of ourselves that has the potential, at least, to surpass the current generations.

She is also complicated by the fact that her actual mother is Sigourney Weaver, the only person I recognized in the entire film. It’s wonderful to see her there, really. I love her so much, and she deserves that role. It’s also one she created all by herself since Alien first hit the silver screen.

It was only after the fact that I realized Kate Winslet was in it, and I couldn’t tell you off-hand who she played. The movie is better without any recognizable stars, I think that’s apparent. I don’t want to be distracted by fucking Joe Pesci or some shit, nam sayin’? (Is he dead? I have no idea…)

The last few criticisms I will level at the overall plot and writing (I still hate the Tarzan white kid, even though his dreadlocks were extremely accurate!) are as follows:

The Navi culture is way too perfect. Yes, okay, this is what people might be trying to say when they scoff at the noble savage trope. Real Indian culture wasn’t homogenous, or peaceful, or non-violent. The Navi all work together way too well, in a way humans cannot. And I guess that’s because they’re not human. Okay, fair cop. Nevertheless. If we tried to emulate that culture ourselves, it would fall apart at 100 people. If not less. It may be realistic for aliens who are deeply interconnected, but very much not realistic for us humans.

Furthermore, after all the shit they went through in the first movie, they made ZERO fucking preparations to fend off or shut down further encroachment. In fact, they tolerated colonies and bases on their own planet for the entire time since the first movie. Zero thought seems to have been given to fending off further invasions, which they clearly know are inevitable.

That… kinda supports them being wiped out, in the long run. Like I said, nature is a bitch. Tech without heart is terrible, but if you don’t have any, you will be subjugated by those who do. Instead of picking sides, we should be seeking a merger of the two. That would be balance. It’s not either/or. Or shouldn’t have to be. For that matter, the actions of the Earthlings are entirely irrational. Just going apeshit to get revenge on one person. It doesn’t make any sense at all, and… yeah, I guess that’s probably pretty accurate, also.

Three quick things here. What I just referenced above is an allusion to Moby Dick, and there is plenty in the film to support my assertion. So that’s really some clever writing and film-making. Add to that Cameron’s nod to Full Metal Jacket (“Outstanding!”) AND a return to The Titanic. Nice work bro, really. Very nice. Even though it’s as much “The Poseidon Adventure” as it is Titanic. That almost makes it even cooler.

I don’t think taking out ten minutes of gunplay really helped lessen the ‘fetishment’ of gun violence or whatever Cameron was talking about in the press, as there is still plenty, but yeah, the movie didn’t need ten more minutes of anything, so good call, there. Save the virtue signaling, though. There’s tons of gun violence.

More importantly, dude is in the press saying we need to eradicate masculinity. The movie itself shows the very necessary balance between the masculine and feminine. Those roles might have been perverted by modern life, but those paradigms exist. We are different. Both have good and bad points. To utterly downplay one over the other is fundamentally wrong. I’m calling bullshit. His movie is more informed than he himself is.

There’s a lot of stuff going on in regard to race/genders/cultures, and what have you, and each of us will take something different away from that.  No, we won’t all be in agreement, but we will all be considering the same issues when we watch it. That’s probably not a bad thing at all.

Deeper subtext? The extraction by brain drill scene harkens to some people’s (kinda bullshit) ‘adrenochrome’ stuff. I say kinda bullshit, because I don’t think that substance is the point at all, in those lurid ‘conspiracy’ tales. It’s more like the way King ALSO alluded to in Dr. Sleep, not just some extract. Some people are torturing and raping kids, sorry. If you refuse to believe that is even possible, somewhere, somehow, well, you don’t live in the real world. Please read a book on the Caesars.

Another subtext? This movie is telling YOU that YOU need to be ready to kill. If you can’t spill blood in your own defense, your blood will be spilled. And it is also saying that you’ll likely be on the side that doesn’t even have firearms. A lot of times, the guns are out of ammo or quit working, throughout this film. Rocks always work. Spears and arrows always work. And they are plentiful.

I could go on and on about this movie. Almost four thousand words are enough. Watch it or not, I don’t care. I enjoyed it.

I can’t *necessarily* say it’s one of my top five favorite movies, because that would mean kicking out something far closer to my own heart, like Repo Man. Do not fuck with my Repo Man. But I do think it’s easily one of the top five most IMPORTANT movies of the past 100 years. At least when we’re talking about pop culture and entertainment. It’s ambitious, and it succeeds.

When will it jump the shark? I imagine it’s hard as hell to do a threepeat, but I do wish Cameron and company luck. The world kinda needs it, if we even live that long.

One last thing, as I forgot to touch on this in the whole of this review. Are there any black people in this damn movie at all? It seems weird that I now can’t recall a single one. Huh. Also, the little bit about ‘the way of water’ as alluded to in the title was a very nice piece of writing.

Also, Cameron, ya dink. Put in a bathroom break. Intermissions were a thing at the movies. Since the theaters are living off of coke and candy sales, they would appreciate it. The length was right for this movie, but I peed before, twice during, and really had to go afterward… Drinking $14 worth of cokes (two) will do that to you.

Your thoughts in the comments would be very welcomed.

ADDENDUM: An empath who I respect entirely has asked me to reconsider the case of the young Tarzan kid. Okay, fine. I'll stop wishing death on him. At the same time, it's this excessive sentimentality that gets entire groups of people eradicated...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Half-Assed Review: "The 100" on Netflix

 

So, I have been seeing the graphic for this show on Netflix for years, and someone finally convinced me to check it out. As a rule, I watch very few movies, and even less TV. A few cartoons, maybe, and select shows (Peaky Blinders, Umbrella Academy, GoT, etc.)

This was actually a pleasant surprise. First of all, it was apparently produced for the CW, which is a channel for senior citizens, I thought, and only worthy of skipping over. It later found a home on Netflix, and I agree with that decision. It's slick and well-produced.

Before I finished an episode, this felt like a worthy successor to 'Lost', which I have never, ever watched. I am relatively confident in saying this show was better. It's more pertinent, and contains far fewer loose ends, knowing what we know now about Lost. Because you are very unlikely to be stranded on a desert isle, but you are definitely facing a coming collapse and further dystopia, whether you are aware of it or not.

Based on a novel I also haven't read, it successfully tells two stories. One is decidedly sci-fi, involving a surviving group of humans on a decaying space station, post apocalypse. The other involves a group of youth sent back to Earth to determine the viability of a return for the others.

Much as the logo suggests, it is a clash of worlds. In fact, it's a clash of worlds within a clash of worlds. The space station culture vs. the newly-minted earthling culture. The newly-minted earthlings vs. the survivors on Earth that they didn't know about. For starters.

So, there's a lot to work with there. The space station is a fairly harsh survival scenario, where laws are absolute, death is the primary penalty, and everything is for the good of the collective. Except where concerns their leaders, naturally. On Earth, it's very much a Lord of the Flies situation. In fact, power struggles are what this show is all about. Everyone wants to rule everyone, with a few genuine leaders in the mix, trying to do what's best for the groups involved.

There are plenty of twists and surprises. It's not all entirely predictable. It's also fairly brutal and edgy at times, at least when you consider who produced it. There is poignancy of a sort, emotional drama, love (and love triangles). Sort of something for everyone, here. It really should appeal to the Hunger Games crowd.

In fact, the only character names I know (kinda...) are women. That's not just because I have a preference, there, but because they're some of the most compelling characters. (Clarke, Raven, and Octavia, if you're quizzing me.) But there are also memorable male characters, forgive me for not knowing their names.

Lots of betrayals and double-crosses. It ain't Game of Thrones, for sure, but there is plenty of intrigue. Fluff+, perhaps, but fluff that can still occasionally make you think a bit. I'm gonna wrap up this lazy-ass review with a score of 8/10. I hear it very much loses the plot in later seasons, but it went on for something like seven or eight of them. I plan on stopping before that point.

I do have a bit of trouble ignoring what I consider to be major plotholes. I don't think third-generation people raised on a spacecraft would just be entirely comfortable rushing out into a forest to live. I also feel that there would be some slang developed by that point. The international nature of the space station (actually a merger of twelve different country's stations) doesn't really translate into any difference on screen. They're all excessively homogenized. 

But, meh. It's TV. I think it's far more worthy of your attention than One Tree Hill or whatever passes for entertainment on the CW... If you're looking for something interesting, give this one a few episodes worth of attention.

THE 100 ON NETFLIX

Profiles in Excellence: Author Naomi Ault

                 

                According to biologist Howard Bloom, anyway, we’re all bad motherfuckers. Each of us alive on this planet have overcome a lot of tough odds to be here. Then there’s author Naomi Ault. A bad motherfucker on a planet of bad motherfuckers. While I would like to think she would be slightly shocked and put off by this declaration, it’s true. Now, allow me to explain.

                In terms of elite feats of mental prowess, did you know that novel writing ranks just below hardcore research papers in terms of brainpower? They’re generally regarded as the most high-end intellectual pursuits one may pursue. But among authors, merely writing a novel, as big as accomplishment as it is, is just par for the course. You’re not much of a novelist if you can’t do that.

                Writing a really *good* novel is something else entirely.

                Naomi has written at least two, so far. It’s kind of hard to quantify, because her debut, Chew, continues to grow on Vella. It’s now a series. So, woah. Then she released Alice Kane Must Die on Vella, which is also intriguing, although I must confess to having not read it yet, opening chapter aside. I did read enough to know I’ll finish it. But that merely makes her a good and competent writer, with an excellent command of storytelling, worldbuilding, and character development.

How, then, I hear you asking, does she qualify for this outlandish BMF title? Because she has mastered all the many things writers need to do *after* they write a great book. Her first paperback is extremely slick. Her marketing campaigns are amazing. She engages readers. In fact, she took herself to the top of the (Canadian) charts in her genre. Canada or not, that’s pretty damn impressive.

Naomi is literally a case study in how it is done. One person, acting alone, ala Lee Harvey Oswald, has carved out a name for herself in the now tough world of indie authors. This is not an easy task. Yet she made it look not only easy, but fun. Not to mention, I do believe she made some serious bank off of Vella with her popularity. Bank, like, more than I have made in ten years as a writer.

So, as an indie author, you can just moan and whine that you don’t have enough readers, as I do, or you can follow her example and learn from her. Videos, giveaways, promos… I don’t know how she got so damn good at all this, but I do know she works hard at it. The results speak for themselves. Naomi Ault is a bad motherfucker. Check out her author site here: https://naomiault.com/

Oh, and of course she has another novel in the wings, and is working on a collaborative effort with someone else on yet another… 

Kindle Vella, Instagram Drama, Promotion Quickie

Kindle Vella

Welp, I put a title on Amazon's Vella. Impetuously, foolishly, but there you have it. It's sort of what I do.

Vella is Amazon's serial, episodic story experiment. The first three chapters are free, then users can purchase tokens to unlock more chapters. It's...interesting. New users also get 200 tokens to spend, which is a nice incentive. Beyond that, tokens are about a penny each, and you can expect an average chapter to run from 15 to maybe 30 tokens are so, based on length. 20 is probably average.

For me, I enjoy the attempt at stretching and writing under a tiny bit of pressure. The story I'm posting (don't tell anyone) is being written as I go along. I'm far enough ahead that if I keep writing a chapter a day as I've been doing, I'll be done before people are caught up to where I am currently. Writing without a net. 

There are problems with the program, as I see it. First of all, Amazon takes your cover and turns in into a circular graphic. If you don't like the results, and I don't, with my cover, you'll have to make an entirely new one, and it's hard to nail down. Pretty terrible, honestly.

The other aspect I'm questioning is the economics of it all. For one, readers are reluctant to read books that aren't fully published. We know this because readers are reluctant to read even a series that is incomplete. Thank you, Stephen King and Clive Barker for that.

But I had to purchase some tokens to continue reading the first Vella story I couldn't ignore. It's not available as an ebook, and is the first novel (serial? I don't know what a Vella story is. A story.) by this author. They're prolific, and I can see that I will have spent far more to read their work than if I had purchased a $2.99 ebook. Or a $3.99 ebook. Or a damn $4.99 ebook.

I don't buy $4.99 ebooks. In this case, it's worth it. But not a practice I follow, ordinarily. So Amazon may have managed to turn a $2.99 ebook into a $9.99 one.

Now that's great for an author, if you are getting a lot of reads. It's very meritocratic. But I don't see the frugal, spendthrift ebook crowd doing that for a lot of authors. One nice thing about Vella, so far, is that it's dominated completely by indies. Like all things Amazon, that will change.

King is probably finishing up on some 1,800 page epic as we speak.

There are any number of quirks to Vella for authors to be aware of. The blurb length is reduced. If you're adapting an existing ebook, your old blurb will be too long. 

The categories are limited. Very bare bones, there. You can add seven tags, but there are only a handful of genres to choose from as far as categorizing your work goes. No erotica category, although there is some on there. Authors had to develop their own WDTM tag for that. (Write Dirty To Me...) Likewise, you can't mark your work as explicit, so the tag serves that function as well.

There is no real way to connect with readers. They are reading stories in the void. The titles are not tied to your author page, and the reviews will not apply to the ebook version if you publish one later. 

Once your work is released, there are no update announcements to the Vella front page. Not only that, but if your story isn't explicitly followed, readers will have no idea. In fact, I've never gotten an update for the one story I am following...

Did I mention that on a laptop, it displays the text in a tiny phone format? WHY?

There is a an iPhone app, via Kindle for iPhone. But no Android version. It's in the works, but not having it at release is bizarre. The whole thing feels sort of rushed and half-baked. Relatable. But it could be so much better. At least the iPhone readers get notifications of new episodes. (Or was we used to call them, chapters...) You can also break your work into 'Seasons', and that also seems weird, to me. These are still books, not Netflix shows. I guess they are trying to capture the youth market and get them reading again, with bite-sized stories for mobile. That's probably a positive, but as a writer, I find it slightly offensive.

Vella seems kinda shitty when you look at all of those problems together. I expect it to change over time, of course. Or just die off. Or just limp along like...a zombie. Knowing Amazon, the changes will tend to favor major publishers instead of indies, over time.

Despite all of that, it's an interesting experiment. If you have a work that's finished, or almost finished, you have little to lose by giving it a shot. It might even motivate you to work harder, as you'll give yourself a little pressure to be more productive. That's always a good thing.

One feature I do enjoy is the chapter endnote feature. I like adding commentary or flavor to my work in that way. Readers can give your episode a 'like', and they can make a story their favorite every week. So that's something. Something fleeting, as it's reset every month, like it or not.

If it takes off, I can see it shaping the way stories are written, as a cliffhanger format works well on Vella. I love writing chapter endings that make you want to push on to learn what happens next. 

In case you're wondering, the story that got me into Vella is Chew by newly published author Naomi Ault. I got so sucked in by this one, I apparently read an entire novel (or at least a long novella) in two days. Something like 38,000 words. It's a smart and fresh take on the zombie genre. She writes in a crisp, clear style that results in a very visual story. I feel it's a lot more cerebral than anything else I've ever read in this area. I compare it favorably to the mighty World War Z novel in my review, in fact. It's a five-star book that I gave four stars out of pure jealousy. She's an amazing author.

Don't Be An Idiot (Like Me)

Ever since I got on Instagram as an author, but especially since I ran a few promo experiments, I get bombarded with people trying to entice me into book promotions, and almost all of them include reviews. Fake reviews. 

After one particularly annoying incident, I broke my own written rule about engaging people, screenshotted the conversation, and posted it there. Big mistake. The guy got irate, told me to take it down, and I'm pretty stubborn when it comes to people telling me what to do.

I got two Verified Purchase one-star reviews in a single day. I'm kicking myself, because I knew better in the first place. My flagship book dropped from a solid four stars to 3.5 overnight.

I'm fine with legitimate bad reviews. This is entirely different. A malicious campaign had started. In fact, he threatened me with twenty of them. I took down the post, let him know that he was starting an utter war with a maniac, and...apologized. Things seem to have cooled down now, but I am for the first time trying to get Amazon to take down a review. 

I hate to have to do that, and it just goes to show that authors are in a uniquely bad position. We are entirely free when we write. In the real world, we are subject to the whims of anyone we encounter. The safest bet is to not even talk to people like that. Calling them out publicly is a terrible idea. 

I knew better. I've written about it. The irony of the situation isn't lost on me. 

A Legitimate Promoter?

My new narrator, who is concerned with my lack of, well, everything, found a Fiverr book promoter who actually looks like they can make a difference. At first glance, Smm_Sema doesn't inspire confidence. She is from Pakistan (not that there's anything wrong with that), I believe, with only six or so ratings. The ad copy doesn't look promising at all, at first glace.

But what she offers seems to stand out from most Fiverr promoters. She has a detailed list of book promotion groups, along with their membership numbers, that she will post your blurb, graphic, and link to. For the nominal cost of ten dollars, she can legitimately claim exposure to potentially millions of people. 

It's a refreshingly honest approach, simple and direct. An author would have to spend way too much time on Facebook, etc. to achieve what she is able to do on her own. The campaign goes live in two days, and if I sell even a copy or two, I'm going to take the plunge and purchase her deluxe package for a different novel.

Then I'm going to try and redo her graphic and ad copy. I hope it works out, because she is the opposite of scammy and pushy. Expect an update if things go well.

Everything Went Black: The Tokio Jones Story as told to Janice Livingston

I haven't published in a while, until just recently. I haven't written since 2016, I do believe. That's all changing rapidly.  Even though I have two incomplete series, and a handful of partially finished projects, I have suddenly found myself engrossed in an entirely unforeseen new work.

It's a Radar Love prequel, telling the story of Tokio, the main secondary character, and the impetus for the entire story arc. Better yet, it's told as dictated to Janice Livingston, another character from the third, unreleased (but almost done) Penultimate Hustle L.A. It's also first person, episodic, and surprisingly unpornographic. 

This has forced me to create an entire bio and pseudo-history for Janice, and even putting a face to her name, It's literally the missing link the series needed.

It's enormously fun to write, and I have already generated an entire novella's worth of material, with no end in sight. There's a lot to tell here, and it enhances the original story and series to a high degree.

It's also enjoyable to write as someone else. The text ends up a blend of Tokio and Janice, mixing it up in some Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart fashion, and becoming greater than the sum of its parts. The cover is still being finalized, the timelines have to change a bit to make the two books mesh, but there you have it. Don't be an idiot. Like me.

Of course, I published it to Vella. And why not? No one is going to read it anyway. You're not reading this now. At any rate, pretend you are, and click on this link. I can pretend you're my beta reader, and I am finally doing things the right way.

Thanks for not reading!

Building an Integrated Universe

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King is a major influence on me as a writer. It is up there with Lord of the Rings, in my mind. But, story aside, what has interested me for a long time now was how it became the hub of all King’s work. It started out small, I think in Wizard & Glass, when he made reference to The Stand and Captain Trips. What it eventually grew into was a universe that held all of his other books and characters, and did it all in a very organic way. He even ended up in the story himself, as himself, in a very meta fashion that served the plot well.

The only other example of something like this that I can name offhand was Robert Heinlein’s ending of Number of the Beast, another favorite classic. At the end, the protagonists have gathered their favorite people from many universes into one place for a sort of convention/reunion, including Lazarus Long, and Valentine Michael Smith, the hero of Stranger in a Strange Land. I think Heinlein himself also makes a cameo. Heinlein’s expanded universe and future history did provide a framework for a significant part of his work, furthermore.

With those influences at play, it’s no wonder that I found myself working along similar lines as I developed my stories.

I think the first time it happened, I had written a character that briefly appeared in my sci-fi/fantasy novella Hurricane Regina. Her name was Renee Hollander, and she was ballsy, brash, funny, and hot. She deserved her own story. And has one, although I haven’t even typed up what I wrote about her, so far. Her novel Reduction of Forces is an industrial construction murder mystery of sorts, and details her early life as well as her time as the head of the world’s largest construction outfit, Zen Construction.

Radar Love has always existed as a standalone story. But when I was writing it, my fiancée at the time, and this is hard to explain (there may have been drugs involved), felt that Janique was becoming too powerful. We roleplayed with her, we enacted things that we later put into the book, and she was becoming a force to be reckoned with.

So, we invented the character Prail. She was calculated to be the opposite of Janique in every way, and would serve to counteract her. Her novella, Perfect Me, flirts with Douglas Adams’s universe directly (and I have paid dearly for that…), but it also incorporated stuff from my musical career, such as it was, and includes parody versions of me and my little brother, as High-C and O.D. Drugwar. High-C, the non-space, non-glorified version, is also a primary character in my Zombie Killa novella.

But when I got around to writing the sequel, Cure for Sanity, I found Prail and Janique working together. That is when things really began to get weird. Janique, my character, makes numerous attempts to kill me, the author. Not only that, but she takes a crack at King, as well. In a strange sense, the series not only ties into my works, but into King and Adams’s, as well. Multiverse stuff is fun like that. That book also makes reference to the third novel involving Janique, Penultimate Hustle: L.A., which parallels that point in its own story. I just stumbled upon that line in my re-read before I attempt to finish it, and was enormously pleased with myself and the way it turned out.

Pageburner also existed in a bubble, for a long time. While some people have asked for a sequel, and I have even mused over the idea numerous times, it has never happened. Until it kind of did. Forever Daddy, another untyped, uncompleted work, sits at some forty-thousand words, with a lot left to say. It ended up being the prequel to Reduction of Forces. Renee is in it, of course, but so is Paige and Jean from Pageburner, and Janique Turner makes a cameo in it as well. It is now somehow the hub of all my stories. All the integration feels very good and natural, and that pleases me to no end.

With very little prompting and prodding, I now find myself having written a good 12,000 words in the past few days on an entirely unforeseen project. My narrator of Radar Love felt that perhaps someday the character Tokio could have his own story. Whatever writing logjam I had in me broke loose with that idea, and seven chapters in, we meet little Maxine Jackson, who we know as Maxxy from Pageburner. The real meta stuff about that novel, though, is that it is written by one of my characters, Janice Livingston, about another of my characters. I’m no longer sure what role I play in the creation of these stories, other than moving my fingers on a keyboard. They all seem to have lives of their own, independent of me.

I guess the point of this column is that you can add an entire layer of richness and complexity to your stories if you approach them in this fashion. I don’t suggest you try and shoehorn things like this in. If it don’t fit, don’t force it. But if you’re aware of the technique and approach, what you end up with after several novels is an entire universe for the reader. They might not explore every aspect of it, but the ones they do will be a little more familiar to them each time, and it all adds up to a more enjoyable experience overall. Or such is my perception of things, anyway.

Okay, Fine. Marketing.

Ordinarily, I enjoy promoting. But my experience comes mainly from promoting musical projects and websites, some of which involved a lot of other people's work. That doesn't interfere with music in any way, and really instead enhances the whole experience.

As a writer, though, you can't be writing or editing if you're promoting. Sure, you're writing blog posts, Instagram posts, comments, etc. But that is just gravy. The meat and potatoes, your books, sit by idly as you get taken further and further away from them, unless you are extraordinarily focused.

In gearing up for the release of the Radar Love audiobook, now a month or two away from completion, I have gotten many of my titles in a state where I feel comfortable pushing them a bit. 

Here's what I've found so far.

KDP and making books free for a few weekends remains a force to be reckoned with. Even without scheduled free promotions lined up on the websites that handle that sort of thing (which takes a lot of scheduling and planning, not the sort of off-the-cuff stuff I have been doing this round), it's relatively easy to get your work into a few hundred more hands.

Will they read any of it? That remains to be seen.

It can, and in my case, did lead to sales of non-free books. Plus having links in your back matter should translate into a few more long-tail sales over time. It also helps with visibility to be on Amazon's top 20 free charts for a few days, and usually results in the selling of a few copies right after the free period ends and you're still charting. You'll also likely rack up a few reads via Kindle Unlimited or whatever the program is that pays you for each page read online.

In embarking on this campaign, I tried to space things out, and group my promotions together in such a way that I could gauge results based on the general action. Each week involved a different tack.

The first new thing I tried now that I'm a "Bookstagrammer" was enlisting the services of the Indian book promoters who are prevalent there. Let me save you some time and money. Don't.

First of all, they want to sell reviews, and I can't emphasize enough how you should never do this. In fact, it took a good deal of explaining, a few times, exactly how I did not want them to do that. It's often rolled into their other services, and I had to put my foot down and say I absolutely didn't want any reviews, fake or otherwise. Because they would be fake, despite their protests to the contrary.

It doesn't matter what sort of numbers they show. 100,000 followers? You still are unlikely to see any sales. The whole scene is incestuous and scammy. Even if you successfully navigate that minefield, you are still at best pitching your work to people in India, and other indie authors. Unless you are an Indian author, I suppose, it's a dead end, and your money, however cheap some of them are, is better spent elsewhere.

You might gain some followers and likes, but even those are hollow. Avoid this area altogether, and put your resources toward what will work.

Cost: About $150 across several promotions.

The next week, I placed my book on a few low-to-mid profile book sites. More budget stuff, but at least they are targeting the right people. This generally involves a page on their site, frontpage status for some period of time, and likely some Twitter or Facebook posts.

Again, I can't say this resulted in immediate sales. But it did increase my overall visibility,  Ideally, you would do this on every site possible, over time. But I can't imagine how much that would end up costing, and doesn't have a great, direct Return On Investment.

What I did get, however, via only five or six sites, was a  more solidified Google ranking. Radar Love, sadly, competes for eyes with another book by the same name. And, of course, with the band Golden Earring themselves.

At least now, if you Google "Radar Love Book", you will have no trouble finding me. Not that anyone is going to be randomly doing that, and if they did, they would be even less likely to acquire my book based on that. Every little bit of exposure helps, though. The Goodreads page does show up halfway down the listing for a basic "Radar Love" search, and that's something. More links back to the book from more sites would in theory move this up in page rankings. Too little reward for too much work and investment.

It's also difficult to gauge if you're getting any sales from these sort of pages, unless it happens on the day it rolls out. A sale this week could be from a promotion last week. In a very real sense, you'll never know for sure. But you have to keep moving forward.

Cost: About $200 across about six pages/mailing lists.

My next area of focus was Bookbub ads. Not the giant and expensive campaigns, yet, as I'm saving them for the audiobook rollout. But small, inline ads. Erm, smaller than this blown-up view.

A good cover, I think, and decent ad copy. I'm too close to the problem to know for sure. And do Bookbub people know that the 'Anything' is a button? I'll assume so. We all know what clicking on an ad does. at this stage. But I wonder if it would be better changed. This is why you run tests with ads.

In a sort of A/B test, I ran two. Both had the same look, but different approaches to funding. No-nonsense stat reporting is one huge advantage this site has. You can really get a feel for what is working and cost-effective.

This is a combined stat, after one day of running two campaigns.

For one, I put in a bid for pay-per-click. The max is an insane $15.00, I believe. That's a click. Not a sale. But since I was trying to develop a strategy and needed results for narrowing my focus, I put in that amount. What happens is that you will actually win bids at a lesser amount. On a $15 ($20?) daily budget, the funds were exhausted with three clicks.

So, even if all three clicks resulted in sales, which they did not, it is a losing proposition. I did get two sales today, and it is possible that they were the result of this test. Unless all traffic and sales goes through your own website, at some point it becomes impossible to tell. 

That's not to say it is a total loss, in the scheme of things. That's some sixteen-hundred more serious book buyers who have heard of the title than before. And it also indicates that the ad could be improved, in my mind, and perhaps more tightly targeted toward the proper audience. I have no idea how to change it in that direction, however.

The other campaign using the same ad is one whereby you pay per 10,000 impressions. I don't know for sure how they are going to achieve that, but that is a lot of eyeballs. Likely a decent investment. It's an ongoing thing until the goal is achieved, so this one can just ride. My targeted 'similar authors' was limited to Jackie Collins and Quentin Tarantino, so that could probably use some refining as well.
I also unpaused the pay-per-click campaign to see what happens tomorrow.
So, mixed, ongoing, and inconclusive results. But this is the most sensible and effective campaign overall, even though it is not generating immediate sales.
Cost: About $140 all told. Possible two sales. Definite three clicks. A terrible ratio, but valuable info, and some decent exposure from the investment. 
I say that it is a decent investment, because in traditional marketing, we used to say that an ad has to be viewed about seven times before it takes hold on an individual. Things have changed dramatically now that things are digital, but it's still a part of human nature, to a degree. Reinforcement leads to eventual interest. Plus you need as many eyes as possible to find your audience in the first place. People that don't care for the ad as presented might not care for the book anyway. It's all about sales to the right set of readers.
I'll run all this past an outside source for an opinion before I embark on more, here. But for now, it's a work in progress.
My Amazon advertisement. Yes, the cover text is too small. We've been over this in previous columns, thanks.
Related to what I was saying about reinforcement and many eyes, I am running an Amazon ad campaign based on cost per click. It's a bit of a sneaky, in that you are getting your stuff out there in front of many people but only paying for click-throughs.

In other words, I have gotten more impressions for free via Amazon, thus far. Again, zero clicks. Zero sales. But excellent statistical tracking, and more valuable marketing info. How do readers feel about sponsored listings such as this one? I know I tend to tune them out, if not scorn the people who place them.
At the high end of bidding, a sale could cost me a dollar... Or a click could cost me three...

Cost: Zero dollars so far. Balanced with zero dollars in sales, but I'm coming out ahead in terms of increased visibility. I think.
Finally, I put my money behind a few Fiverr book promotion accounts. This is the weedy end of things, sharing a huge overlap with Indian Bookstagram, except if you're looking for a book trailer or perhaps a nice logo designed for you. I did manage to find four promoters I felt pretty good about. After adding on a few options and making one a rush, 24-hour delivery job for this article, I ended up with much the same sort of deal small book sites give you: a listing, a feature, a sidebar ad, some tweets or Facebook posts.
Cost: $150 or so. 
It remains to be seen if this is anymore helpful than the rest of my efforts, they mostly just went into effect today. Some of them are better targeted (erotic fiction), and space out their promos over a week's time. All of it together might not help, but at least it doesn't hurt.
Or does it?
With $600, I probably could have squeezed out a very basic Boobbub promotion of the sort that tends to pay for itself in a day or so. My early analysis indicates that it's the better option. All other things being equal, do both if you can. 
Some of this depends on where you are in the publishing process. If it's your first book, you definitely want readers and reviewers, but at the same time, every free book is one you're not going to sell. Free promos are much more synergistic when you have a catalog that can benefit from indirect marketing.
With careful planning, you can schedule a free book weekend, and line up many promo slots for free on the major eBook promo sites at little or not cost to you. This will assuredly make your book a major mover on the free charts. 
Another viable route for reviews, however, is to sign up for something like Reedsy Discovery. (Something else I signed up for at $50, and although it's only been a week, I haven't seen any reviews. It's a weird process, because it's set up for unreleased books. In my case, it's already out, so I had to put some projected future release date on it, and I'm not sure if that's helpful in any way. Most likely a detriment.) 
Avoiding the free-on-Amazon promotion route will let you put your first book up on Apple Books and Barnes & Noble, etc. at the same time you list it on Amazon. I'm honestly not sure how it works right now, but you used to have to be exclusive to Amazon to reap the benefits of free book promotions, and that probably hasn't changed.
Reddit has a number of groups which are okay with you promoting free, Kindle Unlimited, or even normally-priced books. It's where a large part of my free download traffic came from, the second biggest source probably being Instagram.

Reddit is *really* funny about self-promotion. Other than those groups, it's terrible for that. Conversely, it's a great place to find writing communities. Even then, you're usually expected to only speak in the abstract about your work, and generally never mention it by name. A trade-off. One of the best writing groups is actually Writing Circlejerk, a parody of the writing group. Spend enough time in the two, and you start to realize that the best writing advice is in the parody group, and that the 'serious' group is sort of a parody of itself.
I have had decent results with finding select readers in "Recommend Me A Book" on Reddit, and DMing them a free review copy when one of mine fits the bill. Most of the responses I get are overwhelmingly positive and grateful.
Instagram is a good place for the middle ground. There are a literal ton of authors on there, and book people, "Bookstagrammers". But let's be realistic, here. It's 90% women, in both cases. Now, that's perfect for me. And I have met some very cool male authors on there, as well. 
Don't approach Instagram as a mere marketing tool, or you will likely fall flat. Engage with readers, engage with authors. Post interesting content. This holds true across the entire social media universe.
I do monitor traffic from my 'Linktree' (Instagram is terrible about links, in most cases. You can't even DM them...) so I can see that I'm getting blog traffic from IG. which also means I'm getting Amazon traffic, and therefore must be doing something right. It's more of a giant community than the impersonal Reddit, and great friendships and alliances can be forged there. It definitely needs to be an arrow in your online quiver.
As far as Facebook and Twitter go, you're on your own, there for now. I am either banned or just pissy and wary of them, currently. Maybe I'll be back someday. Maybe. Obviously, you can benefit greatly from a presence there, and a good deal of my early book sales were via Facebook. Twitter is also super for engaging with authors you admire, promotions aside. I had a delightful talk with Clive Cussler not too long before he died, actually. That's worth so much more than book sales, to me.

So there you have it. I threw $600 down the drain so you don't have to. My next foray will almost definitely be a full-blown Bookbub promotion campaign for the Radar Love audiobook, and I'll report back then with more findings.
If you're, like, rilly rich and stuff, you could do worse than throw $.99 down the drain on my new self-publishing eBook, Don't Be An Idiot (Like Me). We'll both pretend that most of the content isn't from this blog. 

A Round-Up of Amazon Plug-Ins for Authors

Whilst digging around on the Author Central pages on Amazon (I think), I stumbled onto a page of Chrome (and sometimes Firefox) plug-ins that, in some cases, are beneficial to authors. Here's what I've found. 

Obsessing over stats is a terrible distraction from writing, of course, but it does help to pay a wee bit of attention to things when you're running a promo. I guess it's also useful if you actually sell books, but I don't know what that's like.

Datasprout - This scrapes sales data and gives you a single page dashboard for sales. It's pretty good at it. Nothing that isn't available on your Reports pages, but it tightens the delivery and gives you everything at a glance. An admirable endeavor. It's actually a bit better than the Reports Beta Amazon is rolling out. One caveat, Garbage In, Garbage out. Since it does use Amazon data, it makes the same mistake Reports Beta does. Namely, it doesn't quite know how to handle returned books. Reports Beta is treating them as sales, and so does Datasprout.

It generates a chart showing a comparison against the previous month, and generates a table with all book sales in all formats. Other than the silly, fixable return problem, this is a good one. Maybe I should send them an email to try and get that fixed. It also places itself as a link on your Reports page, which is nice.

Rating: B+.

BookReport - Another dashboard. You can launch the plug-in, or bookmark the webpage. It's not as compact as Datasprout, and I have to ding it for that. There are a lot of customization options in the display table, though, and that might appeal to you. Plus it makes a 'ching!' sound when you have sales. So it's got that going for it.

It does handle returns correctly on the chart, so that's something. It's something that hurts, but it helps. (I just had what I think are my first returns, hence my continual freaking out over it. It was probably my mom.)

While I prefer Datasprout, the fact that it is charting the returns correctly (even though the totals are wrong), it evens out. 

Rating: B+

Bookching - Okay, I can't really use this. Your mileage may vary. It's largely a bulk-uploader for Amazon paperbacks? I can't imagine what sort of publishing mill you're running if you need this, but I don't like the implications. It also seems to be subscription based, but it installed for free and does a tiny bit anyway. I'm not going to look into this further.

One interesting aspect is that it will let you play with publishing options as far as printing cost of your book, which is vaguely useful if you're into that sort of stuff. To let you maximize profits, as it were. Ick.

The sales goals are interesting, akin to what Google Analytics does for webpage impressions. Also, it did show me that I've published under three different names, like an idiot. Thank you, Bookching. For that, I won't give you a C+. Worth investigating if it fits your specific situation. 

Rating: B.

KDP/Amazon BSR Data - I don't even know what exactly to call this, but that's close enough. Moderately useful, it collects some of the book data from your book page, and inserts it near the top of the page. That's how I use it, anyway. 

It saves me a bit of scrolling, so that's nice. Be warned, it can ugly up a page quick if you're looking at your entire list of published titles. There seems to be a wealth of Search Engine Optimization tools relating to keywords that I have yet to explore. There's a lot going on under the surface here, and I will probably look into it further.
In the meantime, visit their page, as there are a ton of links in many categories that can't help but to have some value in there somewhere.
Rank: B.

Merch by Amazon - Okay, while this isn't directly author related, it is interesting and possibly worthwhile. Amazon is going head-to-head with Spreadsheet, Cafe Press, and the like, offering to print your designs on shirts and things, and sell them for you. It could be very lucrative for authors with a big following, or great cover designs. Plus each shirt becomes a walking billboard. John Carmack, creator of the video game Doom used to wear a Doom shirt to conventions that said "Wrote it" on the back. I like that. 

Rank: A, without even checking into it further.

BookBeam - While this looks quite useful, I am not convinced of the $12 a month subscription price. Category finder, keyword generator, niche finder, spy on your competition. This is worth looking into if your sales aren't less than the monthly subscription rate. Or even if they are. A wealth of tools at your fingertips, if you're serious. Apparently I am not. I'm tempted to give it a month's test run anyway. 


Tempting. If I give it a test drive, it will probably deserve its own in-depth write up. The $12 price is for a yearly subscription, and I definitely don't need that. A month is $17.

Rank: A+. It looks that useful.


Seller App - A quick and dirty keyword ranking tool. Free, no login. Useful. It generates lists of the top-ranked keywords based on your input. This is super for improving your visibility. 

Rank: A+.

KDP Champ - This looks valuable and interesting. An app/web page and plug-in combo, KDP Champ will notify you of any changes in sales, reviews, rankings and more, at the frequency you desire. Get a daily report, and never have to worry again. It's kind of nice having all your stats in a separate phone app, if nothing else, and it's quite rich in features.

It takes a bit more in terms of set-up, because it uses your cookies, not your log-in. But that's nice from a security standpoint. Plus it walks you through the process, which is easy and doesn't take long to do.
After some syncing, you're set. One really nice feature here is that it will break down what countries are downloading your free books. I have to say, it's extremely convenient having all these stats available on a phone app. It's a pity that the historical data doesn't seem to be accurate, but that's somewhat understandable. Mine goes back to November 2011. I wish this was working, regardless.
I daresay if you only use one tool, this will be the one. Especially because it also seems to make a cash register sound. It's feature complete.
Score: A+.
KDP Miner - This is another tool to search for useful keywords to apply to your titles by providing the most profitable and popular ones. Unfortunately, it says Time Travel is not profitable. Sorry. Could use some improvement. 


It did pull up the top sixteen time travel related keywords, and it also works with Audible. You might find some value here. It's mostly to spy on successful titles, including letting you check out the most popular covers on Amazon. Honestly, I didn't spend a lot of time with this one, because it doesn't interest me all that much. I'll probably check it out in depth later. I'm getting sick of looking at plugins. 
Rating: B.

BSR Master - This is another best seller ranking app. I think. I can't remember what BSR means anymore. I'm pretty sure that's it. Unfortunately, it's very spartan, has no real documentation, and doesn't seem to do anything. It probably stole my bank account information or something.
It just says 'loading data' (what data?), and never seems to do anything. This will get uninstalled first. Sorry, Andrea Biancolli. It's not even going to get a picture. I am that underwhelmed.
Rating: F++.
There you have it. You might get some use out of at least one of these. I've mostly settled on KDP Champ, myself, because of the app feature. If you're a really high-powered author, you might check into something like Helium, which probably does everything all of these tools do and a lot more. It also costs $39 a month to subscribe. For most of us, that's money better spent on promotions. Or pizza.
Hope that helps.

I have six free ebooks this weekend, including my snazzy new (cover), "Don't Be An Idiot (Like Me)". Give me a bloody download, would you? No? Okay, whatever. I gotta go, I just heard my phone make a cash register sound. 

My Secret Weapon - Cover Artist Katherine Makoyana

I don't know how I do it. I keep finding these amazing artists to work with. Actually, I do know. I have almost unlimited time on my hands, and I'm fairly obsessive. Protip.

Katherine is Russian, and an insane talent. She is not only an accomplished artist, but an author as well, although her books are currently available only in Cyrillic. To my dismay and disappointment.

On the other hand, she has given my very unpopular funny sci-fi series a serious facelift. Behold, the unified look, the tasteful typography, the highly appropriate images:

This very much exemplifies the differences between main character Prail and her alleged love interest President Gorlax. I mean it's a shame I can't get the paperback version to upload properly to Amazon, as I'm dying to see this one printed. Email to tech support sent...


I'm very excited to see a new cover for Cure for Sanity. The old one was drawn by my daughter when she was nine, and it was great. In a sense. In another sense, it looked like it was drawn by a nine-year-old. Which it was. This novel actually has a time travel plot involving Yeshua Bin Joseph (Christ) and Mary of Magda, so it's wildly appropriate. Although the book itself might strike many as wildly inappropriate. Such is life. 


Woah, given that this one isn't written yet, I'm going to have to try hard to do it justice. It in part revolves around the Space Olympics, and is expected to have more dark sub-plots. So, aces once again. Everything is coming up Milhouse. Aside, I guess, from what looks like a pending divorce for me, but that's neither here nor there, is it?

Katherine can be found on Artstation (https://www.artstation.com/makoyana), and apparently Twitter (https://twitter.com/MagnieMakoyana) as well. She has a great portfolio in a range of styles, from quasi-abstract to romantic anime. Not only did she do the typography for these books, but produced beautiful back covers in the same style. I never thought my paperbacks would ever look this good. I am forever in her debt.

But wait, there's more! I am so pleased with her work, I have already made arrangements for two more covers. Here are previews of the cover art for Pageburner and Hurricane Regina!


Pageburner is a thriller about viruses, moral gray areas, and romance. So the only thing that will change will be the text, and the radiation symbol will become a biohazard one. Beautiful! 

Hurricane Regina involves a girl who receives some interesting, God-like powers via a dark arrangement. Although it was intended as a nautical sort of book, this captures the feel of the novel in far better fashion. 

An interesting note about Katherine: A lot of her personal projects revolve around doing artwork for every song on every Muse album. How cool is that? They should be paying her to run their art direction!
I absolutely cannot recommend her enough if you're in the market for an exciting book cover, or just love artwork in general. She's also a wonderful person, and fun to work with. What more can one ask for?